ought I
heard something touch the door and I went up and listened. I couldn't
hear anything. I knocked. I got no answer. I remembered your orders. I
wasn't sure whether I could hear breathing or not inside, but I didn't
dare to wait. I called your office, sir. And I thank God you're here!"

"And you didn't break open the door? You didn't even try the knob?"

She looked at me dumbly. Her mouth twitched with her terror.

"I didn't dare. I've had courage for everything in this world, sir," she
said. "But I didn't dare to open that door! I'm glad somebody else has
come into this dreadful house!"

"Which is the room?" I asked.

"Come with me," she replied, beginning her climb of the broad stairs.

Her feet made no noise on the soft carpeting; nor did mine. The whole
house, indeed, seemed stuffy with motionless air, as if not even sound
vibrations had disturbed the deathlike fixity of that interior. As we
turned at the top toward the paneled white door, which I knew as by
instinct was the one we sought, for the first time I became conscious of
the faint ticking of a clock somewhere on the floor above us.

"I've forgot to wind the rest," whispered the old servant, as if she had
divined my thought. "They were driving me mad."

I nodded to show her that now I, too, was beginning to feel the effect
of the strange state of affairs which I had first sensed from the other
side of the blue wall.

"Leave me here," I said to her softly. "Go down to Mr. Estabrook. He is
in the vestibule. He has a message for you from long ago."

I may have spoken significantly; she may have been at that moment
peculiarly sharp to read the meanings behind plain sentences. Whatever
the case, her face lit up with joy--the characteristic, joyful
expression that never comes to the faces of men and few times to the
face of a woman. For a moment youth seemed to return to her. The last
traces of the limber strength of body, gone with her girlhood, came
back. She wore no longer, at that second, the mien of a nun of household
service. She was transfigured.

"It's Monty Cranch!" she cried under her breath. "He isn't dead! I knew
he wasn't. I knew it always."

"Go now," I said. "Mr. Estabrook has something of a story to tell you."

She left me then, standing alone before that white expanse of door. I
was literally and figuratively on the threshold of poor MacMechem's
mystery, knowing well that the solution of it would explain the strange
influence th