Page:The Master of Mysteries (1912).djvu/98

 ing, trembling with excitement, but without fear. Hardly had he reached her, however, when her voice rang out again.

"There! On the roof!" she cried.

Astro looked and beheld the figure gliding swiftly along the top of the building. The vision lasted only a moment, then disappeared.

He spoke sharply. "Valeska, run up to Miss Fanshawe's room and awaken her! Tell her I want her to see this!"

Valeska ran up the brick walk, passed through a door in the middle of the south wall, and entered the house. The halls had been left lighted, and she found her way easily to Miss Fanshawe's room. Here she knocked on the door, at first softly, then with increasing vehemence. Trying the door, she found it locked. No one answered.

She flew down-stairs again, and was about to go for Astro, when a sound attracted her attention. Down the hall, toward the back stairs, she saw something or some one pass and disappear. Her thoughts flew to Genevieve, and, with a new desire to awaken Miss Fanshawe, she went up-stairs again and knocked.

This time there was a noise inside the chamber,—a rattle, a chair being moved,—and in a few moments the door was partly opened and Miss Fanshawe looked out. At the same moment Genevieve appeared in the upper hall.

For a moment Valeska could not decide what to say. If, as she suspected, Genevieve had been, in some strange way, impersonating the phantom, she dared not tell of it before her. She slipped inside Miss Fanshawe's room, which was not lighted.