"Thank heavens I came downstairs when I did! That must have been what frightened him off. The doctor found that, except for bruises, there weren't any other injuries. Even the doctor was shocked at those bruises, though. He said he had never seen any quite like them.
"The police think that after the man got in the house he called Central and asked them to ring this phone—pretending he thought the bell was out of order or something—in order to lure someone downstairs. They were puzzled as to how he got inside, though, for all the windows and doors were shut fast. Probably I forgot to lock the front door when we went to bed—one of my pieces of unforgivable carelessness!
"The police think that he was a vicious burglar, but I believe he must have been a madman besides. Because there was a silver plate on the floor, and two of our silver forks jammed together strangely, and other odds and ends. And he must have been playing the phonograph in the sewing room, because it was open and the turntable was going and on the floor was one of Evelyn's speech records, smashed to bits."
Yes, the picture was all very clear now. What Norman had forgotten to take into consideration was the ever-present possibility of reaction, if magic miscarried—"like the kick of a gun," or, better, like the breech of a gun blowing up. When he had severed the wire at Bayport, the thwarted Agency of Death had instantly struck back at the sender. And afterward Evelyn Sawtelle had invented the obvious story.
One thing bothered him. If the police should trace that phone call in an effort to prove their own theory, they would find it had been placed by Norman Saylor, at Bayport. But at the worst that would only convict him of a peculiar lie. For the present he would say nothing about it.
"It's all my fault," Sawtelle was repeating mournfully. Norman remembered that Sawtelle always assumed that he was guilty whenever anything hurt or merely upset Evelyn. "I should have awakened! I should have been the one to go down to the phone. When I think of that delicate creature feeling her way through the dark, and lurking just ahead of her that—Oh, and the department! I tell you I'm going out of my mind. Poor Evelyn has been in such a pitifully frightened state ever since, you wouldn't believe it!"
"Good," thought Norman. "If she's really frightened, she may be easier to deal with." The idea of pity never occurred to him. Moreover, if what he had been told about the lodgment of captive souls were true, then Tansy's soul had suffered equally with that of Evelyn Sawtelle here in this very house on Sunday night.
"I tell you, I haven't slept a wink," Sawtelle was saying. "If Mrs. Gunnison hadn't been kind enough to spend a couple of hours with her yesterday morning, I don't know how I'd have managed. Even then she was too frightened to let me stir.... My God!... Evelyn!"
But it was really impossible to identify the agonized scream, except that it had come from the upper part of the house. Crying out, "I knew I heard footsteps! He's come back!" Sawtelle ran full tilt out of the study. Norman was just behind him, suddenly conscious of a very different fear. It was confirmed by a glance through the living-room window at his empty car.