One window was
a little open, for I had forgotten to close it, and about midnight I
heard something outside, trying apparently to push it farther open. I
guessed who it was--yes, it was full twenty feet from the ground--and
I peeped round the corner of the blind. Just outside was the face of
Mrs. Amworth and her hand was on the frame of the window. Very softly I
crept close, and then banged the window down, and I think I just caught
the tip of one of her fingers.”

“But it’s impossible,” I cried. “How could she be floating in the air
like that? And what had she come for? Don’t tell me such----”

Once more, with closer grip, the remembrance of my nightmare seized me. “I am telling you what I saw,” said he. “And all night long, until it
was nearly day, she was fluttering outside, like some terrible bat,
trying to gain admittance. Now put together various things I have told
you.”

He began checking them off on his fingers. “Number one,” he said: “there was an outbreak of disease similar to
that which this boy is suffering from at Peshawar, and her husband
died of it. Number two: Mrs. Amworth protested against my moving the
boy to my house. Number three: she, or the demon that inhabits her
body, a creature powerful and deadly, tries to gain admittance. And add
this, too: in mediæval times there was an epidemic of vampirism here
at Maxley. The vampire, so the accounts run, was found to be Elizabeth
Chaston ... I see you remember Mrs. Amworth’s maiden name. Finally, the
boy is stronger this morning. He would certainly not have been alive if
he had been visited again. And what do you make of it?”

There was a long silence, during which I found this incredible horror
assuming the hues of reality. “I have something to add,” I said, “which may or may not bear on it. You say that the--the spectre went away shortly before dawn.”

“Yes.”

I told him of my dream, and he smiled grimly. “Yes, you did well to awake,” he said. “That warning came from your
subconscious self, which never wholly slumbers, and cried out to you
of deadly danger. For two reasons, then, you must help me: one to save
others, the second to save yourself.”

“What do you want me to do?” I asked. “I want you first of all to help me in watching this boy, and ensuring
that she does not come near him. Eventually I want you to help me in
tracking the thing down, in exposing and destroying it. It is not
human: it is an incarnate fiend. What steps we shall have to take I
don’t yet know.”

It was now eleven of the forenoon, and presently I went across to his
house for a twelve-hour vigil while he slept, to come on duty again
that night, so that for the next twenty-four hours either Urcombe or
myself was always in the room where the boy, now getting stronger
every hour, was lying. The day following was Saturday and a morning
of brilliant, pellucid weather, and already when I went across to his
house to resume my duty the stream of motors down to Brighton had
begun. Simultaneously I saw Urcombe with a cheerful face, which boded
good news of his patient, coming out of his house, and Mrs. Amworth,
with a gesture of salutation to me and a basket in her hand, walking up
the broad strip of grass which bordered the road. There we all three
met. I noticed (and saw that Urcombe noticed it too) that one finger of
her left hand was bandaged. “Good morning to you both,” said she. “And I hear your patient is doing
well, Mr. Urcombe. I have come to bring him a bowl of jelly, and to sit
with him for an hour. He and I are great friends. I am overjoyed at his
recovery.”

Urcombe paused a moment, as if making up his mind, and then shot out a
pointing finger at her. “I forbid that,” he said. “You shall not sit with him or see him. And
you know the reason as well as I do.”

I have never seen so horrible a change pass over a human face as that
which now blanched hers to the colour of a grey mist. She put up her
hand as if to shield herself from that pointing finger, which drew the
sign of the cross in the air, and shrank back cowering on to the road. There was a wild hoot from a horn, a grinding of brakes, a shout--too
late--from a passing car, and one long scream suddenly cut short. Her
body rebounded from the roadway after the first wheel had gone over it,
and the second followed. It lay there, quivering and twitching, and was
still. She was buried three days afterwards in the cemetery outside Maxley,
in accordance with the wishes she had told me that she had devised
about her interment, and the shock which her sudden and awful death
had caused to the little community began by degrees to pass off. To
two people only, Urcombe and myself, the horror of it was mitigated
from the first by the nature of the relief that her death brought;
but, naturally enough, we kept our own counsel, and no hint of what
greater horror had been thus averted was ever let slip. But, oddly
enough, so it seemed to me, he was still not satisfied about something
in connection with her, and would give no answer to my questions on
the subject. Then as the days of a tranquil mellow September and
the October that followed began to drop away like the leaves of the
yellowing trees, his uneasiness relaxed. But before the entry of
November the seeming tranquillity broke into hurricane. I had been dining one night at the far end of the village, and about
eleven o’clock was walking home again. The moon was of an unusual
brilliance, rendering all that it shone on as distinct as in some
etching. I had just come opposite the house which Mrs. Amworth had
occupied, where there was a board up telling that it was to let, when I
heard the click of her front gate, and next moment I saw, with a sudden
chill and quaking of my very spirit, that she stood there. Her profile,
vividly illuminated, was turned to me, and I could not be mistaken in
my identification of her. She appeared not to see me (indeed the shadow
of the yew hedge in front of her garden enveloped me in its blackness)
and she went swiftly across the road, and entered the gate of the
house directly opposite. There I lost sight of her completely. My breath was coming in short pants as if I had been running--and now
indeed I ran, with fearful backward glances, along the hundred yards
that separated me from my house and Urcombe’s. It was to his that my
flying steps took me, and next minute I was within. “What have you come to tell me?” he asked. “Or shall I guess?”

“You can’t guess,” said I. “No; it’s no guess. She has come back and you have seen her. Tell me
about it.”

I gave him my story. “That’s Major Pearsall’s house,” he said. “Come back with me there at
once.”

“But what can we do?” I asked. “I’ve no idea. That’s what we have got to find out.”

A minute later, we were opposite the house. When I had passed it
before, it was all dark; now lights gleamed from a couple of windows
upstairs. Even as we faced it, the front door opened, and next moment
Major Pearsall emerged from the gate. He saw us and stopped.