THE AXTON LETTERS
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tied by the sleeves under his chin. We had at the Great Eastern two whitewashed communicating rooms opening off a narrow, dirty corridor, along whose whitewashed walls at a height of some two feet from the floor ran a greasy smudge gathered from the heads and shoulders of the dark-skinned, white-robed native servants who spent the nights sleeping or sitting in front of their masters' doors. Though Lawler and I each had a servant also outside his door, I dragged a trunk against mine after closing it—a useless precaution, as it proved, as Lawler put no trunk against his—and though I see now that I must have been moved by some foresight of danger, I went to sleep afterward quite peacefully. I awakened somewhat later in a cold and shuddering fright, oppressed by the sense of some presence in my room—started up in bed and looked about. My trunk was still against the door as I had left it; and besides this, I saw at first only the furniture of the room, which stood as when I had gone to sleep—two rather heavy and much scratched mahogany English chairs, a mahogany dresser with swinging mirror, and the spindle-legged, four-post canopy bed on which I lay. But presently, I saw more. He was there—a dark shadow against the whitewashed wall beside the flat-topped window marked his position, as he crouched beside my writing desk and held the papers in a bar of white moonlight to look at them. For an instant, the sight held me motionless, and suddenly becoming aware that he was seen, he leaped to his feet—a short, broad-shouldered, bulky man—sped across the blue and white straw matting into Lawler's room and drove the door to behind him. I followed, forcing the door open with my shoulder, saw Lawler just leaping out of bed in his pajamas, and tore open Lawler's corridor door, through which the man had vanished. He was not in the corridor, though I inspected it carefully, and Lawler, though he had been awakened by the man's passage, had not seen him. Lawler's servant, pretty well dazed with sleep, told me in blank and open-mouthed amazement at my question, that he had not seen him pass; and the other white-draped Hindoos, gathering about me from the doors
