Nealman took them all into the great manor house: I went with Nealman’s chauffeur to see about the handling of their luggage. This was at half-past four of a sunlit day in September. I didn’t see any of the guests again until just before the dinner hour, when a matter of a broken fly-tip had brought me into the manor house. Thereupon occurred one of a series of incidents that made my stay at Kastle Krags the most momentous three weeks of my life.

It was only a little thing—this experience in Nealman’s study. But coming events cast their shadows before—and certainly it was a shadow, dim and inscrutable though it was, of what the night held in store. I had passed Florey the butler, gray and sphynx-like in the hallway, spoke to him as ever, and turned through the library door. And my first impression was that some other guest had arrived in my absence.

A man was standing, smoking, by the window. I supposed at once that he was an absolute stranger. There was not a single familiar image, not the least impulse to my memory. I started to speak, and beg his pardon, and inquire for [Pg 51]Nealman. But the words didn’t come out. I was suddenly and inexplicably startled into silence.

[Pg 51]

It is the rare man who can analyze his own mental processes. Of all the sensations that throng the human mind there is none so lawless, so sporadic in its comings and departure, so utterly illogical as fear—and great surprise is only a sister of fear. I can’t explain why I was startled. There was no reason whatever for being so. I must go further—I was not only startled, but shaken too. It has come about that through the exigencies of the hunting trail I have been obliged to face a charging jaguar—in a jungle of Western Mexico—yet with nerves holding true. My nerves didn’t hold true now—and I couldn’t tell why. They jumped unnecessarily and quivered under the skin.

I did know the man beside the window after all. He was Major Kenneth Dell that I had observed particularly closely—due to having heard of him before—when he had first dismounted from the car. The thing that startled me was that in the hour and a half or so since I had seen him his appearance had undergone an amazing change.

It took several long seconds to win back some measure of common sense. Then I knew that, [Pg 52]through some trick of nerves, I had merely attached a thousand times too much importance to a wholly trivial incident. In all probability the change in Dell’s appearance was simply an effect of light and shadow, wrought by the 

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