Page:The Whisper on the Stair by Lyon Mearson (1924).djvu/267

 again—and when the Mystery—he called him that mentally—would speak to him. Was he the strange apparition who had appeared to him out of a stroke of lightning—who had been revealed to him in an instant, and blotted out in the same instant? Who or what was this thing?

Val could feel again the touch of those invisible fingers as he was released, the creepy feeling that there was more about him than he could see with his eyes or hear with his ears.

With a puzzled sigh he went back to his perusal of the Bible. He read carefully, slowly, noting every word and every letter, and having finished with the two pages—two hundred and two hundred and one—between which the large bill had lain, he started once more, deliberately.

He had attained halfway down the page when he leaned forward with excitement, his eyes bright with the discovery. He saw what he had not seen before—marks—pencil marks, so slight, so slender and light, that it required strong eyes to behold them. He read the passage:

In this passage the slight mark appeared under the words: and. It was plainly the beginning of a message! He glanced further. Now that he knew they were there, he could see more underscorings on the page. It was a message from the dead.