death; and even if he had been, there
must elapse a considerable time in which Emily would necessarily be
alone with her mother's body.

The more I pondered, the more puzzled I grew. It seemed grotesque that
Mrs. Drainger should have overlooked this situation. Moreover, I was
naturally curious. Fawcett's narrative justified me in all I had
thought, but it had not given a motive for the veil, nor for the
tenacity with which Mrs. Drainger clung to it.

The house looked unchanged as I turned into the street on which it
faced. Death was, it said, of so little consequence to the walls which
had immured and conquered life itself. There was in the very lack of
change a great irony. A barren device of crepe on the door, one lower
window partly open--that was all. The very papers yellowing before the
door had not been swept away.

Mrs. Mueller, the woman who had witnessed the signing of the will, was
standing on the steps that led to the street. If my relations with the
Draingers had been odd, they were to conclude as strangely. The woman
was apparently expecting me, and her manner testified to recent terror.

"What do you want?" I asked.

"_She_ told me," Mrs. Mueller said, "to get you."

Her hunted look and the solemn glance she gave me testified that _she_
was as real to her as though Mrs. Drainger had not for twenty-four hours
been dead. "She told me if a certain thing happened I was to call you."

Suddenly I saw. That tremendous woman was reaching at me over the very
boundaries of life.

"I don't like it," continued Mrs. Mueller with an indescribable accent
of fear and a sidelong look at me for support. "I don't like it. But she
said the day before she died, she said, 'If Miss Emily uncovers my face
when I am dead, you are to tell Mr. Gillingham,' she said. And she made
me promise to watch."

She seemed to want to tell me something she could not put in words.

"It is terrible," she went on in a vague, haunted manner, "what I saw."

"What?"

"She was always a queer woman. 'If Miss Emily uncovers my face,' she
said, 'you are to call Mr. Gillingham.' And she made me watch. I didn't
want to. So when she died I came right over."

"How did you know when to come?"

"I don't know," she answered helplessly. "I just came. She told me Miss
Emily wasn't to see me, but I was to watch. It is terrible."

We were at the door. I had a sudden distaste for the woman, though she
was quite simply honest, and, as it were, the h