The
cries appeared to come from a decapitated head resting on the
pavement.
The next moment the pale Major understood. It was the head of a
man thrust through the coal-hole in the street. The next moment,
again, it had vanished, and Major Brown turned to the lady.
"Where's your coal-cellar?" he said, and stepped out into the
passage.
She looked at him with wild grey eyes. "You will not go down," she
cried, "alone, into the dark hole, with that beast?"
"Is this the way?" replied Brown, and descended the kitchen stairs
three at a time. He flung open the door of a black cavity and
stepped in, feeling in his pocket for matches. As his right hand
was thus occupied, a pair of great slimy hands came out of the
darkness, hands clearly belonging to a man of gigantic stature,
and seized him by the back of the head. They forced him down, down
in the suffocating darkness, a brutal image of destiny. But the
Major's head, though upside down, was perfectly clear and
intellectual. He gave quietly under the pressure until he had slid
down almost to his hands and knees. Then finding the knees of the
invisible monster within a foot of him, he simply put out one of
his long, bony, and skilful hands, and gripping the leg by a
muscle pulled it off the ground and laid the huge living man, with
a crash, along the floor.
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