I returned to the warm light of the drawing-room and quietly relocked the door. Then out into the hall, where I stood for a minute listening. Not a single sound could I hear from the landing above. My childish fears began to crowd round me again, and the cat, which was still on my shoulder, must have caught the feeling from me, for I felt his neck suddenly stiffen, as we gazed together up the darkened stairs. Then he jumped from my shoulder and disappeared. I switched on the landing light, and treading as quietly as I could, I crept up-stairs.
Chapter XI.
On the Landing at Midnight
With quiet stealthy tread on the heavy carpet I attained a position half-way up the flight of stairs. Not a sound had I made. Not a board had creaked. No movement or noise was anywhere in all the quiet house. Then with a quick catch in my breath I halted, suddenly motionless, my fears redoubled.
There just above me, stuck up above the switch and shining white in the light from the landing, was a square piece of paper similar to the one I had found in the same position only the night before when I came up-stairs to bed.
I fancy, that, somehow or other, my own stealthy movements had engendered in me a condition, keyed up and ready tuned to vibrate in response to any sudden nervous shock, for, uncontrolled, my heart went pounding and a sickening chill went shuddering down my back. To steady myself again I had to grasp the hand-rail.
Last night just such another piece of paper to which I had made my unfortunate and imbecile addition—but Stella dead when the morning came. No possible connection between the two? How could there be when, innocent, I myself had committed the more pertinent part of the folly? And now again to-night another piece of paper standing out clear and white against the landing wall. What did it all mean? What could it mean? Was some fresh disaster lying hidden undiscovered just ahead? Or was it nothing but another stupid joke? But, in God’s name, I asked myself, who, either sane or sober, would perpetrate such a joke, or any joke, so soon after Stella’s death and the day’s events. And if not a joke, then——?
Full of apprehension, I mounted the remaining stairs.
It was a plain post-card, I found, with the address, “Dalehouse, Merchester,” printed neatly in the top right-hand corner. I had observed similar cards standing in a case on the top of the doctor’s desk. Across the middle of it had been pasted the words:
dark DEEDS are Done in Dalehouse at Night.
Just for a brief moment I did not quite grasp the reason for the irregular appearance of the message, but I soon tumbled to it, that the sentence had been built up by cutting out odd words and letters from a newspaper, and then pasting them on to the card. A faint pencil line had been ruled to keep the wording level. A neat and careful hand had been at work.