“Yes, it does,” assented Mrs. Brigham, whose horror-stricken tone matched her sister’s, “only— Oh, it is awful! What is it, Caroline?”
“I ask you again, how should I know?” replied Caroline. “I see it there like you. How should I know any more than you?”
“It MUST be something in the room,” said Mrs. Brigham, staring wildly around.
“We moved everything in the room the first night it came,” said Rebecca; “it is not anything in the room.”
Caroline turned upon her with a sort of fury. “Of course it is something in the room,” said she. “How you act! What do you mean by talking so? Of course it is something in the room.”
“Of course, it is,” agreed Mrs. Brigham, looking at Caroline suspiciously. “Of course it must be. It is only a coincidence. It just happens so. Perhaps it is that fold of the window curtain that makes it. It must be something in the room.”
“It is not anything in the room,” repeated Rebecca with obstinate horror.
The door opened suddenly and Henry Glynn entered. He began to speak, then his eyes followed the direction of the others’. He stood stock still staring at the shadow on the wall. It was life size and stretched across the white parallelogram of a door, half across the wall space on which the picture hung.
“What is that?” he demanded in a strange voice.
“It must be due to something in the room, Mrs. Brigham said faintly.
“It is not due to anything in the room,” said Rebecca again with the shrill insistency of terror.
“How you act, Rebecca Glynn,” said Caroline.
Henry Glynn stood and stared a moment longer. His face showed a gamut of emotions—horror, conviction, then furious incredulity. Suddenly he began hastening hither and thither about the room. He moved the furniture with fierce jerks, turning ever to see the effect upon the shadow on the wall. Not a line of its terrible outlines wavered.
“It must be something in the room!” he declared in a voice which seemed to snap like a lash.
His face changed. The inmost secrecy of his nature seemed evident until one almost lost sight of his lineaments. Rebecca stood close to her sofa, regarding him with woeful, fascinated eyes. Mrs. Brigham clutched Caroline’s hand. They both stood in a corner out of his way. For a few moments he raged about the room like a caged wild animal. He moved every piece of furniture; when the moving of a piece did not affect the shadow, he flung it to the floor, his sisters watching.
Then suddenly he desisted. He laughed and began straightening the furniture which he had flung down.
“What an absurdity,” he said easily. “Such a to-do about a shadow.”
“That’s so,” assented Mrs. Brigham, in a scared voice which she tried to make natural. As she spoke she lifted a chair near her.
“I think you have broken the chair that Edward was so fond of,” said Caroline.
Terror and wrath were struggling for expression on her face. Her mouth was set, her eyes shrinking. Henry lifted the chair with a show of anxiety.
“Just as good as ever,” he said pleasantly. He laughed again, looking at his sisters. “Did I scare you?” he said. “I should think you might be used to me by this time. You know my way of wanting to leap to the bottom of a mystery, and that shadow does look—queer, like—and I thought if there was any way of accounting for it I would like to without any delay.”
“You don’t seem to have succeeded,” remarked Caroline dryly, with a slight glance at the wall.
Henry’s eyes followed hers and he quivered perceptibly.
“Oh, there is no accounting for shadows,” he said, and he laughed again. “A man is a fool to try to account for shadows.”
Then the supper bell rang, and they all left the room, but Henry kept his back to the wall, as did, indeed, the others.
Mrs. Brigham pressed close to Caroline as she crossed the hall. “He looked like a demon!” she breathed in her ear.
Henry led the way with an alert motion like a boy; Rebecca brought up the rear; she could scarcely walk, her knees trembled so.
“I can’t sit in that room again this evening,” she whispered to Caroline after supper.
“Very well, we will sit in the south room,” replied Caroline. “I think we will sit in the south parlor,” she said aloud; “it isn’t as damp as the study, and I have a cold.”
So they all sat in the south room with their sewing. Henry read the newspaper, his chair drawn close to the lamp on the table. About nine o’clock he rose abruptly and crossed the hall to the study. The three sisters looked at one another. Mrs. Brigham rose, folded her rustling skirts compactly around her, and began tiptoeing toward the door.
“What are you going to do?” inquired Rebecca agitatedly.
“I am going to see what he is about,” replied Mrs. Brigham cautiously.
She pointed as she spoke to the study door across the hall; it was ajar. Henry had striven to pull it together behind him, but it had somehow swollen beyond the limit with curious speed. It was still ajar and a streak of light showed from top to bottom. The hall lamp was not lit.
“You had better stay where you are,” said Caroline with guarded sharpness.
“I am going to see,” repeated Mrs. Brigham firmly.
