The spectator., 1922-05-02

 heavy blow on the side of Alan's head which dizzied him but left him strength to strike again, and his knuckles reached the mans face once more, but he got another heavy blow In return. The man was grappling no longer; he swung Alan to one side and off of him, and rolled himself away. He scrambled to his feet and dashed out through the library. across the hall, and into the service room. Alan got to his feet; dizzied and not yet familiar with the house, he blun- dered against wall and had to feel his way along 1t to the service room; as he slipped and stumbled down the stairway. a door closed loudly at the end of the corridor he had seen at the foot of the s.airs. He ran along the corridor to the door: 1t had closed with a spring lock. and seconds passed while he felt in the dark for the catch; he found it and tore the door open, and came out suddenly into the cold air of the night in paved passage way beside the house which led in one direction 70 the street and in the other to gate opening on the alley. He ran forward to the street and looked up and down, but found 1t emp. ty: then he ran back to the alley. At the end of the alley, where 1t inter- sected the cross street. the figure of the man running away appeared sud denly out of the shadows. then dis appeared; Alan. following as far as the street, could see nothing more of him; this street too was empty.
 He ran little farther and looked then he went back to the house. The side door had swung shut again and latched He le. himself in at the front door and turned on the light in the reading lamp in the library. The electric torch still was burning on the guished it; he went upstairs and brought down his shoes. He had seen wood fire set ready for lighting in the library and now he lighted 1t and sa. before 1t drying his wet socks be- fore he put on his shoes. He was still shaking and breathing fast from his struggle with the man and his chase after him, and by the strangeness of what had taken place.
 When the shaft of light from the torch had flashed across Alan's face in the dark library, the man had not taken him for wha. he was-a living person; he had taken him for a spec ter. His terror and the things he had cried out could mean only that The specter of whom? Not of Benjamin COrvet; for one of the things Alan had remarked when he saw Benjamin Corvet's picture was that he himself did not look at all like his fa.her Be sides. what the man had said made 1t certain that he did not think the spec ter was Ben; for the specter had "got E.n." Did Alan look like some one else. then? Like whom? Evi- dently like the man-now dead for he had ghost-who had "got" Ben, In .he big mans opinion. Who could that be?
 Alan got up and went to look at himself in the mirror he had seen in the hall. He was white. now that the flush of the fighting was going; he probably had been pale before with excitement. and over his right eye there was round black mark. Alan looked down at his hands; Title skin was off one knuckle. where he had struck the man, and his fingers were smudged with black and sotty dust. He had smudged them on the papers upstairs or else In feeling his way about the dark house. and at some time he had touched hls fore head and left the black mark. That had been the bullet hole"
 The res. that the man had said had been reference to some name; Alan had no trouble to recollect the name. and, while he did not understand it at all, it stirred him queerly-"the Nil waka." What was that? The queer excitement and questioning that the name brought, when he repeated 1t to himself. was not recollection: for he could not recall ever having heard the name before; but 1t was not com stiahkS tV Iit Coulu fine the excitement 1t stirred only in that way.
 Sherrill had believed that here in this house Benjamin Corvet had left or might have left-a memorandum, a record, or an account of some sort which would explain to Alan. his son, the blight which hung over his life. Sherrill had said that 1t could have been no mere intrigue, no vulgar per sonal sin; and the events of the night had made that very certain; for. plain ly, whatever was hidden in that house involved some one else seriously. des- perately. There was no other way to explain the intrusion of the sort of man whom Alan had surprised there an hour ago.
 The fact that this other man