He got no further. At that instant a piercing feminine shriek rose in some remote part of the house. Coming as it did at such a juncture, when all present were hanging in suspense upon the words as they fell from the foreman's lips, it produced much the same effect as might have followed the explosion of a bomb in the company's midst. Miss Fluette gasped, and her face went as white as ashes. Maillot and Fluette were both instantly upon their feet, startled and tense.
The scream was a thrilling, prolonged note of horror. For one electric second my blood seemed to chill in my veins. The cry swelled in a quavering crescendo, lingered with the persistence of terror, then abruptly ceased, like the cutting off of a shrieking steam-jet.
For one awful moment everybody sat or stood as if petrified. If a bomb had exploded it might have passed unnoticed. Then, with a wild, unnerving recollection of Genevieve, I rushed to the door.
"Don't let a soul stir from this room!" I hoarsely shouted to Dr. De Breen.
In the next instant I had plunged into the hall, brushed aside the stupefied policeman there, and was taking the stairs four at a time.
CHAPTER XVI
THE FACE IN THE ALCOVE
The first thing I noticed as I sped up the stairs was the absence of Stodger from his post in the upper hall, where I had last seen him. Only a few minutes previously I had peeped into the lower hall to satisfy myself that everything was right; at that time he was leaning on the balustrade, engaged in a desultory conversation with Officer Morrison, stationed below. But in a moment I understood.
The bath room door stood wide open, and on the floor lay Miss Cooper—lifeless, was my first horrified thought. Stodger, with the best of intensions and the least possible capacity for carrying them out, knelt helplessly beside her, under the delusion that he was rendering first aid.