And I, sleepily, laughed at him and went to bed.

And for the next week or so, Guy came to my room every evening until one Sunday night he said, “Dick, I don’t want to go back, I’m not sleepy. May I read in front of your fire all night?”

I told him not to be a fool; he was looking thoroughly tired. And then he said, “Dick, don’t you understand, I’m afraid of that man next door. He wants to kill me.”

“Guy,” I said, “go to bed and don’t be an ass. You have been working too hard.”

But a quarter of an hour later, I felt that I could not go to bed and leave Guy like this, so I went up to his room. As I passed the strange man’s door, I could not help a little qualm of fear. I knocked at Guy’s bedroom door and inside I heard a little cry of terror and the sound of bare feet. I turned the handle, but the door was locked and I could hear Guy’s breathing through the door; he must have been pressed against it on the other side.

“D’you always lock your bedder door?” I asked, and at the sound of my voice, I heard him sigh with relief.

“Hullo, Dick. You quite startled me. What do you want?”

So I went in and talked to him; he always slept with his door locked now, and his light on; he was very much scared but after a few minutes he became calmer and soon I went away, but behind me I heard him lock his door.

Next day he avoided me until evening; then he came in again and asked if he might work. I said:

“Look here, Guy, tell me what is the matter with you.” And almost immediately I wished that I had not asked him, because he poured out his answers so eagerly.

“Dick, you can’t think what I’ve been through in the last ten days. I’m living up there alone with only a door between me and a madman. He hates me, Dick, I know it. It is not imagination. Every night he comes and tries at my door and then shuffles off again. I can’t stand it. One night I shall forget and then God knows what that man will do to me.”

So it went on and one day I went up to Guy’s room in the morning. He was not there, but his scout was, and I found him in the act of taking the key from Guy’s bedroom door. I knew I had no right to ask him, but I said:

“Hullo, Ramsey, what are you doing with Mr. Legge’s key?”

Ramsey showed, as only a scout can show, that I had been guilty of a gross breach of good manners and answered me:

“The gentleman next door wanted it, sir. He has lost his and wanted to see if it would fit.”

“Did Mr. Legge say that you could take it?”

“No, sir. I did not think it necessary to ask him.”

“Then put it back at once and don’t touch things in his room whatever the gentleman next door says.”

I had no right to say this to Guy’s scout, but I was definitely frightened. A sudden realization had come to me that Guy might have some reason for his fear. That evening I went up to see him and we decided to work in his room. He did not mind if I were with him.

“But shut the oak, Dick,” he said.

We worked until eleven o’clock and then we both sat up listening; someone was fumbling against the oak; then he knocked quietly.

Guy had started up white and panting.

“You see, I haven’t been lying. He’s coming at me. Keep him off, Dick, for God’s sake.”

The knocking was repeated.

“Guy,” I said, “I’m going to open that oak. Brace up, man, we two can look after ourselves against anyone. Don’t you see? We’ve got to open that oak.”

“Dick, for God’s sake don’t. I can’t stand it,” but I went towards the door. I opened it and there was only the oak between us and the man beyond. Suddenly Guy’s face became twisted with hatred and his voice harsh. “So you’re in it, too. You’re going to betray me to that fiend. He’s bought you as he has bought Ramsey. There’s not a man in the College he hasn’t bought or bullied into it and I can’t fight the lot,” his voice suddenly fell to a tone of blind despair and he rushed into his bedroom, slamming the door. I hesitated between the two doors and then, picking up a heavy candlestick, opened the oak.

On the threshold, blinking in the light, was the strange man.

“So you’re here, too, Barnes,” he said slowly; “but that is excellent. What I wish to say is for you as well as Legge. I want to apologize for being so rude that evening when you two came up to see me. I was very nervous. But where is Legge?”

And from the bedroom came a sound of hysterical sobbing, the wild, hideous sobbing of a mad man.

After half an hour I said what I had been pondering ever since we started.

“Billy, this is a crazy business. I’m willing to call the bet off if you are.”

But he answered gravely.

“I’m sorry, my friend, but I’m not going to lose the opportunity of making a fiver.”

Then there was silence again until Anderson looked back from the wheel and said:

“Look here, Billy, let’s stop at this pub and then go home. I can lend you a fiver or more if you want it. You needn’t pay me until you want to.”

But Billy was resolute:

“No, Dick, I owe enough already. I should like to earn an honest meal for once.”

So Anderson drove on and soon we came into sight of the grim place which Craine had chosen for our experiment. I saw that Billy was beginning to lose his nerve for he was shivering in his big overcoat and his feet were very still, pressed down with all his might.

“Billy,” I said, “I don’t think we need go any further; we should only be wasting time. You’ve obviously won the bet.”

And I think he would have yielded—for he was rather a child—when Craine’s voice answered for him.

“What damned nonsense. The thing isn’t begun yet. Donne’s bet that he has the nerve to go through the whole werewolf ceremony. Just getting to the place is nothing. He doesn’t yet know what he has to do. I’ve got as far as this twice before—once in Nigeria with a man of forty, but he hadn’t the nerve to go through with it, and once in Wales with the bravest thing in the world, a devoted woman; but she couldn’t do it. Donne may, because he’s young and hasn’t seen enough to make him easily frightened.”

But Billy was frightened, badly, and so were Anderson and I and for this reason we let ourselves be overborne by Craine because he knew that we were; and he smiled triumphant as a stage Satan in the moonlight.

It was strange being beaten like this by Craine who in College was always regarded as a rather unsavoury joke. But then this whole expedition was strange and Craine was an old man—thirty-three—an age incalculable to the inexperience of twenty-one; and Billy was only just nineteen.

We had started off merrily enough down St. Aldate’s; Billy had said:

“I wonder what human flesh tastes like; what d’you suppose one should drink with it?” and when I had answered with utter futility, “Spirits, of course,” they had all laughed; which shows that we were in high good humour.

But once in Anderson’s car and under that vast moon, a deep unquiet had settled upon us and when Craine said in his sinister way:

“By the way, Donne, you ought to know in case you lose us; if you want to regain your manhood all you have to do is to draw some of your own blood and take off the girdle.”

Anderson and I shuddered. He said it with a slight sneer on “manhood” and we resented it that he should speak to Billy in this way, but more than this we were shocked at the way in which the joke was suddenly plunged into reality. This was the first time that evening on which I had felt fear and all through the drive it had grown more and more insistent, until on the heath, bleak and brilliantly moonlit, I was sickeningly afraid and said:

“Billy, for God’s sake let’s get back.”

But Craine said quietly:

“Are you ready, Donne? The first thing you have to do is to take off your clothes; yes, all of them.”