Page:Wadsworth Camp--the gray mask.djvu/245

 come and gone in the week I've been here. But I've never been superstitious, and I didn't hear anything until last night."

Garth stirred.

"What did you hear? When was it?"

"About midnight," she answered tensely. "I had had company in the kitchen until then, so I was alone downstairs. McDonald had told me before he went to bed to make sure the last thing that the library fire was all right. I had looked at it and had put the fender up and was just leaving the room when I heard this sound like moans, sir. I  I've never heard such suffering."

She shuddered.

"It was like a voice from the grave like somebody trying to get out of the grave."

"But you heard no shot?"

"No, sir."

Garth spoke tolerantly.

"These sounds must have come from up stairs. You've forgotten that Mr. Taylor was an invalid."

She cried out angrily.

"It wasn't like a man's or a woman's voice, and I can't tell where it came from. I tell you it was like a a dead voice."

"You failed to trace it, of course," Garth said. "Describe to me what you did."

"I ran to the kitchen," she answered, "but, as I told you, there was no one there. McDonald had gone to bed, and so had his daughter."