“Do you see?” he cried, in a low, quick voice.  “Sylvia, do you see?”

“What?”

“The door.  Look!  Behind him!  The door!” And Sylvia, looking as he bade her, started, and barely stifled the cry which rose to her lips.  For behind Walter Hine, the door in the far corner of the room was opening—­very slowly, very stealthily, as though the hand which opened it feared to be detected.  So noiselessly had the latch been loosed that Walter Hine did not so much as turn his head.  Nor did he turn it now.  He heard nothing.  He leaned from the window with his elbows on the sill, and behind him the gap between the door and the wall grew wider and wider.  The door opened into the room and toward the window, so that the two people in the shadow below could see nothing of the intruder.  But the secrecy of his coming had something sinister and most alarming.  Sylvia joined her hands above her lover’s arm, holding her breath.

“Shout to him!” she whispered.  “Cry out that there’s danger.”

“Not yet!” said Chayne, with his eyes fixed upon the lighted room; and then, in spite of herself, a low and startled cry broke from Sylvia’s lips.  A great shadow had been suddenly flung upon the ceiling of the room, the shadow of a man, bloated and made monstrous by the light.  The intruder had entered the room; and with so much stealth that his presence was only noticed by the two who watched in the road below.  But even they could not see who the intruder was, they only saw the shadow on the ceiling.

Walter Hine, however, heard Sylvia’s cry, faint though it was.  He leaned forward from the window and peered down.

“Now!” said Sylvia.  “Now!”

But Chayne did not answer.  He was watching with an extraordinary suspense.  He seemed not to hear.  And on the ceiling the shadow moved, and changed its shape, now dwindling, now growing larger again, now disappearing altogether as though the intruder stooped below the level of the lamp; and once there was flung on the white plaster the huge image of an arm which had something in its hand.  Was the arm poised above the lamp, on the point of smashing it with the thing it held?  Chayne waited, with a cry upon his lips, expecting each moment that the room would be plunged in darkness.  But the cry was not uttered, the arm was withdrawn.  It had not been raised to smash the lamp, the thing which the hand held was for some other purpose.  And once more the shadow appeared moving and changing as the intruder crept nearer to the window.  Sylvia stood motionless.  She had thought to cry out, now she was fascinated.  A spell of terror constrained her to silence.  And then, suddenly, behind Walter Hine there stood out clearly in the light the head and shoulders of Garratt Skinner.