Suddenly she stopped and twisted about toward the door of the mill, a door that yawned on the road and framed in its square a clouded milky haze.
“Do you hear it?” she asked in a low monotone.
He had already concentrated his faculties and was listening intently.
“Yes, I do,” he answered. A cold fever settled on him as he replied, and he knew that he was perspiring icily at every pore.
Over the narrow wooden bridge that spanned the Saccarac River sounded slow footsteps. He could hear them distinctly in the nerve-wracking silence of the night, a measured advance that increased in sound as the invisible traveler neared the mill. One of the bridge-boards creaked beneath the weight of this unknown, and then there was a brief silence. The unseen wanderer had apparently paused, and Dreeme could imagine him leaning on the wood rail of the bridge and gazing into the black water that flowed so sluggishly beneath the cloudy sky. There were no stars reflected in that water. There was not even the reflection of the face of the noctambulist who was leaning over and gazing into nothingness. Even as the thought flashed through Dreeme’s mind he heard the tread resumed, this time to the accompanying crunch of gravel. Whoever it was had crossed the bridge and was following the path that skirted the ruined shell of the mill. Suddenly, with surprising strength, Martha Westcott thrust Dreeme away from the broken embrasure where they had sat in the murky glow of the half-drowned moon and against the charred sidewall of the mill. From that dark corner they could stare obliquely at the door. They stood there crushed against the wall, the acrid smell of burned timbers in their nostrils, while the crunching footsteps deliberately progressed toward them. The invisible wanderer was passing the angle of the mill now, following the blackened wall, just about to cross the milky square of the doorway. At this moment the sound ceased, stopping with a startling abruptness as though the hidden prowler had paused with one foot in the air. Dreeme could hear the woman beside him catch her breath in a tiny strangled sob. Both of them, flattened against the blackened beams, their shoulders touching, watched the dimly-glowing frame of the entrance with dilated eyes. In the silence that surged back about them like a dark wave, Dreeme could hear Martha Westcott’s heart beating. It was like a drum. It seemed to increase in volume until the whole interior was throbbing with the sound. Then slowly, ever so slowly, a dark shadow obscured the doorway, although there were no accompanying footsteps. The shadow hovered for an instant as though it were poised in the air, and then, to Dreeme’s horror, a low monotonous humming filled the wrecked room. The shadow, enlarged by the deceiving rays of the cloudy moon, appeared to sway, to diminish, to swell in rhythm with this unceasing drone. Dreeme, his nerves at the breaking point, started impulsively forward, but the tight clutch of Martha Westcott’s hand on his wrist caught him back. At this moment he recognized a melody in the low humming. “Rock of Ages.” Somebody was standing in the doorway of the mill and monotonously humming, “Rock of Ages.” Immediately Dreeme’s imagination shaped before him a shallow-faced figure in a frayed frock coat. A lean figure with dead eyes.
He had barely time to identify the man in the doorway before the humming ceased, and the shadow withdrew as noiselessly as it had appeared. There was the instant’s pause and Dreeme suddenly recollected that there was a patch of soft earth before the mill door. Of course. The loiterer was crossing that, returning to the gravel path again. Even as his mind began to function rationally once more he heard the crunching footsteps, this time decreasing in sound as the wanderer progressed along the road to Marlborough. They were slow, casual, a retarded crunch-crunch, a deliberate and unexcited dwindling. Presently there was silence. Dreeme, relaxed and almost smiling at the fever of fear into which he had been thrust by the nocturnal rambler, turned to Martha Westcott. He expected to find her relieved, but instead of this he could faintly decipher a concentrated expression of mingled fear and anger on her face.
“Well,” he said, “our unexpected caller has departed.”
“You knew him?” she asked.
They were both walking toward the door, tacitly admitting that the rendezvous was at an end.
“The worthy Burroughs?” said Dreeme lightly. “Of course. He was taking his usual evening promenade.”
She said nothing until they reached the milky square of obscured moonlight. Then she asked:
“Will you meet me here tomorrow night?”
“No,” said Dreeme.
She frowned at that.
“I have certain things I want to tell you,” she went on. “I need your advice about a number of matters.”
“Why don’t you come to my office?” he inquired.
“You know very well why,” she replied.
He said nothing but stood restlessly outside the door, anxious to leave her and unwilling to be too abrupt.
“Burroughs didn’t see us anyway,” he said inconsequentially. “It was too dark in that corner.”
She opened her eyes wide at that and regarded him with a mocking expression.
“It isn’t wise to meet in this clandestine way,” he insisted. “Somebody might see us, and you know how people gossip. I don’t like gossip when there isn’t any reason for it. It’s … it’s too nerve-racking.”
He teetered on one foot and turned toward Marlborough. She was leaning easily against the door. She said:
“I will tell you a great many things tomorrow night.”
Dreeme made an impatient gesture, and started to walk away.
“He did see us,” remarked Martha Westcott, not so much to the young doctor, as to the night about them. “Of course he saw us.”
Dreeme did not turn about, but kept on his way down the road. The air was cool and frolicksome, and it ruffled the hair on his forehead. It was fresh and pleasant. It was not like the acrid smell of burned wood. Two
