The House of the Whispering Pines | Page 5

the wall; I felt forward; I even handled the pegs and counted them as I
passed to and fro, touching every one; but I could not alter the fact. The

groping she had done had been in this direction. She was searching for
this hat and coat (a man's hat,--a derby, as I had been careful to assure
myself at the first handling) and, in them, she had gone home as she
had probably come, and there was no man in the case, or if there were--
The doubt drove me to the staircase. Making no further effort to
unravel the puzzle which only beclouded my faculties, I began my
wary ascent. I had not the slightest fear, I was too full of cold rage for
that.
The arrangement of rooms on the second floor was well known to me. I
understood every nook and corner and could find my way about the
whole place without a light. I took but one precaution--that of slipping
off my shoes at the foot of the stairs. I wished to surprise the intruder. I
was willing to resort to any expedient to accomplish this. The matches I
carried in my pocket would make this possible if once I heard him
breathing. I held my own breath as I stole softly up, and waited for an
instant at the top of the stairs to listen. There was an awesome silence
everywhere, and I was hesitating whether to attack the front rooms first
or to follow up a certain narrow hall leading to a rear staircase, when I
remembered the thin line of smoke which, rising from one of the
chimneys, had first attracted my attention to the house. In that was my
clue. There was but one room on this floor where a fire could be lit. It
lay a few feet beyond me down the narrow hall I have just mentioned.
Why had I trusted everything to my ears when my nose would have
been a better guide? As I took the few steps necessary, a slight smell of
smoke became very perceptible, and no longer in doubt of my course, I
pushed boldly on and entering the half-open door, struck a match and
peered anxiously about.
Emptiness here just as everywhere else. A few chairs, a dresser,--it was
a ladies' dressing-room,--some smouldering ashes on the hearth, a
lounge piled up with cushions. But no person. The sound I had heard
had not issued from this room, yet something withheld me from
seeking further. Chilled to the bone, with teeth chattering in spite of
myself, I paused just inside the door, and when the match went out in
my hand remained shivering there in the darkness, a prey to sensations

more nearly approaching those of fear than any I had ever before
experienced in my whole life.

II
IT WAS SHE--SHE INDEED!
Look on death itself!--up, up, and see The great doom's visage!
Macbeth.
Why, I did not know. There seemed to be no reason for this excess of
feeling. I had no dread of attack; my apprehension was of another sort.
Besides, any attack here must come from the rear--from the open
doorway in which I stood--and my dread lay before me, in the room
itself, which, as I have already said, appeared to be totally empty. What
could occasion my doubts, and why did I not fly the place? There were
passage-ways yet to search, why linger here like a gaby in the dark
when perhaps the man I believed to be in hiding somewhere within
these walls, was improving the opportunity to escape?
If I asked myself this question, I did not answer it, but I doubt if I asked
it then. I had forgotten the intruder; the interest which had carried me
thus far had become lost in a fresher one of which the beginning and
ending lay hidden within the four walls I now stared upon, unseeing.
Not to see and yet to feel--did that make the horror? If so, another
lighted match must help me out. I struck one while the thought was hot
within me, and again took a look at the room.
I noted but one thing new, but that made me reel back till I was half
way into the hall. Then a certain dogged persistency I possess came to
my rescue, and I re-entered the room at a leap and stood before the
lounge and its pile of cushions. They were numerous,--all that the room
contained, and more! Chairs had been stripped, window-seats denuded,
and the whole collection disposed here in a set way which struck me as
unnatural. Was this the janitor's idea? I hardly thought so, and was
about to pluck one of these cushions off, when that most unreasonable

horror seized me