“I hope you’ve had enough to eat.  You wouldn’t care for this, you know,” with a downward glance.

Shorthouse met his eyes with an inward loathing, and it was impossible not to show some of the repugnance he felt.  In the other’s face, however, he thought he saw a subdued, cowed expression.  But he found nothing to say.

“Marx will be in presently,” Garvey went on.  “He’s either listening, or in a vacuum.”

“Does he choose any particular time for his visits?” the secretary managed to ask.

“He generally goes after dinner; just about this time, in fact.  But he’s not gone yet,” he added, shrugging his shoulders, “for I think I hear him coming.”

Shorthouse wondered whether vacuum was possibly synonymous with wine cellar, but gave no expression to his thoughts.  With chills of horror still running up and down his back, he saw Marx come in with a basin and towel, while Garvey thrust up his face just as an animal puts up its muzzle to be rubbed.

“Now we’ll have coffee in the library, if you’re ready,” he said, in the tone of a gentleman addressing his guests after a dinner party.

Shorthouse picked up the bag, which had lain all this time between his feet, and walked through the door his host held open for him.  Side by side they crossed the dark hall together, and, to his disgust, Garvey linked an arm in his, and with his face so close to the secretary’s ear that he felt the warm breath, said in a thick voice—­

“You’re uncommonly careful with that bag, Mr. Shorthouse.  It surely must contain something more than the bundle of papers.”

“Nothing but the papers,” he answered, feeling the hand burning upon his arm and wishing he were miles away from the house and its abominable occupants.

“Quite sure?” asked the other with an odious and suggestive chuckle.  “Is there any meat in it, fresh meat—­raw meat?”

The secretary felt, somehow, that at the least sign of fear the beast on his arm would leap upon him and tear him with his teeth.

“Nothing of the sort,” he answered vigorously.  “It wouldn’t hold enough to feed a cat.”

“True,” said Garvey with a vile sigh, while the other felt the hand upon his arm twitch up and down as if feeling the flesh.  “True, it’s too small to be of any real use.  As you say, it wouldn’t hold enough to feed a cat.”

Shorthouse was unable to suppress a cry.  The muscles of his fingers, too, relaxed in spite of himself and he let the black bag drop with a bang to the floor.  Garvey instantly withdrew his arm and turned with a quick movement.  But the secretary had regained his control as suddenly as he had lost it, and he met the maniac’s eyes with a steady and aggressive glare.

“There, you see, it’s quite light.  It makes no appreciable noise when I drop it.”  He picked it up and let it fall again, as if he had dropped it for the first time purposely.  The ruse was successful.