"'Great Scott!' I says to myself, 'there's Miss Hope!'"
It is not too much to say that a shudder traversed the court. Christina, white as death, and her eyes black and strained with horror, leaned toward him in an agony.
"Perhaps you thought she was rather a late visitor!" smiled the coroner. "Well? She didn't melt away, I suppose?"
"No, sir. She came up to me, all smiles like, but you bet there was something that wasn't a bit funny in that smile. And she says to me, 'Is our friend, Mr. Ingham, at home?' she says. And I says, 'No, ma'am.' And she says, 'You're a bad liar, my boy! But you won't take me up, I suppose?' And I says, 'He told me not to, ma'am.'"
"Well? Go on!"
"So she says, 'Well, then, I must take myself up.' And before you could say 'Pop,' she was up the stairs."
"And what did you do?"
"'Oh, here, ma'am, ma'am,' I says, 'you mustn't do that!' She stopped and put her elbows on the stair-rail,—they run right up to one side o' the 'phone desk, you know,—and laughed down at me. She looked awful pretty, but there was something about her kind o' scared me. And 'It's all right, my boy,' she says. 'I shan't hurt him!' An' she laughed again an' ran on up."
"And you did nothing?"
"Well, what could I do, I like to know! But I grabbed at the switchboard and called up Mr. Ingham. 'Mr. Ingham,' I says, 'that lady's coming up anyhow.' An' he says, 'Damnation!' That's the last word I ever heard out o' him."
"'That lady!' Didn't you give him her name?"
"Why, I didn't know her name, sir!"
"Not know her name! Why, you know Miss Hope—you know her name?"
"Oh, yes, sir."
"Well, are you crazy, then? It was Miss Hope, was it not?"
"Why, no, you bet you it wasn't! It was another lady altogether!"