Bram gave a glance round the room, and then opened the door through which he and the others had just come to examine the hall.
“What’s the matter?” asked Mr. Cornthwaite sharply. He had bidden the doctor a hasty good-bye, afraid of the condolences which he saw were on the tip of his tongue.
Bram, with a candle in his hand, was peering into the dark corners.
“I was just thinking, sir, that perhaps Meg Tyzack had got in while we were talking in the drawing-room,” said he. “Mr. Biron made me bolt the doors to keep her from getting in. He seemed to be afraid she would follow him into the house.”
The words were hardly uttered, when from the floor above there came a piercing scream, a woman’s scream.
“Claire!” shouted Bram, springing on the stairs.
But before he could mount half a dozen steps a wild figure came out of Claire’s room, and rushed to the head of the staircase in answer to his call. But it was not Claire. It was, as Bram had feared, Meg Tyzack, recognizable only by her deep voice, by her loud, hoarse laugh, for the figure itself looked scarcely human.
Standing at the top of the stairs, with her arms outstretched as if to prevent any one’s passing her on the way up, the gaunt creature seemed to be of gigantic height, and looked, with her loose, disordered hair and the rags which hung down from her arms instead of sleeves, like a witch in the throes of prophecy.
“Stand back! Stand back! Leave her alone!” she cried furiously, as Bram rushed up the stairs, and struggled to get past her. She flung her arms round him, laughing discordantly, and clinging so tightly that without hurting her he would have found it impossible to disengage himself.
“What has she done? What has she done?” asked Mr. Cornthwaite in a loud, hard, angry voice as he came to Bram’s assistance.