Williams news., 1922-07-21

mans face. The man struck back
 a heavy blow on the side of Alan's
 head which dfzzied 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 blum
 dered against a wall and had to feel
 his way along 1t to the service room i;
 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; it had closed
 with a spring lock, and seconds passed
 while he felt in the dark for the catch i;
 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 to the street and in the other to a 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 it 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 a 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 floor and he picked it up and extin- guished it; he went upstairs and brought down his shoes. He had seen a wood fire set ready for lighting in the library, and now he lighted it and sat 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 A1an's face in the dark library, the man had not taken him for wha- he was-a living person; he had taken him for 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 it certain that he did not think the spec ter was Ben; for the specter had 'sgot Ben" Did Alan look like some one else, then? Like whom? Evi- dently like the man-now dead, for he had a 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 and over his right eye there was a round black mark. Alan looked down at his hands; little skin was off one knuckle, where he had struck the man, and his fingers were smudged with a 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 his fore head and left the black mark. That had been the bullet hole"
 The res. that the man had said had been a reference to some name; Alan had no trouble to recollect the name, and, while he did not understand 1t 1t all, it stirred him queerly-"the Nil waka." What was that? The queer excitement and questioning that the name brought, when he repeated 1t -o himself, was not recollection; for | 1e could not recall ever having heard he name before; but 1t was not com oIetely strange to him. He could de | inc the excitement 1t stirred only in | hat way.
 Sherrill had believed that here in | his house Benjamin Corvet had left | )r might have left-a memorandum, | record, or an account of some sort | which would explain to Alan, his son. | he blight which hung over his life. | Sherrill had said that 1t could have | ,een no mere intrigue, no vulgar per. 'onal sin; and the events of the night | lad made that very certain for, plain y, whatever was hidden in that house some one else seriously, des- ,erately. There was no other way to explain the intrusion of the sort of nan whom Alan had surprised there ln hour ago.
 The fact that this other man earched also did not prove that Ben amin Corvet had left a record in the louse, as Sherrfn believed; but 1t Sho +hot onotbor raraon |