wide-eyed by the fire, smoking a pipe.
I have no idea how much time had passed when something threw itself violently on my chest. I roused with a start and leaped to my feet, and a large Angora cat fell with a thump to the floor. The fire was still bright, and there was an odor of scorched leather through the room, from Hotchkiss’ shoes. The little detective was sound asleep, his dead pipe in his fingers. The cat sat back on its haunches and wailed.
The curtain at the door into the hallway bellied slowly out into the room and fell again. The cat looked toward it and opened its mouth for another howl. I thrust at it with my foot, but it refused to move. Hotchkiss stirred uneasily, and his pipe clattered to the floor.
The cat was standing at my feet, staring behind me. Apparently it was following with its eyes, an object unseen to me, that moved behind me. The tip of its tail waved threateningly, but when I wheeled I saw nothing.
I took the candle and made a circuit of the room. Behind the curtain that had moved the door was securely closed. The windows were shut and locked, and everywhere the silence was absolute. The cat followed me majestically. I stooped and stroked its head, but it persisted in its uncanny watching of the corners of the room.
When I went back to my divan, after putting a fresh log on the fire, I was reassured. I took the precaution, and smiled at myself for doing it, to put the fire tongs within reach of my hand. But the cat would not let me sleep. After a time I decided that it wanted water, and I started out in search of some, carrying the candle without the stand. I wandered through several rooms, all closed and dismantled, before I found a small lavatory opening off a billiard room. The cat lapped steadily, and I filled a glass to take back with me. The candle flickered in a sickly fashion that threatened to leave me there lost in the wanderings of the many hallways, and from somewhere there came an occasional violent puff of wind. The cat stuck by my feet, with the hair on its back raised menacingly. I don’t like cats; there is something psychic about them.
Hotchkiss was still asleep when I got back to the big room. I moved his boots back from the fire, and trimmed the candle. Then, with sleep gone from me, I lay back on my divan and reflected on many things: on my idiocy in coming; on Alison West, and the fact that only a week before she had been a guest in this very house; on Richey and the constraint that had come between us. From that I drifted back to Alison, and to the barrier my comparative poverty would be.
The emptiness, the stillness were oppressive. Once I heard footsteps coming, rhythmical steps that neither hurried nor dragged, and seemed to mount endless staircases without coming any closer. I realized finally that I had not quite turned off the tap, and that the lavatory, which I had circled to reach, must be quite close.
The cat lay by the fire, its nose on its folded paws, content in the warmth and companionship. I watched it idly. Now and then the green wood hissed in the fire, but the cat never batted an eye. Through an unshuttered window the lightning flashed. Suddenly the cat looked up. It lifted its head and stared directly at the gallery above. Then it blinked, and stared again. I was amused. Not until it had got up on its feet, eyes still riveted on the balcony, tail waving at the tip, the hair on its back a bristling brush, did I glance casually over my head.
>From among the shadows a face gazed down at me, a face that seemed a fitting tenant of the ghostly room below. I saw it as plainly as I might see my own face in a mirror. While I stared at it with horrified eyes, the apparition faded. The rail was there, the Bokhara rug still swung from it, but the gallery was empty.
The cat threw back its head and wailed.
CHAPTER XXIV
HIS WIFE’S FATHER
I jumped up and seized the fire tongs. The cat’s wail had roused Hotchkiss, who was wide-awake at once. He took in my offensive attitude, the tongs, the direction of my gaze, and needed nothing more. As he picked up the candle and darted out into the hall, I followed him. He made directly for the staircase, and part way up he turned off to the right through a small door. We were on the gallery itself; below us the fire gleamed cheerfully, the cat was not in sight. There was no sign of my ghostly visitant, but as we stood there the Bokhara rug, without warning, slid over the railing and fell to the floor below.
“Man or woman?” Hotchkiss inquired in his most professional tone.
“Neither - that is, I don’t know. I didn’t notice anything but the eyes,” I muttered. “They were looking a hole in me. If you’d seen that cat you would realize my state of mind. That was a traditional graveyard yowl.”
“I don’t think you saw anything at all,” he lied cheerfully. “You dozed off, and the rest is the natural result of a meal on a buffet car.”
Nevertheless, he examined the Bokhara carefully when we went down, and when I finally went to sleep he was reading the only book in sight - Elwell on Bridge. The first rays of daylight were coming mistily into the room when he roused me. He had his finger on his lips, and he whispered sibilantly while I tried to draw on my distorted boots.
“I think we have him,” he said triumphantly. “I’ve been looking around some, and I can tell you this much. Just before we came in through the window last night, another man came. Only - he did not drop, as you did. He swung over to the stair railing, and then down. The rail is scratched. He was long enough ahead of us to go into the dining-room and get a decanter out of the sideboard. He poured out the liquor into a glass, left the decanter there, and took the whisky into the library across the hall. Then - he broke into a desk, using a paper knife for a jimmy.”
“Good Lord, Hotchkiss,” I exclaimed; “why, it may have been Sullivan himself! Confound your theories - he’s getting farther away every minute.”
“It was Sullivan,” Hotchkiss returned imperturbably. “And he has not gone. His boots are by the library fire.”
“He probably had a dozen pairs where he could get them,” I scoffed. “And while you and I sat and slept, the very man we want to get our hands on leered at us over that railing.”
“Softly, softly, my friend,” Hotchkiss said, as I stamped into my other shoe. “I did not say he was gone. Don’t jump at conclusions. It is fatal to reasoning. As a matter of fact, he didn’t relish a night on the mountains any more than we did. After he had unintentionally frightened you almost into paralysis, what would my gentleman naturally do? Go out in the storm again? Not if I know the Alice-sit-by-the-fire type. He went upstairs, well up near the roof, locked himself in and went to bed.”
“And he is there now?”
