Page:Richard Marsh--The joss, a reversion.djvu/32

20 and let us in; we’ve been nearly robbed and murdered.”

“I daresay! You don’t enter this house to-night; you know the rules. And if you don’t take yourselves off this instant I’ll send for the police.”

“Send for the police, that’s what we want you to do. The police will soon see if you won’t let us in.”

Mrs. Galloway’s head disappeared; the window was banged. Emily cried louder than ever.

“I told you she’d never let us in.”

“We’ll see if she won’t.”

Off I started again to hammer. Presently steps were heard coming along the passage. Mrs. Galloway’s voice came from the other side of the door.

“Stop that disgraceful noise! Go away! Do you hear me, go away!”

“If we do it will be to fetch the police. They’ll soon show you if you can keep us out all night when we’ve been nearly robbed and murdered.”

The door was opened perhaps three inches; as I believed, upon the chain. I knew Mrs. Galloway’s little tricks. But if it was upon the chain what occurred was odd. Someone came hurrying up the steps behind us. To my amazement it was the dreadful old man in the yellow canvas cloth. I was too bewildered to even try to guess where he had come from; I had never supposed that he, or anybody else, was near. He pointed to the door.

“Open!” he said, in that queer, half-stifled voice in which he had spoken to me before.

The door was opened wide, though how the housekeeper had had time to remove the chain, if it was chained, was more than I could understand. Emily and I marched into the passage—sneaked, I daresay, would have been the better word. As I went the stranger slipped something into my hand; a hard something, wrapped in a scrap of paper.