"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. I stood frozen and still. Every drop of blood
in my body seemed to leave the surface and gather around my heart. In
the dead silence that followed it throbbed as if it would burst. More
dead than alive, I stumbled into Louise's bedroom. She was not there!