Then I turned as if to look down the corridor, but nothing but a close black curtain met my eyes. There was not a gleam of light. Every signal light was gone; there was not even a glimmer of light from under the doors of kitchen or drug room or linen closet. I was suspended in a breathless black void.
And down that black emptiness, only five nights ago, two men had been violently done to death!
My breath began to come in painful, rasping gasps. I must do something. I must find Maida. I must get a lamp. Must make my way to the basement switch-box and replace a burned-out fuse—or find what had caused the trouble.
Or was it an accident? Had a fuse actually gone? Could it be that the lights had purposely been disconnected?
The terrifying question had not more than entered my head when from somewhere down the corridor a cold current of air struck me.
I shivered. Some door or window had been opened. Some door—the south door! Was it the south door?
I was standing, gripping the chair back, loath to leave that firm, stationary thing and venture forth into the surrounding blackness that was alive, now, with foreboding and the menace of unspeakable things. Was something moving? Did I hear a stealthy footstep? Was it the thudding of my own heart?
I strove to move, to force my horror-drugged muscles to advance that length of grisly blackness toward—toward Room 18.
I tried to call out: “Maida—Maida—” I kept saying and finally realized that my stiff lips were only shaping the words.
What was happening down there? Was Room 18 claiming another—Was—I took a step into the darkness, tore my reluctant hands from the chair, and groped for the wall to guide me past the yawning emptiness of those intervening doors.
With outstretched, shaking hands, I was feeling for some stable thing to guide me, when, in that dead silence, there was a shattering crash of sound.
It was a revolver shot! The crash reverberated through the halls, echoing and reechoing in those empty spaces and about those blank doors.
Then gradually the frightful echoes died away. The blackness pressed in upon me, more suffocating than before, and again dead silence reigned.
For a moment I must have been numb with shock. Then there were footsteps running, a cry, the clicking of signal lights that did not light, and I was running, stumbling, gasping, bumping into doors, trying to reach the end of the corridor. And Room 18.
Along the way I collided with something, something moving that twisted away from me and cried out. It was Maida and at my voice she answered.
“What is it! What has happened! Was it Room 18?”
“Room 18! What can we—”
“We must have a light. In the kitchen—there’s a candle—” I heard the swift, soft thud of her feet as they moved away and I kept on, feeling along the cold, dank wall, groping my way past open doors. It seemed an eternity before I reached the end of the corridor and felt the small panes of glass in the south door under my fingers. I turned sharply to the left. Beyond that black void stretched Room 18. I paused at its threshold but something drove me on, into the room.
Here was the wall. Here was the electric light button. Here the bedside table. I bent, feeling along the rough weave of the counterpane on the bed, took a few steps further, trod on something hideously soft and yielding, and sprang backward in stark terror.
Afraid to move, afraid to breathe, my heart clamouring in my throat choking me, my hands pressed against my teeth, I could not even scream.
What lay there? What was in that room?
Then I realized dimly that Maida was coming, that a small circle of light was at the door, that a hand was holding a lamp unsteadily and the wavering flame was casting grotesque shadows on Maida’s chin and mouth. Above them her eyes were wide and black and mirrored my terror.
I saw her hand advance, pointing at my feet. It shook. Her mouth opened in a voiceless cry and I forced myself to look downward.
It was Higgins, sprawled there at the foot of the bed. He had been shot!
Neither of us spoke. Neither of us moved.
At last Maida withdrew her hand.
“Set the lamp down,” I heard someone saying—it must have been I. “Set the lamp down before you drop it.”
We did not hear O’Leary enter the south door. All at once he was there with us, staring at the thing there on the floor, holding his electric torch to illumine it.
“When did it happen? How? Come into the hall. Tell me. Was I too late?”
Somehow we were out in the corridor; the lamp was left on the table in Room 18. The light from its small flame trembled and cast eery, creeping shadows.
“Quick,” said O’Leary. “Take that lamp to the basement, Miss Day. The light switch has been pulled out. You know where the switch-box is—”
I saw Maida flinch but she took the lamp, averting her eyes from the floor.
“Hurry! No, Miss Keate, stay here, please, at the door. If anyone tries to get in, stop him! Scream! I’ll not be far away.”
In a flash he was gone, out the south door. I was still standing as if petrified, there in front of the south door, when the green light over the chart desk at the opposite end of the corridor flashed up and the little red signal lights gleamed suddenly all up and down the hall. I breathed a sigh of relief; Maida was all right, then. And in another moment or two her white uniform came into view at the chart desk.
“All right, thank you, Miss Keate,” came a voice at my elbow. It was O’Leary, his hat gone, his hair ruffled, his eyes shining like phosphorescent flashes on a deep-lying sea. “Come with me, please,” he said.
“Was the fuse burned
