He relighted the lamp, and opened his watch and placed it on the table, where frequently he could look at the time.

He wanted to smoke his pipe, but the odor of tobacco, he was sure, would reach Kedsty, unless the Inspector had actually retired into his bedroom for the night.
Half a dozen times he questioned himself as to the identity of the ghostly apparition he had seen in the lightning flare of the storm.
Perhaps it was some one of Fingers' strange friends from out of the wilderness, Mooie's partner in watching the bungalow.

The picture of that giant of a man with his great beard and long hair, as his eyes had caught him in a sea of electrical fire, was indelibly burned into his brain.

It was a tragic picture.
Again he put out the light and bared the blanketed window, but he saw nothing but the sodden gleam of the earth when the lightning flashed.

A second time he opened the door a few inches and sat down with his back to the wall, listening.
How long it was before drowsiness stole upon him he did not know, but it came, and for a few moments at a time, as his eyes closed, it robbed him of his caution.