Her heart was beating like a
trip-hammer. It seemed to fill all the building with the wild iteration
of its pulsations. As she sought to reassure herself, she remembered that
in a cross-hall she had noted the telephone, the wire still intact, as
she knew, for the connection of the hotel was with that of the bungalow
on a party-line of the exchange at Shaftesville, twenty miles away. If
she should be really frightened, she could in one moment call up the
house across the ravine.
The next instant she was almost palsied with recurrent terror: the
footfall, stealthy, shuffling, weighty, sounded again. It was never the
echo of her own deft, light step! A distinct, sibilant whisper suddenly
hissed with warning throughout the place, and as she turned with the
instinct of flight she caught a glimpse in the darkling mirror across the
dining-room of a fugitive speeding figure, then another, and still
another, all frantically, noiselessly fleeing--why or whom, she could not
descry, she did not try to discriminate.
Pages:
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68