The door into the trunk-room had been locked from the inside.  At the second that it gave, opening against the wall with a crash and evidently tumbling somebody into the room, the stealthy fingers beyond the mantel-door gave the knob the proper impetus, and—­the door swung open, and closed again.  Only—­and Liddy always screams and puts her fingers in her ears at this point—­ only now I was not alone in the chimney room.  There was some one else in the darkness, some one who breathed hard, and who was so close I could have touched him with my hand.

I was in a paralysis of terror.  Outside there were excited voices and incredulous oaths.  The trunks were being jerked around in a frantic search, the windows were thrown open, only to show a sheer drop of forty feet.  And the man in the room with me leaned against the mantel-door and listened.  His pursuers were plainly baffled:  I heard him draw a long breath, and turn to grope his way through the blackness.  Then—­he touched my hand, cold, clammy, death-like.

A hand in an empty room!  He drew in his breath, the sharp intaking of horror that fills lungs suddenly collapsed.  Beyond jerking his hand away instantly, he made no movement.  I think absolute terror had him by the throat.  Then he stepped back, without turning, retreating foot by foot from The Dread in the corner, and I do not think he breathed.

Then, with the relief of space between us, I screamed, ear-splittingly, madly, and they heard me outside.

“In the chimney!” I shrieked.  “Behind the mantel!  The mantel!”

With an oath the figure hurled itself across the room at me, and I screamed again.  In his blind fury he had missed me; I heard him strike the wall.  That one time I eluded him; I was across the room, and I had got the chair.  He stood for a second, listening, then—­he made another rush, and I struck out with my weapon.  I think it stunned him, for I had a second’s respite when I could hear him breathing, and some one shouted outside: 

“We—­Can’t—­get—­in.  How—­does—­it—­open?”

But the man in the room had changed his tactics.  I knew he was creeping on me, inch by inch, and I could not tell from where.  And then—­he caught me.  He held his hand over my mouth, and I bit him.  I was helpless, strangling,—­and some one was trying to break in the mantel from outside.  It began to yield somewhere, for a thin wedge of yellowish light was reflected on the opposite wall.  When he saw that, my assailant dropped me with a curse; then—­the opposite wall swung open noiselessly, closed again without a sound, and I was alone.  The intruder was gone.

“In the next room!” I called wildly.  “The next room!” But the sound of blows on the mantel drowned my voice.  By the time I had made them understand, a couple of minutes had elapsed.  The pursuit was taken up then, by all except Alex, who was determined to liberate me.  When I stepped out into the trunk-room, a free woman again, I could hear the chase far below.