It will be well for me to relate all that I did that evening. I washed, and then took some valuables out of my bag and put them in my pocket. Then I glanced round the chamber, and amongst other satisfactory details noticed that the electric lights were so fixed that I could read in bed without distressing my eyes. I then went downstairs, by the lift, and into the smoke-room. I had dined on board the express, and so I ordered nothing but a _café noir_ and a packet of Virginian cigarettes. After finishing the coffee I passed into the billiard-room, and played a hundred up with the marker. To show that my nerves were at least as steady as usual that night, I may mention that, although the marker gave me fifty and beat me, I made a break of twenty odd which won his generous approval. The game concluded, I went into the hall and asked the porter if there were any telegrams for me. There were not. I noticed that the porter--it was the night-porter, and he had just come on duty--seemed to have a peculiarly honest and attractive face. Wishing him good-night, I retired to bed. It was something after eleven. I read a chapter of Mr. Walter Crane’s “The Bases of Design,” and having turned off the light, sank into the righteous slumber of a man who has made a pretty break of 20 odd and drunk nothing but coffee. At three o’clock I awoke--not with a start, but rather gradually. I know it was exactly three o’clock because the striking of a notoriously noisy church clock in the neighbourhood was the first thing I heard. But the clock had not wakened me. I felt sure that something else, something far more sinister than a church clock, had been the origin of disturbance. I listened. Then I heard it again--It. It was the sound of a groan in the next room. “Someone indisposed, either in body or mind,” I thought lightly, and I tried to go to sleep again. But I could not sleep. The groans continued, and grew more poignant, more fearsome. At last I jumped out of bed and turned on the light--I felt easier when I had turned on the light. “That man, whoever he is, is dying.” The idea, as it were, sprang at my throat. “He is dying. Only a dying man, only a man who saw Death by his side and trembled before the apparition, could groan like that.”