The garden at 19 Author:Edgar Jepson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III THE KOAKING IN THE NIGHT BY the time I had had a bath and changed into dry flannels I had grown rather ashamed of the extravagance of my emotio... more »ns, though I was still aware that they had been quite beyond my controlling. All the way to the tennis club, at the tennis club, where I played very badly, and all that evening I pondered and debated the cause of my panic. I could not believe it groundless. The girl had cried out that there was something horrible in the garden; I had had an impression of a hideous, shapeless beast; my neighbor had seen it, or felt its presence, or he would not have set about driving it back to its lair, or to the Abyss by his adjuration. I could not have fancied it; at any rate I could not have fancied its loathsome, sickly smell, for Mrs. Eingrose hau smelt it, too. There were also the flying sparrows and the rats. What kind of a beast was it that filled human beings and animals with this unnerving terror, a terror independent of the understanding and the will! From what lair had it come? Whither had it gone? Was it dangerous or merely horrible? It must be dangerous, unspeakably malefic, to fill me with that panic terror. And what would happen if it came again when the man was out and the girl at home alone? It was a disquieting thought. I tossed long on a sleepless pillow wrestling with these questions. The next morning I awoke in a less confident state of mind. I was disposed to make more allowance for the flights of the imagination. It seemed to me that my impression of a hideous, shapeless beast might very well be a mere fancy. But even so, something must have given it to me; there had been something in the garden of No. 19, to inspire that horror into me. Of that I was sure. It clung to me still; all day the memory of it kept i...« less