unfriendly attitude to thelittle old lady.
"You practically threw her muffins at her," I said. "And I must speakagain about the cups--"
"What does she come snooping around for, anyhow?" she broke in. "Aren'twe paying for her house? Didn't she get down on her bended knees and begus to take it?"
"Is that any reason why we should be uncivil?"
"What I want to know is this," Maggie said truculently. "What righthas she to come back, and spy on us? For that's what she's doing, MissAgnes. Do you know what she was at when I looked in at her? She wasrunning a finger along the baseboard to see if it was clean! And what'smore, I caught her at it once before, in the back hall, when she waspretending to telephone for the station hack."
It was that day, I think, that I put fresh candles in all the holdersdownstairs. I had made a resolution like this,--to renew the candles,and to lock myself in my room and throw the key over the transom toMaggie. If, in the mornings that followed, the candles had been used, itwould prove that Martin Sprague was wrong, that even foot-prints couldlie, and that some one was investigating the lower floor at night.For while my reason told me that I had been the intruder, my intuitioncontinued to insist that my sleepwalking was a result, not a cause. Ina word, I had gone downstairs, because I knew that there had been andmight be again, a night visitor.
Yet, there was something of comedy in that night's precautions, afterall.
At ten-thirty I was undressed, and Maggie had, with rebellion in everyline of her, locked me in. I could hear her, afterwards running alongthe hall to her own room and slamming the door. Then, a moment later,the telephone rang.
It was too early, I reasoned, for the night calls. It might be anything,a telegram at the station, Willie's boy run over by an automobile,Gertrude's children ill. A dozen possibilities ran through my mind.
And Maggie would not let me out!
"You're not going downstairs," she called, from a safe distance.
"Maggie!" I cried, sharply. And banged at the door. The telephone wasringing steadily. "Come here at once."
"Miss Agnes," she beseeched, "you go to bed and don't listen. There'llbe nothing there, for all your trouble," she said, in a quavering voice."It's nothing human that rings that bell."
Finally, however, she freed me, and I went down the stairs. I hadcarried down a lamp, and my nerves were vibrating to the rhythm of thebell's shrill summons. But, strangely enough, the fear had left me.I find, as always, that it is difficult to put into words. I did notrelish the excursion to the lower floor. I resented the jarring sound ofthe bell. But the terror was gone.
I went back to the telephone. Something that was living and moving wasthere. I saw its eyes, lower than mine, reflecting the lamp like twinlights. I was frightened, but still it was not the fear. The twin lightsleaped forward--and proved to be the eyes of Miss Emily's cat, which hadbeen sleeping on the stand!
I answered the telephone. To my surprise it was Miss Emily herself, aquiet and very dignified voice which apologized for disturbing me atthat hour, and went on:
"I feel that I was very abrupt this afternoon, Miss Blakiston. My excuseis that I have always feared change. I have lived in a rut too long, I'mafraid. But of course, if you feel you would like to move the telephone,or put in an upstairs instrument, you may do as you like."
She seemed, having got me there, unwilling to ring off. I got a curiouseffect of reluctance over the telephone, and there was one phrase thatshe repeated several times.
"I do not want to influence you. I want you to do just what you thinkbest."
The fear was entirely gone by the time she rang off. I felt, instead, asort of relaxation that was most comforting. The rear hall, a cul-de-sacof nervousness in the daytime and of horror at night, was suddenlytransformed by the light of my lamp into a warm and cheerful refuge fromthe darkness of the lower floor. The purring of the cat, comfortablysettled on the telephone-stand, was as cheering as the singing of akettle on a stove. On the rack near me my garden hat and an old Paisleyshawl made a grotesque human effigy.
I sat back in the low wicker chair and surveyed the hallway. Why not, Iconsidered, do away now with the fear of it? If I could conquer it likethis at midnight, I need never succumb again to it in the light.
The cat leaped to the stand beside me and stood there, waiting. He wasan intelligent animal, and I am like a good many spinsters. I am notmore fond of cats than other people, but I understand them better. Andit seemed to me that he and I were going through some familiar program,of which a part had been neglected. The cat neither sat nor lay, butstood there, waiting.
So at last I fetched the shawl from the rack and made him a bed onthe stand. It was what he had been waiting for. I saw that at once. Hewalked onto it, turned around once, lay down, and closed his eyes.
I took up my vigil. I had been the victim of a fear I was determined toconquer. The house was quiet. Maggie had retired shriveled to bed. Thecat slept on the shawl.
And then--I felt the fear returning. It welled up through mytranquillity like a flood, and swept me with it. I wanted to shriek. Iwas afraid to shriek. I longed to escape. I dared not move. There hadbeen no sound, no motion. Things were as they had been.
It may have been one minute or five that I sat there. I do not know.I only know that I sat with fixed eyes, not even blinking, for fear ofeven for a second shutting out the sane and visible world about me. Asense of deadness commenced in my hands and worked up my arms. My chestseemed flattened.
Then the telephone bell rang.
The cat leaped to his feet. Somehow I reached forward and took down thereceiver.
"Who is it?" I cried, in a voice that was thin, I knew, and unnatural.
The telephone is not a perfect medium. It loses much that we wishto register but, also, it registers much that we may wish to lose.Therefore when I say that I distinctly heard a gasp, followed by heavydifficult breathing, over the telephone, I must beg for credence. It istrue. Some one at the other end of the line was struggling for breath.
Then there was complete silence. I realized, after a moment, that thecircuit had been stealthily cut, and that my conviction was verifiedby Central's demand, a moment later, of what number I wanted. I was, atfirst, unable to answer her. When I did speak, my voice was shaken.
"What number, please?" she repeated, in a bored tone. There isnothing in all the world so bored as the voice of a small towntelephone-operator.
"You called," I said.
"Beg y'pardon. Must have been a mistake," she replied glibly, and cut meoff.