Liddy's knees seemed to give away under her. Without a sound she sank

down, leaving me staring at the window in petrified amazement. Liddy

began to moan under her breath, and in my excitement I reached down and

shook her.

"Stop it," I whispered. "It's only a woman--maybe a maid of the

Armstrongs'. Get up and help me find the door." She groaned again.

"Very well," I said, "then I'll have to leave you here. I'm going."

She moved at that, and, holding to my sleeve, we felt our way, with

numerous collisions, to the billiard-room, and from there to the

drawing-room. The lights came on then, and, with the long French

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windows unshuttered, I had a creepy feeling that each one sheltered a

peering face. In fact, in the light of what happened afterward, I am

pretty certain we were under surveillance during the entire ghostly

evening. We hurried over the rest of the locking-up and got upstairs

as quickly as we could. I left the lights all on, and our footsteps

echoed cavernously. Liddy had a stiff neck the next morning, from

looking back over her shoulder, and she refused to go to bed.

"Let me stay in your dressing-room, Miss Rachel," she begged. "If you

don't, I'll sit in the hall outside the door. I'm not going to be

murdered with my eyes shut."

"If you're going to be murdered," I retorted, "it won't make any

difference whether they are shut or open. But you may stay in the

dressing-room, if you will lie on the couch: when you sleep in a chair

you snore."

She was too far gone to be indignant, but after a while she came to the

door and looked in to where I was composing myself for sleep with

Drummond's Spiritual Life.

"That wasn't a woman, Miss Rachel," she said, with her shoes in her

hand. "It was a man in a long coat."

"What woman was a man?" I discouraged her without looking up, and she

went back to the couch.

It was eleven o'clock when I finally prepared for bed. In spite of my

assumption of indifference, I locked the door into the hall, and

finding the transom did not catch, I put a chair cautiously before the

door--it was not necessary to rouse Liddy--and climbing up put on the

ledge of the transom a small dressing-mirror, so that any movement of

the frame would send it crashing down. Then, secure in my precautions,

I went to bed.

I did not go to sleep at once. Liddy disturbed me just as I was

growing drowsy, by coming in and peering under the bed. She was afraid

to speak, however, because of her previous snubbing, and went back,

stopping in the doorway to sigh dismally.

Somewhere down-stairs a clock with a chime sang away the

hours--eleven-thirty, forty-five, twelve. And then the lights went out

to stay. The Casanova Electric Company shuts up shop and goes home to

bed at midnight: when one has a party, I believe it is customary to fee

the company, which will drink hot coffee and keep awake a couple of

hours longer. But the lights were gone for good that night. Liddy had

gone to sleep, as I knew she would. She was a very unreliable person:

always awake and ready to talk when she wasn't wanted and dozing off to

sleep when she was. I called her once or twice, the only result being

an explosive snore that threatened her very windpipe--then I got up and

lighted a bedroom candle.




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