I went back to bed. But he didn't come in and I was just getting up again to see what detained him—his voice really sounded so strange I thought then he might have been taken sick or something. But just as I got to the door a plank creaked and I opened the door and there it was right where I could have touched him. And then it ran—and oh, what if——"

[Pg 62]

"I'm astin' you once more what it was like?"

"How should I know except that——"

"Was it a big, fat, wild, bare-headed, scary, awful-lookin' scoundrel dressed in some kind of funny pink clothes?"

"Yes, that's it! That's him—he was all sort of pink. Oh, did you see him too? Oh, is it a burglar?"

"Burglar nothin'! It's a ravin', rampagin' lunatic—that's what it is!"

"Oh, my heavens, a lunatic!"

"Sure it is. He tried to git me to let him in and——"

"Oh, whatever shall we do!"

XIII

"Hey, what's all the excitement about?"

A new and deeper voice here broke into the babel, and Mr. Leary recognising it at a distance, where he stood listening—but not failing, even while he listened,[Pg 63] to strive unavailingly with his problem of buttons—knew he was saved. Knowing this he nevertheless retreated still deeper into the inner room. The thought of spectators in numbers remained very abhorrent to him. So he did not hear all that happened next, except in broken snatches.

[Pg 63]

He gathered though, from what he did hear, that Bob Slack and Mr. Edward Braydon were coming up the stairs, and that a third male whom they called Officer was coming with them, and that the janitress was coming likewise, and that divers lower-floor tenants were joining in the march, and that as they came the janitress was explaining to all and sundry how the weird miscreant had sought to inveigle her into admitting him to Mr. Slack's rooms, and how she had refused, and how with maniacal craft—or words to that effect—he had, nevertheless, managed to secure admittance to the house, and how he must still be in the house. And through all 

 Prev. P 37/40 next