"
The effect on Alex was to make him apoplectic with rage, and with
it all I fancied there was an element of satisfaction. As I look
back, so many things are plain to me that I wonder I could not
see at the time. It is all known now, and yet the whole thing
was so remarkable that perhaps my stupidity was excusable.
Alex leaned down the chute and examined the ladder carefully.
"It is caught," he said with a grim smile. "The fools, to have
left a warning like that! The only trouble is, Miss Innes, they
won't be apt to come back for a while."
"I shouldn't regard that in the light of a calamity," I replied.
Until late that evening Halsey and Alex worked at the chute.
They forced down the ladder at last, and put a new bolt on the
door. As for myself, I sat and wondered if I had a deadly enemy,
intent on my destruction.
I was growing more and more nervous. Liddy had given up all
pretense at bravery, and slept regularly in my dressing-room on
the couch, with a prayer-book and a game knife from the kitchen
under her pillow, thus preparing for both the natural and the
supernatural. That was the way things stood that Thursday night,
when I myself took a hand in the struggle.
CHAPTER XXIII
WHILE THE STABLES BURNED
About nine o'clock that night Liddy came into the living-room and
reported that one of the housemaids declared she had seen two men
slip around the corner of the stable. Gertrude had been sitting
staring in front of her, jumping at every sound.
Pages:
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181