They stood considering a minute. All at once a dull metallic clang echoed heavily through the crypt. Despite herself, the girl shuddered. The eerie depths, the gloom, the skeletons had all conspired to shake her nerves.
“What's that?” she whispered, gripping Allan by the arm.
“That? Oh--nothing! Now how the deuce are we going to get at these--”
“It was something, Allan! But what?”
He grew suddenly silent.
“By Jove--it sounded like--the door--”
“The door? Oh, Allan, quick!”
A sudden, irresistible fear fingered at the strings of the man's heart. At the back of his neck he felt the hair begin to lift. Then he smiled by very strength of will.
“Don't be absurd, Beatrice,” he managed to say. “It couldn't be, of course. There's no one here. It--”
But already she was out of the alcove. With the torch held high in air, she stood there peering with wide eyes down the long blackness of the crypt, striving to pierce the dark.