The Circular Staircase - Page 147/154

The house was very still. Once my straining ears seemed to catch a

footfall beneath me, possibly in my own room. I groped for the chair

from the table, and pounded with it frantically on the floor. But

nothing happened: I realized bitterly that if the sound was heard at

all, no doubt it was classed with the other rappings that had so

alarmed us recently.

It was impossible to judge the flight of time. I measured five minutes

by counting my pulse, allowing seventy-two beats to the minute. But it

took eternities, and toward the last I found it hard to count; my head

was confused.

And then--I heard sounds from below me, in the house. There was a

peculiar throbbing, vibrating noise that I felt rather than heard, much

like the pulsing beat of fire engines in the city. For one awful moment

I thought the house was on fire, and every drop of blood in my body

gathered around my heart; then I knew. It was the engine of the

automobile, and Halsey had come back. Hope sprang up afresh. Halsey's

clear head and Gertrude's intuition might do what Liddy's hysteria and

three detectives had failed in.

After a time I thought I had been right. There was certainly something

going on down below; doors were slamming, people were hurrying through

the halls, and certain high notes of excited voices penetrated to me

shrilly. I hoped they were coming closer, but after a time the sounds

died away below, and I was left to the silence and heat, to the weight

of the darkness, to the oppression of walls that seemed to close in on

me and stifle me.

The first warning I had was a stealthy fumbling at the lock of the

mantel-door. With my mouth open to scream, I stopped. Perhaps the

situation had rendered me acute, perhaps it was instinctive. Whatever

it was, I sat without moving, and some one outside, in absolute

stillness, ran his fingers over the carving of the mantel and--found

the panel.

Now the sounds below redoubled: from the clatter and jarring I knew

that several people were running up the stairs, and as the sounds

approached, I could even hear what they said.

"Watch the end staircases!" Jamieson was shouting. "Damnation--there's

no light here!" And then a second later. "All together now.

One--two--three--"

The door into the trunk-room had been locked from the inside. At the

second that it gave, opening against the wall with a crash and

evidently tumbling somebody into the room, the stealthy fingers beyond

the mantel-door gave the knob the proper impetus, and--the door swung

open, and closed again. Only--and Liddy always screams and puts her

fingers in her ears at this point--only now I was not alone in the

chimney room. There was some one else in the darkness, some one who

breathed hard, and who was so close I could have touched him with my

hand.