“For myself I shall
hurry to the scene of sleep.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Outside the threatening promise of the barometer was already finding
fulfilment, and a cold ugly wind was complaining among the pines, and
hooting round the peaks, and snow had begun to fall. The night was
thickly overcast, and it seemed as if uneasy presences were going to and
fro in the darkness. But there was no use in ill augury, and certainly
if we were to be house-bound for a few days I was lucky in having so
commodious a lodging. I had plenty to occupy myself with indoors, though
I should vastly have preferred to be engaged outside, and in the
immediate present how good it was to lie free in a proper bed after a
cramped night in the train. *       *       *       *       *

I was half-undressed when there came a tap at my door, and the waiter
who had served us at dinner came in carrying a bottle of whisky. He was
a tall young fellow, and though I had not noticed him at dinner, I saw
at once now, as he stood in the glare of the electric light, what Harry
had meant when he said he was sure he was a sensitive. There is no
mistaking that look: it is exhibited in a peculiar “inlooking” of the
eye. Those eyes, one knows, see further than the surface....

“The bottle of whisky for monsieur,” he said, putting it down on the
table. “But I ordered no whisky,” said I. He looked puzzled. “Number twenty-three?” he said. Then he glanced at the other bed. “Ah, for the other gentleman, without doubt,” he said. “But there is no other gentleman,” said I. “I am alone here.”

He took up the bottle again. “Pardon, monsieur,” he said. “There must be a mistake. I am new here; I
only came to-day. But I thought----”

“Yes?” said I. “I thought that number twenty-three had ordered a bottle of whisky,” he
repeated. “Good-night, monsieur, and pardon.”

       *       *       *       *       *

I got into bed, extinguished the light, and feeling very sleepy and
heavy with the oppression, no doubt, of the snow that was coming,
expected to fall asleep at once. Instead my mind would not quite go to
roost, but kept sleepily stumbling about among the little events of the
day, as some tired pedestrian in the dark stumbles over stones instead
of lifting his feet. And as I got sleepier it seemed to me that my mind
kept moving in a tiny little circle. At one moment it drowsily
recollected how I had thought I had heard movement inside my room, at
the next it remembered my dream of some figure going stealthily about
and stropping a razor, at a third it wondered why this Swiss waiter with
the eyes of a “sensitive” thought that number twenty-three had ordered a
bottle of whisky. But at the time I made no guess as to any coherence
between these little isolated facts; I only dwelt on them with drowsy
persistence. Then a fourth fact came to join the sleepy circle, and I
wondered why I had felt a repugnance against using the other bed. But
there was no explanation of this forthcoming, either, and the outlines
of thought grew more blurred and hazy, until I lost consciousness
altogether. *       *       *       *       *

Next morning began the series of awful days, sleet and snow falling
relentlessly with gusts of chilly wind, making any out-of-door
amusement next to impossible. The snow was too soft for toboganning, it
balled on the skies, and as for the rink it was but a series of pools of
slushy snow. This in itself, of course, was quite enough to account for
any ordinary depression and heaviness of spirit, but all the time I felt
there was something more than that to which I owed the utter blackness
that hung over those days. I was beset too by fear that at first was
only vague, but which gradually became more definite, until it resolved
itself into a fear of number twenty-three and in particular a terror of
the other bed. I had no notion why or how I was afraid of it, the thing
was perfectly causeless, but the shape and the outline of it grew slowly
clearer, as detail after detail of ordinary life, each minute and
trivial in itself, carved and moulded this fear, till it became
definite. Yet the whole thing was so causeless and childish that I could
speak to no one of it; I could but assure myself that it was all a
figment of nerves disordered by this unseemly weather. However, as to the details, there were plenty of them. Once I woke up
from strangling nightmare, unable at first to move, but in a panic of
terror, believing that I was sleeping in the other bed. More than once,
too, awaking before I was called, and getting out of bed to look at the
aspect of the morning, I saw with a sense of dreadful misgiving that the
bed-clothes on the other bed were strangely disarranged, as if some one
had slept there, and smoothed them down afterwards, but not so well as
not to give notice of the occupation. So one night I laid a trap, so to
speak, for the intruder, of which the real object was to calm my own
nervousness (for I still told myself that I was frightened of nothing),
and tucked in the sheet very carefully, laying the pillow on the top of
it. But in the morning it seemed as if my interference had not been to
the taste of the occupant, for there was more impatient disorder than
usual in the bed-clothes, and on the pillow was an indentation, round
and rather deep, such as we may see any morning in our own beds. Yet by
day these things did not frighten me, but it was when I went to bed at
night that I quaked at the thought of further developments. It happened also from time to time that I wanted something brought me,
or wanted my servant. On three or four of these occasions my bell was
answered by the “Sensitive,” as we called him, but the Sensitive, I
noticed, never came into the room. He would open the door a chink to
receive my order, and on returning would again open it a chink to say
that my boots, or whatever it was, were at the door. Once I made him
come in, but I saw him cross himself as, with a face of icy terror, he
stepped into the room, and the sight somehow did not reassure me. Twice
also he came up in the evening, when I had not rung at all, even as he
came up the first night, and opened the door a chink to say that my
bottle of whisky was outside. But the poor fellow was in a state of such
bewilderment when I went out and told him that I had not ordered whisky,
that I did not press for an explanation. He begged my pardon profusely;
he thought a bottle of whisky had been ordered for number twenty-three. It was his mistake, entirely--I should not be charged for it; it must
have been the other gentleman. Pardon again; he remembered there was no
other gentleman, the other bed was unoccupied. It was on the night when this happened for the second time that I
definitely began to wish that I too was quite certain that the other bed
was unoccupied. The ten days of snow and sleet were at an end, and
to-night the moon once more, grown from a mere slip to a shining shield,
swung serenely among the stars.