“A job for you, Bolton,” he cried.  “Listen.  You know the Red House in College Road?”

Bolton removed his helmet and scratched his closely-cropped head.

“Let me see,” he mused; “it’s on the right—­”

“No, no,” I interrupted.  “It is a house about half-way down on the left; very secluded, with a high brick wall in front.”

“Oh!  You mean the empty house?” inquired the constable.

“Just what I was about to remark, sergeant,” said I, turning to my acquaintance.  “To the best of my knowledge the Red House has been vacant for twelve months or more.”

“Has it?” exclaimed the sergeant.  “That’s funny.  Still, it’s none of my business; besides it may have been let within the last few days.  Anyway, listen, Bolton.  You are to see if the garage is unlocked.  If it is and the keys are there, go in and lock the door behind you.  There’s another door at the other end; go out and lock that too.  Leave the keys at the depot when you go off.  Got that fixed?”

“Yes,” replied Bolton, and he stood helmet in hand, half inaudibly muttering the sergeant’s instructions, evidently with the idea of impressing them upon his memory.

“I have to pass the Red House, constable,” I interrupted, “and as you seem doubtful respecting its whereabouts, I will point the place out to you.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Bolton, replacing his helmet and ceasing to mutter.

“Once more—­good night, sergeant,” I cried, and met by a keen gust of wind which came sweeping down the village street, showering cascades of water from the leaves above, I set out in step with my stolid companion.

It is supposed poetically that unusual events cast their shadows before them, and I am prepared to maintain the correctness of such a belief.  But unless the silence of the constable who walked beside me was due to the unseen presence of such a shadow, and not to a habitual taciturnity, there was nothing in that march through the deserted streets calculated to arouse me to the fact that I was entering upon the first phase of an experience more strange and infinitely more horrible than any of which I had ever known or even read.

The shadow had not yet reached me.

We talked little enough on the way, for the breeze when it came was keen and troublesome, so that I was often engaged in clutching my hat.  Except for a dejected-looking object, obviously a member of the tramp fraternity, who passed us near the gate of the old chapel, we met never a soul from the time that we left the police-box until the moment when the high brick wall guarding the Red House came into view beyond a line of glistening wet hedgerow.

“This is the house, constable,” I said.  “The garage is beyond the main entrance.”

We proceeded as far as the closed gates, whereupon: 

“There you are, sir,” said Bolton triumphantly.  “I told you it was empty.”