Part 5 (1/2)
”Not then----” began the woman, but Simpkins cut her short by jumping to his feet with a cry of ”What's that!” and his voice was sharp with fear.
For in that silent second, while he waited for her answer, he had heard a noise out in the hall, the sound of stealthy feet behind the veil, and he had seen the woman's eyes gleam triumph.
Again the terror that had mastered him an hour before leaped into life, and quakingly he faced the darkness. But he saw nothing--only the s.h.i.+fting shadows, the crimson blotches crawling on the veil, and the vague outlines of the coffined dead.
He looked back to the woman. Her face was masklike. It must have been a fancy, a vibration of his own tense nerves. But none the less, he rearranged the light, that while its rays shone clear on Mrs.
Athelstone, he might be in the shadow, and set his chair back close against the wall, that both the woman and the hall might be well in his eye. And when he sat down again one hand clutched tight the b.u.t.t of a revolver.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
[Ill.u.s.tration]
VIII
”You seem strangely disturbed, Simpkins,” said Mrs. Athelstone quietly; but he fancied that there was a note of malicious pleasure in her voice.
”Has anything happened to alarm you?”
”I thought I heard a slight noise, as if something were moving behind me. Perhaps a mummy was breaking out of its case,” he answered, but his voice was scarcely steady enough for the flippancy of his speech.
”Hardly that,” was the serious answer; ”but it might have been my cat, Rameses.”
”Not unless it was Rameses II., because--well, it didn't sound like a cat,” he wound up, guiltily conscious of his other reason for certainty on this point. ”Perhaps Isis has climbed down from her pedestal to stretch herself,” and he smiled, but his eyes were anxious, and he shot a furtive glance toward the veil.
”It's hardly probable,” was the calm reply.
”What? Can't the thing use its legs as well as its arms?”
”Ah! then you know----”
”Yes; she reached for me when I was dusting her off, but I kicked harder than Doctor Athelstone, I suppose, and so touched the spring twice.”
”You beast!”
”Well, let it go at that,” Simpkins a.s.sented. ”And let's hear the rest.”
He was burning with impatience to reach the end and get away, back to noisy, crowded Broadway.
But Mrs. Athelstone answered nothing, only looked off toward the altar.
It almost seemed as if she waited for something.
”Go on,” commanded Simpkins, stirred to roughness by his growing uneasiness.
”You will not leave while yet you may?” and her tone doubled the threat of her words.