IN what order we dashed down to the drawing-room I cannot recall. But none was before
me when I leaped over the threshold and saw Miss Eltham prone by the French windows.
These were closed and bolted, and she lay with hands outstretched in the alcove which
they formed. I bent over her. Nayland Smith was at my elbow.
"Get my bag" I said. "She has swooned. It is nothing serious."
Her father, pale and wide-eyed, hovered about me, muttering incoherently; but I managed
to reassure him; and his gratitude when, I having administered a simple restorative, the
girl sighed shudderingly and opened her eyes, was quite pathetic.
I would permit no questioning at that time, and on her father's arm she retired to her own
rooms.
It was some fifteen minutes later that her message was brought to me. I followed the
maid to a quaint little octagonal apartment, and Greba Eltham stood before me, the
candlelight caressing the soft curves of her face and gleaming in the meshes of her rich
brown hair.
When she had answered my first question she hesitated in pretty confusion.
"We are anxious to know what alarmed you, Miss Eltham."
She bit her lip and glanced with apprehension towards the window.
"I am almost afraid to tell father," she began rapidly. "He will think me imaginative, but
you have been so kind. It was two green eyes! Oh! Dr. Petrie, they looked up at me from
the steps leading to the lawn. And they shone like the eyes of a cat."
The words thrilled me strangely.
"Are you sure it was not a cat, Miss Eltham?"
"The eyes were too large, Dr. Petrie. There was something dreadful, most dreadful, in
their appearance. I feel foolish and silly for having fainted, twice in two days! But the
suspense is telling upon me, I suppose. Father thinks"--she was becoming charmingly
confidential, as a woman often will with a tactful physician--"that shut up here we are
safe from--whatever threatens us." I noted, with concern, a repetition of the nervous
shudder. "But since our return someone else has been in Redmoat!"
"Whatever do you mean, Miss Eltham?"
