I crept to the library and listened. Then I tiptoed back and closed the door of the inner room. I felt more secure with even a half-inch panel between me and what that inner room held.
Then I listened. I began to hear the padded tread of feet. Then came the sound of another opened door, and then the snap of a light-switch. There was nothing secret about the new invasion. I knew, as I shrank back behind one of the high-backed library chairs, that the front of the house was already illuminated.
Then came the sound of a calling voice, apparently from the head of the stairs. It was a cautious and carefully modulated voice; I took it for that of a young man of about twenty.
"Is that you, Caddy?"
Then came a silence.
"I say, is that you, Orrie?" was demanded in a somewhat somnolent stage-whisper. There was something strangely reassuring in that commonplace boyish voice. Anthony Gubtill, I knew, had no immediate family. I vaguely recalled, however, some talk of a Canadian nephew and niece who had at times visited him.
"Sh—s—sh!" said a woman's voice from the lower hall, "Don't wake Uncle Anthony."
It must have been a young woman. Her voice sounded pensive, like that of a girl who might be coming home tired from a dance at Sherry's. Yet, knowing what I did, its girlish weariness took on a pathos indescribably poignant.
"It's an awful hour, isn't it?" asked a second man's voice from the lower hall. There were sounds that seemed to imply that wraps were being removed.
"Almost four," came the answer from above. "Had a good time, Caddy?"