Page:Strange Tales Volume 02 Number 03 (1932-10).djvu/65

I do not like strange beds. This was a very comfortable one, but it was not the simple, modernistic bed in my own rather austere bachelor apartment at home.

Set at an angle in one corner of the room, the two windows, one in the side of the house, facing the Atlantic, and the other in the end of the house, were too far away to give me the rush of fresh air to which I was accustomed. Brooke's summer place had been built, I remembered, in the days when night air was supposed to carry all manner of ills. However, I was weary from a hard day's drive, and it was a matter of but a few minutes before I was asleep.

But I do not sleep well in a strange bed. I awakened presently and glanced at my wrist watch. It was twenty minutes of one by the green-glowing dial. I had been asleep but little more than an hour, and I felt uncomfortably wide awake.

Propping myself on one arm, I searched on the table beside the bed for cigarettes and matches. I have a bad habit of smoking in the middle of the night when I am restless, but even this small favor was to be denied me that night, for I