A sudden paroxysm of inexpressible anxiety seized my heart as I scrambled to my feet. Already my hands were perspiring so copiously that—after setting the lamp back upon the tabletop—I took a moment to dry my palms against the legs of my trousers. Then, returning to the bed, I clasped it by its underframe and, with a grunt of effort, dragged it towards the center of the room until the loosened board was fully exposed.

For several moments, I merely stared down at the planking, while—within my heaving bosom—a turbulent battle raged. On one side were those inner promptings urging me to flee to the headquarters of the police and notify Captain Russell at once. On the other was an equally powerful impulse—born of both intense curiosity and a deeply ingrained sense of personal duty—to complete my investigatory mission by confronting whatever unknown mystery lay concealed beneath the floor.

At length, I could procrastinate no longer. With a wild cry of desperate resolution, I stooped to the board, and—wedging my quaking fingers beneath its upraised edges—tore it from its place.

Immediately, a foul, fetid odor waited up from the hollow space beneath the floor. My heart quailed—my limbs quaked—and a cry of delirious horror escaped from my terror-parched mouth, as I looked down upon the inexpressibly awful sight that smote my gaping eyes. Dropping the plank, I stumbled backwards, trembling convulsively in every fibre.

At that instant, directly behind me, I heard a distinct susurration and felt a warm exhalation of breath on the back of my neck, which caused each separate nape-hair to bristle and stand erect!

A shriek of the purest terror issued from my throat as I whirled around. There, standing only inches away, was a sight even more stupefying in its way than the ghastly thing I had just glimpsed beneath the floor.

It was she: the same dreamlike—no! nightmarish—figure who had appeared before my disbelieving eyes in the gloomy chamber of Roger Asher’s ill-fated abode.

I screamed again. Then darkness washed over my vision—I felt the strength drain from my limbs—and all conscious sensations were swallowed up in a mad rushing descent of my soul into the blackness of utter oblivion!

My submerged consciousness returned—not suddenly, like the luckless sailor who, having plunged overboard, bursts from the briny depths, crying madly for help; nor by slow degrees, like those near-amphibious divers of South Sea isles who, after plundering the priceless oyster beds, drift lazily back to the sunlight, pearly treasures in hand—but rather by fits and starts, like an exhausted swimmer who alternately sinks and struggles again to the surface, until, through sheer heroic effort, he fights his way safely to shore.