The window opened noiselessly enough, and I stepped within and set my little satchel full of necessary tools upon the floor. But the damp weather had swelled the woodwork, and as I closed the window again, though I pushed it ever so gently, it gave forth a noise something between a grunt and a squeak.
And as pat as the report of a pistol to the pressure of the trigger came the answer—a sound of a quickly-caught breath from the warm dimness of the room. I made no motion; though the blood drummed desperately through my brain and my scalp tingled with apprehension and excitement.
For ten, for twenty, for thirty seconds I stood so; and then the silence was broken by the unmistakable rustle of a woman's skirts. The sound came softly towards me through the darkness. It was my turn to let loose my held breath with a gasp, and in another moment I should have been through the window and running for it; when a woman's whisper halted me.
“Is that you, Charles? And why did you not rap upon the shutter?”
So some one called Charles was expected? Then, ticked off my thoughts almost automatically, the lady somewhere near me in the dark might have her own reasons for not caring to alarm the house just then! The thought steadied me to action.
“Shh,” I whispered, feeling behind me for the window, and gradually opening it again. “S-h-h! No, it is not Charles”—and I put one foot backward across the sill. “It is not Charles, but Charles has sent me to say——”
Click!—went something by the window, and the room was flooded with sudden brilliance from a dozen electric globes. And again, click!—and I looked with blinking eyes at the muzzle of a cocked pistol held by the most beautiful, the most be-jeweled, the most determined-looking young woman it has ever been my lot to meet.
“Who are you?” she asked in a voice that was at once hoarse and sweet. “Who are you? And what do you want? And where is Charles?”
As I stood there dripping moisture upon the oiled floor, with my hands in the air—they had gone up quite involuntarily—I must have been the very picture of idiocy and discomfiture. I wondered if Charles, whoever the devil Charles might be, was always welcomed with a cocked pistol. Probably not; but, I wondered, how did she happen to have a pistol with her? I wondered why neck, breast, hair, arms, and hands should be ablaze with the diamonds that accentuated her lithe and vivid loveliness. I wondered why, now that she saw I was not Charles, she did not alarm the house. I wondered everything; but nothing to the point. And as I stood wondering she repeated:
“Who are you? And what do you want?”