"I want you to see why I am frightened of this place," she said,
flashing her eyes upon me with an almost girlish appeal.
"I will go," said I; and following her quickly out, I locked the
bungalow door, and ignoring the hand she extended toward me, dropped the
key into my pocket.
I thought I heard a little gasp--the least, the smallest of sounds
possible. But if so, the feeling which prompted it was not apparent in
her manner or her voice as she led the way back to her house, and
ushered me into a hall full of packing-boxes and the general litter
accompanying an approaching departure.
"You will excuse the disorder," she cried as she piloted me through
these various encumbrances to a small but exquisitely furnished room
still glorying in its full complement of ornaments and pictures. "This
trouble which has come to one I love has made it very hard for me to do
anything. I feel helpless, at times, completely helpless."
The dejection she expressed was but momentary, however. In another
instant she was pointing out a chair and begging me to make myself
comfortable while she went for the letter (I think she called it a
letter) which I had come there to read.
What was I to think of her? What was I to think of myself? And what
would the story tell me to warrant the loss of what might have proved a
most valuable hour? I had not answered these questions when she
reentered with a bundle in her hand of discolored--I should almost call
them mouldered--sheets of much crumpled paper.
"These--" she began; then, seeing me look at them with something like
suspicion, she paused until she caught my eye, when she added gravely,
"these came to me from Mrs. Ocumpaugh. How she got them you will have to
ask her. I should say, judging from appearances--" Here she took a seat
opposite me at a small table near which I had been placed--"that they
must have been found in some old chest or possibly in some hidden drawer
of one of those curious antique desks of which more than one was
discovered in the garrets of the old house when it was pulled down to
give place to the new one."
"Is this letter, as you call it, so old?" I asked.
"It is dated thirty-five years ago."
"The garret must have been a damp one," I remarked.
She flashed me a look--I thought of it more than once afterward--and
asked if she should do the reading or I.
"You," I rejoined, all afire with the prospect of listening to her
remarkable voice in what I had every reason to believe would call forth
its full expression. "Only let me look at those sheets first, and
understand as perfectly as I may, just what it is you are going to read
to me."
"It's an explanation written for his heirs by Mr. Ocumpaugh. The story
itself," she went on, handing me over the papers she held, "begins
abruptly. From the way the sheet is torn across at the top, I judge that
the narrative itself was preceded by some introductory words now
lacking. When I have read it to you, I will tell you what I think those
introductory words were."
I handed back the sheets. There seemed to be a spell in the
air--possibly it arose from her manner, which was one to rouse
expectation even in one whose imagination had not already been stirred
by a visit at night and in more than commonly bewildering company to the
place whose dark and hitherto unknown secret I was about to hear.
"I am ready," I said, feeling my strange position, but not anxious to
change it just then for any other conceivable one.
She drew a deep breath; again fixed me with her strange, compelling
eyes, and with the final remark:
"The present no longer exists, we are back in the seventies--" began
this enthralling tale.