“A fire-elemental,” he cried, “a fire-elemental of the most powerful and malignant kind—­”

“A what?” thundered the voice of Colonel Wragge behind us, having returned suddenly and overheard.

“It’s a fire-elemental,” repeated Dr. Silence more calmly, but with a note of triumph in his voice he could not keep out, “and a fire-elemental enraged.”

The light began to dawn in my mind at last.  But the Colonel—­who had never heard the term before, and was besides feeling considerably worked up for a plain man with all this mystery he knew not how to grapple with—­the Colonel stood, with the most dumfoundered look ever seen on a human countenance, and continued to roar, and stammer, and stare.

“And why,” he began, savage with the desire to find something visible he could fight—­“why, in the name of all the blazes—?” and then stopped as John Silence moved up and took his arm.

“There, my dear Colonel Wragge,” he said gently, “you touch the heart of the whole thing.  You ask ‘Why.’  That is precisely our problem.”  He held the soldier’s eyes firmly with his own.  “And that, too, I think, we shall soon know.  Come and let us talk over a plan of action—­that room with the double doors, perhaps.”

The word “action” calmed him a little, and he led the way, without further speech, back into the house, and down the long stone passage to the room where we had heard his stories on the night of our arrival.  I understood from the doctor’s glance that my presence would not make the interview easier for our host, and I went upstairs to my own room—­shaking.

But in the solitude of my room the vivid memories of the last hour revived so mercilessly that I began to feel I should never in my whole life lose the dreadful picture of Miss Wragge running—­that dreadful human climax after all the non-human mystery in the wood—­and I was not sorry when a servant knocked at my door and said that Colonel Wragge would be glad if I would join them in the little smoking-room.

“I think it is better you should be present,” was all Colonel Wragge said as I entered the room.  I took the chair with my back to the window.  There was still an hour before lunch, though I imagine that the usual divisions of the day hardly found a place in the thoughts of any one of us.

The atmosphere of the room was what I might call electric.  The Colonel was positively bristling; he stood with his back to the fire, fingering an unlit black cigar, his face flushed, his being obviously roused and ready for action.  He hated this mystery.  It was poisonous to his nature, and he longed to meet something face to face—­something he could gauge and fight.  Dr. Silence, I noticed at once, was sitting before the map of the estate which was spread upon a table.  I knew by his expression the state of his mind.  He was in the thick of it all, knew it, delighted in it, and was working at high pressure.  He recognised my presence with a lifted eyelid, and the flash of the eye, contrasted with his stillness and composure, told me volumes.