e room, and now she heard the handle of the street
door turned and someone come into the passage. She stood wondering, and
in that pause she missed her chance, for the steps came straight past
the door and began to go upstairs. It might, of course, conceivably be
one of the lodgers on the top-floor, and yet she knew it was not. She
whisked to the door a moment later, but it was too late, and she was
only just in time to see the figure she knew turn the corner of the four
stairs that led to the first-floor landing.

"Is that Frankie?" asked Jimmie, suddenly sitting up in bed. "Oh!
mother, let me--"

"You be quiet!" snapped the woman, and stood listening; with parted
lips.

(II)

From that point Mrs. Partington seems to have been able to follow very
closely what must have taken place upstairs.

It was a very quiet night, here in Turner Road: the roysterers were in
the better-lighted streets, and the sober folk were at home. And there
was not a footstep on the pavements outside to confuse the little drama
of sound that came down to her through the ill-fitting boards overhead.
She could not explain afterwards why she did not interfere. I imagine
that she hoped against hope that she was misinterpreting what she heard,
and also that a kind of terror seized her which she found it really
impossible to shake off.

First, there was the opening and closing of the door; two or three
footsteps, and then dead silence.

Then she heard talking begin, first one voice, then a crescendo, as if
two or three clamored together; then one voice again. (It was
impossible, so far, to distinguish which was which.)

This went on for a minute or two; occasionally there was a crescendo,
and once or twice some voice rose almost into a shout.

Then, without warning, there was a shuffling of feet, and a crash, as of
an overturned chair; and, instant upon the noise, 'Erb set up a
prolonged wail.

"You be quiet!" snapped the woman in a sharp whisper.

The noises went on: now the stamp of a foot; now the scraping of
something overhead and a voice or two in sharp deep exclamation, and
then complete silence once more. 'Erb was sobbing now, as noiselessly as
he could, terrified at his mother's face, and Jimmie was up, standing
on the floor in his flannel shirt, listening like his mother. Maggie
still slept deeply on the further side of the bed.

The woman went on tip-toe a step nearer the door, opened it, and peeped
out irresolutely. But th