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that the door across the landing, leading from the back-stairs, opened and shut again, giving her a glimpse of the face of a stranger.
    It passed, like the dissolving memory of a dream, yet it left a horror in her mind, as though she had received a vision of elemental evil.
    Even while she stared in stunned bewilderment, she realized that a door had actually opened and that the Professor was advancing towards her.
    “It must have been the Professor,” she thought. “It must. I believe it looked like him. Some trick of light or shadow altered his expression. It’s so dark here.”
    Even while she clung to this commonplace explanation, her reason rejected it. At the back of her mind remained a picture of the spiral of the back-stairs. The two staircases of the Summit offered special chances to anyone who wished to hide.
    She reminded herself that no one could get in during the daytime. Besides, the house was so full of people that it would be impossible for anyone to escape notice. The intruder would have to know the habits and time-table of all the inmates.
    Suddenly she remembered that Mrs. Oates had commented on the supernormal cunning of a criminal maniac.
    He would know.
    A shiver ran down. her spine, as she wondered if she ought to tell the Professor of her experience. It was her duty, if any unauthorized person was secreted in the house. But, as she opened her lips, the memory of her recent encounter with Miss Warren made her afraid of appearing officious.
    Although the Professor’s eyes seemed to reduce her to the usual essential gases, the sight of his conventional dinner clothes acted as a tonic. His shirt-front gleamed, his black tie was formal, his grey hair was brushed back from his intellectual brow..
    Although he was rigid where his sister was fluid, he inspired her with the same sense of unhuman companionship.
    Suddenly aware that he might suspect her of spying through a bedroom keyhole, she broke into an explanation of the defective door-handle.
    “Tell Oates to see to it, please,” he said, with an absent nod.
    Toned by the incident, Helen resolved to test her nerve by a descent of the back-stairs. When she opened the landing door, and looked down the spiral, it looked a trap, .corkscrewing down to depths of darkness. But her courage did not desert her until the last flight, which she nearly leaped, at a sudden memory of a seared, distorted face.

CHAPTER VII
    THE, NEW NURSE
     
    When Helen entered the kitchen, she was greeted by the explosions of splattering fat. Although the table was crowded. with materials for dinner—in different stages of preparation—while vegetables bubbled on the range, Mrs. Oates fried fish, juggled with her saucepans, and dried her husband’s wet things over the boiler. In spite of the seeming confusion, she took these interludes in her stride, without loss of head, or temper.
    Oates, in his grey woollen cardigan, was eating a huge. meal in the corner, which his wife had cleared for him. He was a goodnatured giant of a man, with the build of a prize-fighter.
    At the sight of his small honest eyes, Helen’s heart leaped in real welcome. Like his wife, he always appeared to her as a tower of strength.
    “I’m so glad you’ve come back,” she told him. “You’re as good as three men about the house.”
    Oates smiled sheepishly as he tried to return the compliment.
    “Thank you for laying my table, miss,” he said. “Is it still raining heavily?” went on Helen.
    “Not near so much,” interposed Mrs. Oates’ bitterly. “Oates brought most of it in with him.”
    Oates poured Worcester sauce over his fish, and changed the subject.
    “Wait till you see what I’ve brought back with me,” he chuckled.
    “You mean—the new nurse?” asked Helen.
    “Yes, the little piece I picked up at the Nursing Home. By the look of her, she’s as good as another man.”
    “Is she nice?”
    “As nasty a bit of work as ever I’ve come across. Talks with plums in her mouth,