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THE SURAKARTA
a sound—clear, distinct, perfectly unmistakable—a click within the room and toward its side where there was neither door nor window, only a solid brick wall. So like the click of a cocking pistol was it that Hereford felt the spontaneous checking of his pulses as the suggestion came to him. The tremble in the hand against his told him that Lorine was at least equally affected. What he heard next Hereford could not tell, or that any sound at all came to his ears—or by what sensations, beyond the prickling of the short hairs upon his skin, it was revealed to him, in the midst of the darkness and of the heavy, sandalwood smell, that something which lived was moving in the room before them. Yet some one was in the room—who or what? Some one
