Page:The Master of Mysteries (1912).djvu/102

 awake; if she's not, don't awaken her. Let her go to bed herself."

Valeska flew into the house and up-stairs. Miss Fanshawe had kept her promise and had left her door unlocked. Valeska entered.

The window was still up. There was no one in the bed. One pillow was missing. On the instant Valeska understood the secret of the baby that the specter was supposed to carry.

She slipped into the corner and waited. In a few moments a form appeared in the window, blocking out the light. A wriggle and a twist, and it sprang lightly in, and Miss Fanshawe stood revealed in the moonlight, in her night-dress, now streaked and spattered with blue stains. In her arms she still held the pillow, as a mother holds her babe. Her eyes stared straight before her without power of sight.

Valeska, more moved by this uncanny vision than if it had been a supernatural visitation, stole silently away and rejoined the Master.

"I don't see how it was possible, even though I saw it with my own eyes!" she said, as they sat down on the bench to talk it over before sleeping. "A frail woman like that to climb to the second story up a rod, to the roof even! I've heard stories of somnambulists before, but this is miraculous!"

"If you had read Metchnikoff," said Astro, smoking calmly, "you would have found that such a case as this is not rare; and you would have discovered the explanation. The fact is that in somnambulism and in hysteria persons often revert atavistically to the