Hampden disengaged himself from further conversation with a single formal sentence, and returned to his vigil. There he was secure from her callous chatter. He saw the renewed look of terror start into her eyes when a board behind her creaked as the door was closing. He heard the startled shriek, but her squalid avarice cut off his sympathies. He sat down again and looked round at the already familiar objects in the room. The form lying on the bed had not changed a fraction of its rigid outline; but he missed something somewhere in the room, and for a minute he could not identify it. Then he remembered the ticking of the death-watch. It had ceased. He looked at his watch; it was not yet nine o'clock. He had not been back more than ten minutes when the subdued tapping--it was rather a timid scrape, as though she feared that a louder summons might call another forth--was repeated. "I don't see that it's no good my staying here," she gasped. "I've been sitting there till the furniture fair began to move towards me, and every bloomin' rag about the place had a face in it. It's giving me the fair horrors." He could not ignore her half-frenzied state. "What do you want to do?" he asked. "I want to go out for a bit," she replied, licking her thin feline lips. "You don't know what it's like. I want to hear real people talk and not see things move. I'll come back soon; before Gord, I will." "Yes, _how_ will you came back?" "I won't. May it strike me dead if I touch a drop. I'll go straight into Mrs Rugg's across the street, and she's almost what you might call a teetotaler." "The man you call your husband is dying in there, and he may need your help at any minute," he said sternly. It needed no gift of divination to prophesy that if the woman once left the place she would be hopelessly drunk before an hour had passed. "Don't sit down doing nothing but imagining things," he continued. "Make yourself some tea, and then when one of your friends comes round to see you, you can let her stay. But only one, mind." He saw the more sullen of her looks settle darkly about her face as he closed the door. He waited to hear the sound of the kettle being moved, the tea-cup clinking, but they never came. An unnatural, uncreaking silence reigned instead. He opened the door quietly and looked out. That room was empty, and, as he stood there, a current of cooler air fell across his cheek. Half a dozen steps brought him to the entrance to the little hall--the only other room there was. It also was empty, and the front door stood widely open. There was only one possible inference: "Mrs Flak" had fled.