I heard the sound die away. The silence dropped down again to find me standing wholly motionless before the window, one hand resting on the sill, seemingly with all power of action gone. It was a shattering blow to spirit and hope that there was no further sound from that deathly still lagoon. Further calls would indicate that the outcome of the affair was still in doubt, that there was still use to hope and struggle. But there was a sense of dreadful finality in that unbroken silence. The drama that had raged on that craggy shore was already closed and done.
The sound had not been only a cry for help. It had been charged full of the knowledge of impending death.
Motion came back to my body; and I sprang to the door. The interlude of inactivity couldn’t have been more than a second in duration. That still, upper corridor was coming to life. Some one flashed on a light at the end of the hall, and the door of the room just opposite mine flew open. Van Hope, also in dressing-gown and slippers, stood on the threshold.
He saw me, and pushed through into the hall. His face had an almost incredible pallor in the soft light. In a moment his strong hand had seized my arm.
“Good God, I didn’t dream that, did I?” he cried. “I was dozing—you heard it, didn’t you——”
“Of course I heard——”
“Some one screamed for help! I heard the word plain. Good Lord, it’s last night’s work done over——”
What he said thereafter I didn’t hear. I was running down the hall toward the stairway, and at the head of the stairs I almost collided with Major Dell, just emerging from his room. He had evidently gone to bed, and he had just had time to jerk on his trousers over his pajamas and slip on a pair of romeos. The light was brighter here, and I got a clear picture of his face.
It is a curious thing what details imprint themselves ineffaceably on the memory in a moment of crisis. Perhaps—as in the world of beasts—all the senses are incalculably sharpened, the thought processes are clean-cut and infallible, and images have a clarity unequalled at any other time. I got the idea that Dell had been terribly moved by that scream in the darkness. His emotion had seemingly been so violent that it gave the impression of no emotion. His face looked blank as a sheet of white paper.
I rushed by him, and I heard him and Van Hope descending the stairs just behind me. The hall was still lighted, but long shadows lay across the broad veranda. Fargo, his book still in his hand, stood just outside the door.