The Thing was twittering at her, soft, birdlike noises, and she saw the flash of its white teeth in the darkness. It was not pulling, it was simply holding, one hand gripping the tendrils of the ivy up which it had climbed, the other hand firmly about her wrist. Again it twittered and pulled. She drew back, but she might as well have tried to draw back from a moving piston rod. A great, hairy leg was suddenly flung over the sill; the second hand came up and covered her face.

The sound of her scream was deadened in the hairy paw, but somebody heard it. From the ground below came a flash of fire and the deafening tang! of a pistol exploding. A bullet zipped and crashed amongst the ivy, striking the brickwork, and she heard the whirr of the ricochet. Instantly the great monkey released his hold and dropped down out of sight. Half swooning, she dropped upon the windowsill, incapable of movement. And then she saw a figure come out of the shadow of the laurel bush, and instantly recognized the midnight prowler. It was Michael Brixan.

“Are you hurt?” he asked in a low voice.

She could only shake her head, for speech was denied her.

“I didn’t hit him, did I?”

With an effort she found a husk of a voice in her dry throat.

“No, I don’t think so. He dropped.”

Michael had pulled an electric torch from his pocket and was searching the ground.

“No sign of blood. He was rather difficult to hit⁠—I was afraid of hurting you, too.”

A window had been thrown up and Jack Knebworth’s voice bawled into the night.

“What’s the shooting? Is that you, Brixan?”

“It is I. Come down, and I’ll tell you all about it.”

The noise did not seem to have aroused Mr. Longvale, or, for the matter of that, any other member of the party; and when Knebworth reached the garden, he found no other audience than Mike Brixan.

In a few words Michael told him what he had seen.

“The monkey belongs to friend Penne,” he said. “I saw it this morning.”

“What do you think⁠—that he was prowling round and saw the open window?”

Michael shook his head.

“No,” he said quietly, “he came with one intention and purpose, which was to carry off your leading lady. That sounds highly dramatic and improbable, and that is the opinion I have formed. This ape, I tell you, is nearly human.”

“But he wouldn’t know the girl. He has never seen her.”

“He could smell her,” said Mike instantly. “She lost a pair of gloves at the Towers today, and it’s any odds that they were stolen by the noble Gregory Penne, so that he might introduce to Bhag an unfailing scent.”

“I can’t believe it; it is incredible! Though I’ll admit,” said Jack Knebworth thoughtfully, “that these big apes do some amazing things. Did you shoot him?”

“No, sir, I didn’t shoot him, but I can tell you this, that he’s an animal that’s been gunned before, or he’d have come for me, in which case he would have been now fairly dead.”

“What were you doing round here, anyway?”

“Just watching out,” said the other carelessly. “The earnest detective has so many things on his conscience that he can’t sleep like ordinary people. Speaking for myself, I never intended leaving the garden, because I expected Brer Bhag. Who is that?”

The door opened, and a slim figure, wrapped in a dressing-gown, came out into the open.

“Young lady, you’re going to catch a very fine cold,” warned Knebworth. “What happened to you?”

“I don’t know.” She was feeling her wrist tenderly. “I heard something and went to the window, and then this horrible thing caught hold of me. What was it, Mr. Brixan?”

“It was nothing more alarming than a monkey,” said he with affected unconcern. “I’m sorry you were so scared. I guess the shooting worried you more?”

“You don’t guess anything of the kind. You know it didn’t. Oh, it was horrible, horrible!” She covered her face with her trembling hands.

Old Jack grunted.

“I think she’s right, too. You owe something to our friend here, young lady. Apparently he was expecting this visit and watched in the garden.”

“You expected it?” she gasped.

“Mr. Knebworth has made rather more of the part I played than can be justified,” said Mike. “And if you think that this is a hero’s natural modesty, you’re mistaken. I did expect this gentleman, because he’d been seen in the fields by Mr. Longvale. And you thought you saw him yourself, didn’t you, Knebworth?”

Jack nodded.

“In fact, we all saw him,” Mike went on, “and as I didn’t like the idea of a coming star (if I may express that pious hope) being subjected to the annoyance of visiting monkeys, I sat up in the garden.”

With a sudden impulsive gesture she put out her little hand, and Michael took it.

“Thank you, Mr. Brixan,” she said. “I have been wrong about you.”

“Who isn’t?” asked Mike with an extravagant shrug.

She returned to her room, and this time she closed her window. Once, before she went finally to sleep, she rose and, peeping through the curtains, saw the little glowing point of the watcher’s cigar, and went back to bed comforted, to sleep as if it were only for a few minutes before Foss began knocking on the doors to waken the company.

The literary man himself was the first down. The garden was beginning to show palely in the dawn light, and he bade Michael Brixan a gruff good morning.

“Good morning to you,” said Michael. “By the way, Mr. Foss, you stayed behind at Griff Towers yesterday to see our friend Penne?”

“That’s no business of yours,” growled the man, and would have passed on, but Michael stood squarely in his path.

“There is one thing which is a business of mine, and that is to ask you why that little white disc appears on Miss Leamington’s window?”

He pointed up to the white circle that the girl had seen the night before.

“I don’t know anything about it,” said Foss with rising anger, but there was also a note of fear in his voice.

“If you don’t know, who will? Because I saw you put it there, just before it got dark last night.”

“Well, if you must know,” said the man, “it was to mark a vision boundary for the cameraman.”

That sounded a plausible excuse. Michael had seen Jack Knebworth marking out boundaries in the garden to ensure the actors being in the picture. At the first opportunity, when Knebworth appeared he questioned him on the subject.

“No, I gave no instructions to put up marks. Where is it?”

Michael showed him.

“I wouldn’t have a mark up there, anyway, should I? Right in the middle of a window! What do you make of it?”

“I think Foss put it there with one object. The window was marked at Gregory’s request.”

“But why?” asked Knebworth, staring.

“To show Bhag Adele Leamington’s room. That’s why,” said Michael, and he was confident that his view was an accurate one.