Alone in the room, she undressed quickly, hanging her clothing on a chair, for she could not bring herself to use that big, old closet, filled with Miss Grant’s things. She was very tired, and, thankful that the night was so much cooler than the preceding one, she blew out the lamp and crawled into bed.
The utter blackness of the room was rather appalling, even to a courageous girl like Mary Louise. Accustomed as she was to the street lights of Riverside, the darkness was thick and strange, for the denseness of the trees about Dark Cedars shut out even the sky, with its stars, from the windows. But Mary Louise closed her eyes immediately, resolved not to let anything so trivial bother her.
The girls in the attic had quieted down; the house was in absolute silence. Mary Louise, too, lay very still. Listening.... She almost believed that she heard somebody breathing!
“But that’s absurd!” she reprimanded herself sharply. “It couldn’t be a ghost, as Hannah insists, for ghosts don’t breathe. And it couldn’t be a robber trying to get into the house, or Silky would be barking. That dog has keen ears.”
She turned over and put the thought out of her mind by recalling the high lights of the picnic, and soon dozed off. But she knew that she had not been asleep long when she was suddenly awakened by the low, squeaking creak of a door.
Thinking it was probably Elsie, restless after too much picnic food, Mary Louise opened her eyes and peered about in the darkness. Now she heard that breathing distinctly—and something big and dark seemed to be moving towards her, something blacker than the darkness of the room. No face was visible to her until the figure bent over close to her in the bed. Then she beheld two gleaming eyes!
She opened her lips to scream, but at the same instant a thin hand was clapped over her mouth, making utterance impossible. Both her hands were caught and held in an iron grip, and a bag was pulled over her head and tied so tightly under her chin that she believed she would choke.
Mary Louise could see nothing now, but she felt a rope being twisted around her body, tying her arms to her sides. In another second she was lifted bodily and tossed roughly into Miss Grant’s closet.... The key was turned in the lock.
In wild desperation Mary Louise tried to shout, but the thickness and tightness of the bag over her head muffled the sound, and the closet walls closed it in. The girls in the attic would never hear her, for they were at the back of the house, and probably sleeping soundly. So she abandoned the effort, and became quiet, twisting her hands about under the rope, and listening to the sounds from the room.
Whoever, whatever it was that had attacked her was moving about stealthily, making a queer noise that sounded like the tearing of a garment. For a brief moment the thought of Corinne Pearson jumped into her mind. Had the girl come here to get revenge on Mary Louise for disclosing her guilt, and was she tearing her clothes to pieces?