“Give me my revolver, Aunt Ray,” he said; and I got it—­the one I had found in the tulip bed—­and gave it to him.  He saw Liddy there and divined at once that Louise was alone.

“You let me attend to this fellow, whoever it is, Aunt Ray, and go to Louise, will you?  She may be awake and alarmed.”

So in spite of her protests, I left Liddy alone and went back to the east wing.  Perhaps I went a little faster past the yawning blackness of the circular staircase; and I could hear Halsey creaking cautiously down the main staircase.  The rapping, or pounding, had ceased, and the silence was almost painful.  And then suddenly, from apparently under my very feet, there rose a woman’s scream, a cry of terror that broke off as suddenly as it came.  I stood frozen and still.  Every drop of blood in my body seemed to leave the surface and gather around my heart.  In the dead silence that followed it throbbed as if it would burst.  More dead than alive, I stumbled into Louise’s bedroom.  She was not there!

CHAPTER XVII

IN THE EARLY MORNING

I stood looking at the empty bed.  The coverings had been thrown back, and Louise’s pink silk dressing-gown was gone from the foot, where it had lain.  The night lamp burned dimly, revealing the emptiness of the place.  I picked it up, but my hand shook so that I put it down again, and got somehow to the door.

There were voices in the hall and Gertrude came running toward me.

“What is it?” she cried.  “What was that sound?  Where is Louise?”

“She is not in her room,” I said stupidly.  “I think—­it was she—­who screamed.”

Liddy had joined us now, carrying a light.  We stood huddled together at the head of the circular staircase, looking down into its shadows.  There was nothing to be seen, and it was absolutely quiet down there.  Then we heard Halsey running up the main staircase.  He came quickly down the hall to where we were standing.

“There’s no one trying to get in.  I thought I heard some one shriek.  Who was it?”

Our stricken faces told him the truth.

“Some one screamed down there,” I said.  “And—­and Louise is not in her room.”

With a jerk Halsey took the light from Liddy and ran down the circular staircase.  I followed him, more slowly.  My nerves seemed to be in a state of paralysis:  I could scarcely step.  At the foot of the stairs Halsey gave an exclamation and put down the light.

“Aunt Ray,” he called sharply.

At the foot of the staircase, huddled in a heap, her head on the lower stair, was Louise Armstrong.  She lay limp and white, her dressing-gown dragging loose from one sleeve of her night-dress, and the heavy braid of her dark hair stretching its length a couple of steps above her head, as if she had slipped down.