“Yes.  You’re right,” Garvey said, still standing in the doorway and staring at him.  “At any rate it wouldn’t hold enough for two,” he laughed.  And as he closed the door the horrid laughter echoed in the empty hall.

They sat down by a blazing fire and Shorthouse was glad to feel its warmth.  Marx presently brought in coffee.  A glass of the old whisky and a good cigar helped to restore equilibrium.  For some minutes the men sat in silence staring into the fire.  Then, without looking up, Garvey said in a quiet voice—­

“I suppose it was a shock to you to see me eat raw meat like that.  I must apologise if it was unpleasant to you.  But it’s all I can eat and it’s the only meal I take in the twenty-four hours.”

“Best nourishment in the world, no doubt; though I should think it might be a trifle strong for some stomachs.”

He tried to lead the conversation away from so unpleasant a subject, and went on to talk rapidly of the values of different foods, of vegetarianism and vegetarians, and of men who had gone for long periods without any food at all.  Garvey listened apparently without interest and had nothing to say.  At the first pause he jumped in eagerly.

“When the hunger is really great on me,” he said, still gazing into the fire, “I simply cannot control myself.  I must have raw meat—­the first I can get—­” Here he raised his shining eyes and Shorthouse felt his hair beginning to rise.

“It comes upon me so suddenly too.  I never can tell when to expect it.  A year ago the passion rose in me like a whirlwind and Marx was out and I couldn’t get meat.  I had to get something or I should have bitten myself.  Just when it was getting unbearable my dog ran out from beneath the sofa.  It was a spaniel.”

Shorthouse responded with an effort.  He hardly knew what he was saying and his skin crawled as if a million ants were moving over it.

There was a pause of several minutes.

“I’ve bitten Marx all over,” Garvey went on presently in his strange quiet voice, and as if he were speaking of apples; “but he’s bitter.  I doubt if the hunger could ever make me do it again.  Probably that’s what first drove him to take shelter in a vacuum.”  He chuckled hideously as he thought of this solution of his attendant’s disappearances.

Shorthouse seized the poker and poked the fire as if his life depended on it.  But when the banging and clattering was over Garvey continued his remarks with the same calmness.  The next sentence, however, was never finished.  The secretary had got upon his feet suddenly.

“I shall ask your permission to retire,” he said in a determined voice; “I’m tired to-night; will you be good enough to show me to my room?”

Garvey looked up at him with a curious cringing expression behind which there shone the gleam of cunning passion.

“Certainly,” he said, rising from his chair.  “You’ve had a tiring journey.  I ought to have thought of that before.”