Page:Wadsworth Camp--the gray mask.djvu/97

Rh She gasped.

"I begin to see."

"Maybe I shouldn't have brought you," he whispered.

"But who—"

"Sh-h!"

"Did you hear anything?" she asked.

"No. If Randall never wore a rose—"

"Jim! I've never—felt such darkness."

"I must think," he said.

But his brain refused to enter the new country of speculation whose gates the discovery in the stream had opened. The dank air of the room where Treving had been murdered was thick with imminence. A formless anticipation possessed Garth's mind. He had a quick instinct to turn on the lights and proceed with his search, abandoning this course which logic had suggested, but which was fraught, he had no doubt, with positive apprehension to Nora. Why not, indeed, satisfy her curiosity now? But his pride denied the impulse. He wanted first something more tangible, something more provocative of her praise.

"It frightens me here," Nora breathed. "I've the queerest desire to—to scream."

Her laugh was scarcely audible.

Her words had set Garth's memory to work. He knew again what he missed in this silent house—the amorphous screams of a woman in an agony powerless to express itself. How she must have wanted to speak! How horribly she had tried un-