Page:The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928).djvu/101

 "Oh, I mean to escape," Miss Fosdick kept telling her interiorly, as if to break down the chain of habit. "Oh, I mean to escape, all right." She gazed malignantly at the image of Mrs. Weatherby, who was doing her nails and practicing her expression of sweetness at the same time. "Ah, if she only knew." But Miss Fosdick hadn't the least idea what she meant to do.

All this time she had been watching the clock and counting the strokes of the brush with a part of her mind that seemed immune from that wild torrent of rebellious thought. One hundred and forty-two, one hundred and forty-three. . . eight strokes to the minute according to Mrs. Weatherby's schedule.

Aunt Henrietta was speaking again. "I'm afraid, dear, that I'll have to ask you to sit by me tonight."

It was not possible that it was coming so surely, exactly as she had known it would come. This time she might have thrown down the brush, but before she had time to act there rose in the still air the sound of a voice calling in Italian, "Hello! Hello in there!" and the sound of vigorous knocking on the main door.

For a second the gaze of the two women, so hostile and now suddenly frightened, met in the blotched old mirror.

"Who could it be?" whispered Mrs. Weatherby, who was always afraid of something. "At this hour of the night?"

They listened for a moment and then the knocking was repeated and the shouting.

"Go to the window, Gertrude." 