But they found no papers, nor anything resembling a clock dial save on the clocks themselves.
The mere fact of the search, however, had greatly unnerved both Clara and Norah, and had a result beyond any of our expectations.
Norah asked that night to be allowed to keep Jock in her room, and Clara took Isabel.
The total result of which was that I was awakened at three o’clock in the morning by a most horrible scream.
It seemed to come from the back of the house, and was both prolonged and agonized.
I leaped out of bed and threw open my door.
Joseph had similarly opened his, and I heard his voice.
“Who is it?
What is wrong?”
There was a moan, and turning on the lights Joseph and I ran to the back stairs.
Norah in her night dress was crouched there on the landing, her hands over her eyes.
“I’ve seen her!” she wailed. “I’ve seen her!”
“Stop that noise,” said Joseph sternly. “You’re scaring the whole neighborhood.
Who have you seen?”
“Miss Sarah.
I saw her, right at the foot of those stairs. She was standing there looking at me.
In her uniform, too.
All white.”
And to this absurd story she adhered with the dogged persistency of her type.
It appeared that Jock had wakened and had demanded to be taken out.
He had whimpered and scratched at the door, and at last, none too happily, Norah had started down with him.
At the top of the back stairs, however, he had stopped and given a low growl.
Norah had looked down.
There is a lamp on the garage, and since our trouble I had ordered it left burning all night.
Through the pantry window it sends a moderate amount of light into the pantry, and in that doorway Norah claimed to have seen her figure.
“And after that, what?” I demanded.
“I don’t know.
I shut my eyes.”
Only one thing struck me as curious in all this.
So far as I know, Elise, terrified by Judy’s dire threats, had said nothing of the figure in the attic and was now at a safe and discreet distance.
The next day I went over the house again with Joseph.
New locks had been placed wherever possible and bolts supplemented them at the doors, and in the basement I had had placed over the windows gratings of stout iron well set into the bricks.
“What is it, Joseph?” I asked.
“Do these women imagine these things?
Or is somebody getting into the house?”
“They’re very nervous, madam.
And nothing has been taken.”
I looked at him.
It seemed to me that he stood not so erect as formerly; that he looked older and very tired.
And lately I had noticed that he was less certain in his movements, slightly inco-ordinate.
I put my hand on his arm.
“This is wearing on you, Joseph,” I said.
“Would you like a vacation?
I daresay we could manage.”
But he shook his head.
“Thank you, madam, but I’d prefer to stay.
I’ve been a bit shaken since the attack; that’s all.”
“And you still have no idea who struck you?”
I thought that he hesitated.
Certainly the arm under my hand perceptibly tightened.