“As I turned on the light on the landing I noticed the same sort of shadow coming from the grandfather clock. I went to sleep all right, but suddenly found myself peering out of the window, and there was that shadow stretching out from the trees and in the drive. At first there was about that much of it showing,” and he drew a line down the sketch on the table-cloth, “about a sixth. Well, it’s been a simple story since then. Every night that shadow has grown a little. It is now almost all visible. And it comes out suddenly from different places. Last night it was on the wall beside the door into the Dutch garden. I never know where I’m going to see it next.” “And how long has this been going on?” asked Bellamy. “A month to-morrow. You sound as if you thought I was mad. I probably am.” “No, you’re as sane as I am. But why don’t you leave Franton and come to London?” “And see it on the wall of the club bedroom! I’ve tried that, Teddie, but one’s as bad as the other. Doesn’t it sound ludicrous? But it isn’t to me.” “Do you usually eat as little as this?” asked Bellamy. “‘And drink as much?’ you were too polite to add. Well, there’s more to it than indigestion, and it isn’t incipient D.T. It’s just I don’t feel very hungry nowadays.” Bellamy got that rush of tip-toe pugnacity which had won him so many desperate cases. He had had a Highland grandmother from whom he had inherited a powerful visualising imagination, by which he got a fleeting yet authentic insight into the workings of men’s minds. So now he knew in a flash how he would feel if Philip’s ordeal had been his. “Whatever it is, Philip,” he said, “there are two of us now.” “Then you do believe in it,” said Philip. “Sometimes I can’t. On a sunny morning with starlings chattering and buses swinging up Waterloo Place--then how can such things be? But at night I know they are.” “Well,” said Bellamy, after a pause, “let us look at it coldly and precisely. Ever since Clinton sent you a certain painted paper pattern you’ve seen a shadowed reproduction of it. Now I take it he has--as you suggested--unusual hypnotic power. He has studied mesmerism?” “I think he’s studied every bloody thing,” said Philip. “Then that’s a possibility.” “Yes,” agreed Philip, “it’s a possibility. And I’ll fight it, Teddie, now that I have you, but can you minister to a mind diseased?” “Throw quotation to the dogs,” replied Bellamy. “What one man has done another can undo--there’s one for you.” “Teddie,” said Philip, “will you come down to Franton to-night?” “Yes,” said Bellamy. “But why?” “Because I want you to be with me at twelve o’clock to-night when I look out from the study window and think I see a shadow flung on the flag-stones outside the drawing-room window.” “Why not stay up here for to-night?” “Because I want to get it settled. Either I’m mad or---- Will you come?” “If you really mean to go down to-night I’ll come with you.”