Vera Cummings gave a minute description of her.
“Are you sure, Stella, we don’t know anyone like her?” Mrs. Bell said quietly. “That description seems to tally exactly with someone we once knew. Someone who used to frequent this place. Can she have returned, do you think?”
“I don’t know who you mean,” Stella Dean said crossly. “I tell you, I’ve seen no one.”
The next morning they all three arrived simultaneously, and went up together in the elevator. On nearing the office, the sound of a typewriter was heard. They looked at one another in open-mouthed astonishment.
“It must be one of the other clerks in the building,” Vera Cummings said. “She’s mistaken our room for hers. She’s an early bird, anyway, for I reckon there’s no one else arrived yet.”
“But the door’s locked,” Mrs. Bell whispered. “See, here’s the key!” And she took it out of her pocket as she spoke.
“Well, there’s no mistaking the sound, is there?” Vera Cummings laughed. “Click, click, click—that’s a typewriter, sure enough. Someone must have got in through the window. My, Stella, how white you are!”
Mrs. Bell glanced sharply at Stella Dean—there was not an atom of colour in her cheeks, and the pupils of her eyes were dilating with terror.
Mrs. Bell then put the key in the lock and opened the door. The typewriter was working away furiously, but there was no one at it, the room was absolutely empty. It stopped the moment Mrs. Bell crossed the threshold.
That afternoon Stella Dean complained of a headache and went home early. She was in bed for several weeks, and during her absence from the office the strange phenomena there entirely ceased. The morning she returned, Pete Simpkins met her and Vera Cummings just outside the office building. He was bubbling over with excitement.