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Page 45
"To Colonel Menendez's room?"
"Yes. They were light, furtive footsteps."
"This took place late at night?"
"Quite late, long after everyone had retired."
She paused, staring at me with a sort of embarrassment, and presently:
"Were the footsteps those of a man or a woman?" I asked.
"Of a woman. Someone, Mr. Knox," she bent forward, and that look of
fear began to creep into her eyes again, "with whose footsteps I was
quite unfamiliar."
"You mean a stranger to the house?"
"Yes. Oh, it was uncanny." She shuddered. "The first time I heard it I
had been lying awake listening. I was nervous. Madame de St�mer had
told me that morning that the Colonel had seen someone lurking about
the lawns on the previous night. Then, as I lay awake listening for the
slightest sound, I suddenly detected these footsteps; and they paused--
right outside my door."
"Good heavens!" I exclaimed. "What did you do?"
"Frankly, I was too frightened to do anything. I just lay still with my
heart beating horribly, and presently they passed on, and I heard them
no more."
"Was your door locked?"
"No." She laughed nervously. "But it has been locked every night since
then!"
"And these sounds were repeated on other nights?"
"Yes, I have often heard them, Mr. Knox. What makes it so strange is
that all the servants sleep out in the west wing, as you know, and
Pedro locks the communicating door every night before retiring."
"It is certainly strange," I muttered.
"It is horrible," declared the girl, almost in a whisper. "For what can
it mean except that there is someone in Cray's Folly who is never seen
during the daytime?"
"But that is incredible."
"It is not so incredible in a big house like this. Besides, what other
explanation can there be?"
"There must be one," I said, reassuringly. "Have you spoken of this to
Madame de St�mer?"
"Yes."
Val Beverley's expression grew troubled.
"Had she any explanation to offer?"
"None. Her attitude mystified me very much. Indeed, instead of
reassuring me, she frightened me more than ever by her very silence. I
grew to dread the coming of each night. Then--" she hesitated again,
looking at me pathetically--"twice I have been awakened by a loud cry."
"What kind of cry?"
"I could not tell you, Mr. Knox. You see I have always been asleep when
it has come, but I have sat up trembling and dimly aware that what had
awakened me was a cry of some kind."
"You have no idea from whence it proceeded?"
"None whatever. Of course, all these things may seem trivial to you,
and possibly they can be explained in quite a simple way. But this
feeling of something pending has grown almost unendurable. Then, I
don't understand Madame and the Colonel at all."
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