Page:The Whisper on the Stair by Lyon Mearson (1924).djvu/272



were not destined, however, to finish out the night with sleep. There are some nights, sometimes, into which Fate seems anxious to crowd in the experience of a lifetime, as though there would never be any more nights for her to play with. This night was already badly jammed with events, but they were not yet through, though the next act of destiny was not directly involved with Val’s affairs. Fate was not yet finished. She still had a trump card up her sleeve to play, and she played said card just before the dawn, when the night was blackest and when men slept the soundest.

Val was awakened by a fit of coughing. He opened his eyes slowly, sleepily, and though his window was open it seemed to him that the atmosphere was stifling; that it was almost impossible for him to breathe. There was a pungent, acrid element in the atmosphere; something he was unaccustomed to; something that his tortured lungs rejected. From afar, through his semiconscious state, he heard a sound of crackling. In the next room he caught the creaking of the springs of the bed as Eddie turned from side to side, in his sleep, evidently also endeavoring to breathe.

Suddenly, instantly, however, he was awake—awake to the fullest extent. Through the great corridors outside, ringing up and down the wooden walls, came the dread cry that sometimes comes in the night. Rh