Half way down he stopped abruptly, stood for a moment listening, then hastened on, dropping his cigarette over the banister. He did not see where it fell. He did not care. His only aim was to get out—to get away. He had heard a sound as he came down the stairs that turned his fear to terror—it was the distant grumble of an automobile horn. He locked the door and sped down the bramble-walled path to the runabout. He had left it in the middle of the road, so that as he leaped in and started again it left no swerve of its wheel ruts toward the old Grigsby house. It was five miles to the nearest town, but Hicks made it in twenty minutes, and without hearing again the threatening automobile horn. The first thing he did was to telephone to Owen.
For half an hour Owen had been locked in the library of the Marvin house. The events of the early afternoon, the failure of his best-laid plans, the suspense of waiting the result of Hicks's final move, had made him a nervous wreck. He had lighted a dozen cigars and thrown them away. As many times he had picked up the telephone only to set it down again without calling a number. At last he had taken out the thin tube of light pills, had drawn the shades, switched on the electric lights, and sat down to wait for the half-peace that morphine brought to his conscience.
As he leaned back in his chair, awaiting the effect of the drug, the mummy in its case stood in front of him. He closed his eyes in a pleasant stupor. He opened them in terror. For a moment his hands were outstretched in front of him, with claw-like fingers clutching at thin air; then he covered his eyes with them to shut from view the mummy, which stood over him, its upraised hand pointing to him the finger of accusation; its woman's eyes blazing with anger; its cold lips speaking a message that chilled his blood.
The telephone bell jangled again and again before Owen found courage to open his eyes. When he did so he clutched at the instrument, eager for the sound of a human voice.
"Hello! . . . Yes, this is Owen . . ." He glanced apprehensively over his shoulder at the mummy. Its hand was lowered and it stood motionless as before. He turned excitedly back to the telephone. "It's YOU! Hicks? . . . What news? . . . . She's at Grigsby's? What do you mean? Somebody after you? . . . Not him? . . . I give you my word there hadn't been anything on that road for two months. . . . What have you done? What! Nothing? You should have called the police from Jersey. . . . All gone to pieces? . . . Stay over there, I'll join you tonight. Yes, go back to the house and watch. . . . What? . . . All right."
Pauline, left alone, began to regain her courage. After a few moments she was able to stand up and move slowly about her prison room. She tried the door and the window shutters mechanically. She searched the room for something that might be used to batter down the door. There was nothing. She sat on the cot and tried to think.
She sprang up again, trembling. The dry, choking smell of smoke had reached her. Hicks's lighted cigarette had fallen among the wisps of old wall paper in the hall.
She ran to the door. Baffled, piteous, alone, she turned—and looked on death.
For through the cracks in the floor flashed now the golden daggers of flame in sheaths of stifling smoke. She cowered, choking, by the outer wall of the room.
The flame daggers grew into scimitars. The inner wall caught fire.
There was no outlet for the suffocating smoke.