I
Josephine Stone was seated in the library of the chateau up in the Cup of Nannabijou after the zenith of the storm had passed that night. Earlier in the evening she and Mrs. Johnson with some apprehension had watched the storm coming up, but it broke with much less violence there than it did down on the waterfront, the high cliffs of the Cup effectually diverting the fury of the tempest, whose roar they could hear in the upper air while the rain came down in torrents. Mrs. Johnson, who was invariably up before the sun, retired early, but Miss Stone did not feel that she could compose herself for sleep. Since childhood high winds had always made her restless and nervous.
She had been sitting in her room reading a book she had brought up from the library. An hour had passed, when, above the lash of the driving rain, she was certain she heard the rumble of voices outside; then the opening and closing of a door in the building adjacent where the wireless station was located. Some of the Indians who looked after the place slept there, but she was sure they could not be up and about unless something unusual had happened. They invariably went to their slumbers and were not seen or heard from after sundown.
Josephine Stone got up and going to the window cautiously lifted a corner of the drawn blind. A light shone in the wireless building, but she could see nothing of what was going on inside. The nervousness that was upon her precluded sleep and it was becoming too chilly to sit up in her room. She thought of going down to the library and building a wood fire in the huge fireplace. That would possibly cheer her up, she felt.
But when the fire was leaping high and crackling loudly she still felt the need of something to occupy her mind. There was an eerie, insistent personality to the library. Its high, small-paned French windows were heavily-curtained, and its furniture, of a substantial design several decades old, was upholstered in the same sombre brown tone that characterised the curtains and the great deep-piled rug that occupied the entire floor space. Curtained wall-shelves and ancient, glass-doored cases were crowded with leather-bound volumes of a heterogeneous variety as well as departmental government books in blue paper covers. There were several tiers of the classics, dog-eared and much thumb-worn, but the majority of the books were devoted to science, psychology, mineralogy and forestry. None of the books contained a name to designate to whom they belonged, though many of the older ones had fly-leaves torn from them that bespoke some one’s precaution against identification.
The girl, tiring of rummaging through the books, turned her attention to the square, black mahogany piano across one corner of the room, wondering vaguely what might be the history of this strange place, what story these walls might tell if they could speak. It was a quaint old instrument with a wonderfully mellow tone. Some cultured person must have at some time occupied this chateau, some one of a distinctly scientific turn, she reflected. Who were they and what had become of them? She shivered involuntarily. Was it fancy, or did she sense a silent, unseen presence in this room?
She ran her lithe fingers over the keys and struck up a popular air from memory. The music seemed to dissipate her oppression and lift the heavy melancholy of her surroundings.
The girl played on and on, until wearying of memory selections, she thought to look over a sheaf of music on the back of the instrument. During the pause she was sure she heard a light tapping at the door off the hall to her left.
She listened, at first quite startled; but when the tapping was repeated, something human and deferential in the summons reassured her.