e only sound was the
muffled clicking of the balls in the combination; the only light, the
shaft from the lamp which she held unsteadily. The thought of the steel
walls added to the oppression of the air. Garth breathed with
difficulty. He fancied once that something moved behind the divan.
George caught his start and demanded an explanation. He scolded
querulously.

"Well," Garth croaked, "I agree with the lady. I don't like the room."

"I looked around," George said.

Nora lowered her arms.

"George," she said, "sometimes you can't see everything."

She straightened. That disquieting, colorless whisper came again.

"I know what it is. That cop was killed here, wasn't he?"

"What do I know about it?" he asked angrily.

She leaned closer and grasped his arm.

"Right here, George. And if he--It must have been just like this--this
time of night--when he--George! Can't we turn on the lights?"

He swallowed hard.

"Why not send out a call for the patrol? What do you mean, if he--"

She shivered.

"I don't like places where people have died hard. That's what I felt
when I came in here. But you--you're not afraid?"

He turned momentarily from his work. He tried with indifferent success
to fill his voice with challenge. Afterwards he looked up expectantly as
though he was far from certain the challenge might not be accepted.

"Afraid! A man with a red heart afraid of dead ones! They never come
back."

"Don't say that. I know. My mother told me such things. She was Italian.
She knew. She saw. George, don't say that. It's like cursing the dead.
And he lay right there, didn't he, George, between you and the safe?
That's why Slim stayed outside. Maybe Slim killed him. I want to go,
too. Let Simmons hold the lamp."

"No," George said. "That thing he wears isn't human company. You stay."

Garth wondered that in that fantastic light the girl's manner should set
a cold anxiety rippling along his own nerves. He looked with an
unnatural curiosity at the place which she had indicated.

Evidently she had yielded to an excess of terror. In spite of George's
command she was trying to pass the lamp to Garth. It slipped from her
fingers, and the white shaft circled swiftly downwards. She caught the
handle before it reached the floor, but now the only light in the room
was a narrow circle which bored into the carpet and exposed a dark,
irregular stain.

Nora cried chokingly.

"Blood! George! That's his blood!"

Cur