Florence Digby, in her short and sheltered life, had possibly never
known any very great or deep emotion. But she touched the bottom of
extreme terror at that moment, as with her ears still thrilling with
Violet’s piercing cry, she turned to look at Mr. Van Broecklyn, and
beheld the instantaneous wreck it had made of this seemingly strong
man. Not till he came to lie in his coffin would he show a more ghastly
countenance; and trembling herself almost to the point of falling,
caught him by the arm and sought to read his face what had happened.
Something disastrous she was sure; something which he had feared and was
partially prepared for, yet which in happening had crushed him. Was it
a pitfall into which the poor little lady had fallen? If so--But he is
speaking--mumbling low words to himself. Some of them she can hear. He
is reproaching himself--repeating over and over that he should never
have taken such a chance; that he should have remembered her youth--the
weakness of a young girl’s nerve. He had been mad, and now--and now--
With the repetition of this word his murmuring ceased. All his energies
were now absorbed in listening at the low door separating him from what
he was agonizing to know--a door impossible to enter, impossible to
enlarge--a barrier to all help--an opening whereby sound might pass but
nothing else, save her own small body, now lying--where?
“Is she hurt?” faltered Florence, stooping, herself, to listen. “Can you
hear anything--anything?”
For an instant he did not answer; every faculty was absorbed in the one
sense; then slowly and in gasps he began to mutter:
“I think--I hear--something. Her step--no, no, no step. All is as quiet
as death; not a sound, not a breath--she has fainted. O God! O God! Why
this calamity on top of all!”
He had sprung to his feet at the utterance this invocation, but next
moment was down on knees again, listening--listening.
Never was silence more profound; they were hearkening for murmurs from a
tomb. Florence began to sense the full horror of it all, and was swaying
helplessly when Mr. Van Broecklyn impulsively lifted his hand in an
admonitory Hush! and through the daze of her faculties a small far sound
began to make itself heard, growing louder as she waited, then becoming
faint again, then altogether ceasing only to renew itself once more,
till it resolved into an approaching step, faltering in its course, but
coming ever nearer and nearer.
“She’s safe! She’s not hurt!” sprang from Florence’s lips in
inexpressible relief; and expecting Mr. Van Broecklyn to show an equal
joy, she turned towards him, with the cheerful cry,
“Now if she has been so fortunate as to that missing page, we shall all
be repaid for our fright.”
A movement on his part, a shifting of position which brought him finally
to his feet, but he gave no other proof of having heard her, nor did
his countenance mirror her relief. “It is as if he dreaded, instead of
hailed, her return,” was Florence’s inward comment as she watched him
involuntarily recoil at each fresh token of Violet’s advance.
Yet because this seemed so very unnatural, she persisted in her efforts
to lighten the situation, and when he made no attempt to encourage
Violet in her approach, she herself stooped and called out a cheerful
welcome which must have rung sweetly in the poor little detective’s
ears.
A sorry sight was Violet, when, helped by Florence, she finally crawled
into view through the narrow opening and stood once again on the cellar
floor. Pale, trembling, and soiled with the dust of years, she presented
a helpless figure enough, till the joy in Florence’s face recalled some
of her spirit, and, glancing down at her hand in which a sheet of paper
was visible, she asked for Mr. Spielhagen.
“I’ve got the formula,” she said. “If you will bring him, I will hand it
over to him here.”
Not a word of her adventure; nor so much as one glance at Mr. Van
Broecklyn, standing far back in the shadows.
Nor was she more communicative, when, the formula restored and
everything made right with Mr. Spielhagen, they all came together again
in the library for a final word. “I was frightened by the silence
and the darkness, and so cried out,” she explained in answer to their
questions. “Any one would have done so who found himself alone in
so musty a place,” she added, with an attempt at lightsomeness which
deepened the pallor on Mr. Van Broecklyn’s cheek, already sufficiently
noticeable to have been remarked upon by more than one.
“No ghosts?” laughed Mr. Cornell, too happy in the return of his hopes
to be fully sensible of the feelings of those about him. “No whispers
from impalpable lips or touches from spectre hands? Nothing to explain
the mystery of that room long shut up that even Mr. Van Broecklyn
declares himself ignorant of its secret?”
“Nothing,” returned Violet, showing her dimples in full force now.
“If Miss Strange had any such experiences--if she has anything to tell
worthy of so marked a curiosity, she will tell it now,” came from the
gentleman just alluded to, in tones so stern and strange that all show
of frivolity ceased on the instant. “Have you anything to tell, Miss
Strange?”
Greatly startled, she regarded him with widening eyes for a moment, then
with a move towards the door, remarked, with a general look about her:
“Mr. Van Broecklyn knows his own house, and doubtless can relate its
histories if he will. I am a busy little body who having finished my
work am now ready to return home, there to wait for the next problem
which an indulgent fate may offer me.”
She was near the threshold--she was about to take her leave, when
suddenly she felt two hands fall on her shoulder, and turning, met the
eyes of Mr. Van Broecklyn burning into her own.
“You saw!” dropped in an almost inaudible whisper from his lips.
The shiver which shook her answered him better than any word.
With an exclamation of despair, he withdrew his hands, and facing the
others now standing together in a startled group, he said, as soon as he
could recover some of his self-possession:
“I must ask for another hour of your company. I can no longer keep my
sorrow to myself. A dividing line has just been drawn across my life,
and I must have the sympathy of someone who knows my past, or I shall
go mad in my self-imposed solitude. Come back, Miss Strange. You of all
others have the prior right to hear.”