The Thing in the Upper Room | Page 5

to do but cross the water and walk a little in the
boulevards. This they did, and finished the evening at a café table with
half a dozen acquaintances.
Attwater walked home with a light step, feeling less drowsy than at any
time during the day. He was well enough. He felt he should soon get
used to the room. He had been a little too much alone lately, and that
had got on his nerves. It was simply stupid.
Again he slept quickly and heavily and dreamed. But he had an
awakening of another sort. No bright sun blazed in at the open window
to lift his heavy lids, and no morning bell from St. Sulpice opened his
ears to the cheerful noise of the city. He awoke gasping and staring in
the dark, rolling face-downward on the floor, catching his breath in
agonized sobs; while through the window from the streets came a
clamour of hoarse cries: cries of pursuit and the noise of running men: a
shouting and clatter wherein here and there a voice was clear among
the rest--"A l'assassin! Arrêtez!"
He dragged himself to his feet in the dark, gasping still. What was
this--all this? Again a dream? His legs trembled under him, and he
sweated with fear. He made for the window, panting and feeble; and
then, as he supported himself by the sill, he realized wonderingly that
he was fully dressed--that he wore even his hat. The running crowd
straggled through the outer street and away, the shouts growing fainter.
What had wakened him? Why had he dressed? He remembered his
matches, and turned to grope for them; but something was already in
his hand--something wet, sticky. He dropped it on the table, and even

as he struck the light, before he saw it, he knew. The match sputtered
and flared, and there on the table lay the crooked dagger, smeared and
dripping and horrible.
Blood was on his hands--the match stuck in his fingers. Caught at the
heart by the first grip of an awful surmise, he looked up and saw in the
mirror before him, in the last flare of the match, the face of the Thing in
the Room.


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