‘You stay here, Frances,’ I whispered, the beating of my heart making the words uneven, ‘while I go down and make a search. Lock yourself in, girl. Nothing can happen to you. It was downstairs, you said?’
‘Underneath,’ she answered faintly, pointing through the floor.
She moved suddenly between me and the door.
‘Listen! Hark!’ she said, the eyes in her face quite fixed; ‘it’s coming again,’ and she turned her head to catch the slightest sound. I stood there watching her, and while I watched her, shook. But nothing stirred. From the halls below rose only the whirr and quiet ticking of the numerous clocks. The blind by the open window behind us flapped out a little into the room as the draught caught it.
‘I’ll come with you, Bill—to the next floor,’ she broke the silence. ‘Then I’ll stay with Mabel—till you come up again.’ The blind sank down with a long sigh as she said it.
The question jumped to my lips before I could repress it:
‘Mabel is awake. She heard it too?’
I hardly know why horror caught me at her answer. All was so vague and terrible as we stood there playing the great game of this sinister house where nothing ever happened.
‘We met in the passage. She was on her way to me.’
What shook in me, shook inwardly. Frances, I mean, did not see it. I had the feeling just then that the Noise was upon us, that any second it would boom and roar about our ears. But the deep silence held. I only heard my sister’s little whisper coming across the room in answer to my question: