"Halsey," I persevered, "some one is breaking into the house.
Get up, won't you?"
"It isn't our house," he said sleepily. And then he roused to
the exigency of the occasion. "All right, Aunt Ray," he
said, still yawning. "If you'll let me get into something--"
It was all I could do to get Liddy out of the room. The demands
of the occasion had no influence on her: she had seen the ghost,
she persisted, and she wasn't going into the hall. But I got her
over to my room at last, more dead than alive, and made her lie
down on the bed.
The tappings, which seemed to have ceased for a while, had
commenced again, but they were fainter. Halsey came over in a
few minutes, and stood listening and trying to locate the sound.
"Give me my revolver, Aunt Ray," he said; and I got it--the one I
had found in the tulip bed--and gave it to him. He saw Liddy
there and divined at once that Louise was alone.
"You let me attend to this fellow, whoever it is, Aunt Ray, and
go to Louise, will you? She may be awake and alarmed."
So in spite of her protests, I left Liddy alone and went back to
the east wing. Perhaps I went a little faster past the yawning
blackness of the circular staircase; and I could hear Halsey
creaking cautiously down the main staircase. The rapping, or
pounding, had ceased, and the silence was almost painful.
And then suddenly, from apparently under my very feet, there rose
a woman's scream, a cry of terror that broke off as suddenly as
it came.
Pages:
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133