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Page 12
"Indeed! and how long have you been in the house? I judge that
you rent it?"
"Yes, we rent it and we have been here two months. It was the
only house I could get in a locality convenient for me; besides,
the old place suits me. It would take more than an obsolete
ghost or so to scare me away from what I like."
"But Mrs. Packard? She may not be a superstitious woman, yet--"
"Don't be fanciful, Miss Saunders. You will have to look deeper
than that for the spell which has been cast over my wife.
Olympia afraid of creaks and groans? Olympia seeing sights?
She's much too practical by nature, Miss Saunders, to say nothing
of the fact that she would certainly have confided her trouble to
me, had her imagination been stirred in this way. Little things
have invariably been discussed between us. I repeat that this
possibility should not give you a moment's thought."
A burst of sweet singing came from the drawing-room.
"That's her voice," he cried. "Whatever her trouble may be she
has forgotten it for the moment. Excuse me if I join her. It is
such pleasure to have her at all like herself again."
I longed to detain him, longed to put some of the numberless
questions my awakened curiosity demanded, but his impatience was
too marked and I let him depart without another word.
But I was not satisfied. Inwardly I determined to see him again
as soon as possible and gain a more definite insight into the
mysteries of his home.
CHAPTER IV
LIGHTS--SOUNDS
I am by nature a thoroughly practical woman. If I had not been,
the many misfortunes of my life would have made me so. Yet, when
the library door closed behind the mayor and I found myself again
alone in a spot where I had not felt comfortable from the first,
I experienced an odd sensation not unlike fear. It left me
almost immediately and my full reasoning powers reasserted
themselves; but the experience had been mine and I could not
smile it away.
The result was a conviction, which even reason could not dispel,
that whatever secret tragedy or wrong had signalized this house,
its perpetration had taken place in this very room. It was a
fancy, but it held, and under its compelling if irrational
influence, I made a second and still more minute survey of the
room to which this conviction had imparted so definite an
interest.
I found it just as ordinary and unsuggestive as before; an
old-fashioned, square apartment renovated and redecorated to suit
modern tastes. Its furnishings I have already described; they
were such as may be seen in any comfortable abode. I did not
linger over them a moment; besides, they were the property of the
present tenant, and wholly disconnected with the past I was
insensibly considering. Only the four walls and what they held,
doors, windows and mantel-piece, remained to speak of those old
days. Of the doors there were two, one opening into the main
hall under the stairs, the other into a cross corridor separating
the library from the dining-room. It was through the dining-room
door Nixon had come when he so startled me by speaking
unexpectedly over my shoulder! The two windows faced the main
door, as did the ancient, heavily carved mantel. I could easily
imagine the old-fashioned shutters hidden behind the modern
curtains, and, being anxious to test the truth of my imaginings,
rose and pulled aside one of these curtains only to see, just as
I expected, the blank surface of a series of unslatted shutters,
tightly fitting one to another with old-time exactitude. A flat
hook and staple fastened them. Gently raising the window, and
lifting one, I pulled the shutter open and looked out. The
prospect was just what I had been led to expect from the location
of the room--the long, bare wall of the neighboring house. I was
curious about that house, more curious at this moment than ever
before; for though it stood a good ten feet away from the one I
was now in, great pains had been taken by its occupants to close
every opening which might invite the glances of a prying eye. A
door which had once opened on the alley running between the two
houses had been removed and its place boarded up. So with a
window higher up; the half-circle window near the roof, I could
not see from my present point of view.
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