Mary Louise realized how early she had come; she had quite disturbed the usual order of things. "No, thank you," she said. "I'll just wait here in the hall."
The woman waddled away again and disappeared through a back door which wheezed shut with a sort of sucking noise, and the hall was left in hushed silence. Mary Louise gazed up at the ceiling, then at the stairway reaching far back and into the depths of upstairs hall. Even in the soft light the place looked like a barn. It seemed to be watching her sullenly as a small child watches an intruder. Odd little crackings sounded in far corners, and a whispering, starting somewhere in that upstairs hall, came slinking down the wainscoting, across the hall carpet, and out beneath the front door. She wondered what might be going on back in those silent, unexplored depths.
Then the door opened again and Mrs. Mosby came swishing forth, like an echo of the whisper that had preceded her. She was wearing the same ruching, the same bangles, the same everything—minus the bonnet with the veil—that she had worn that previous afternoon. There was an opaque flatness in her eyes.
Mary Louise rose to her feet. She was embarrassed as she met the older woman's quiet gaze, but she quickly threw off the feeling.
"I just heard some indefinite but disturbing news about an accident last night," she said anxiously.
Mrs. Mosby smiled a ghostly little smile and inclined her head. "We had quite a time," she admitted. "Won't you sit down? Or won't you come in the parlour?"
"No. I've not long to stay. I—I felt so worried. I wanted to come first thing and find out, see if there was anything I could do." They sat down at opposite ends of the horsehair sofa, each reflectively watching the other.
Mrs. Mosby shook her head. "He's getting on as nicely as could be expected. Fortunately, Dr. Withers was got hold of right away, last night." She was gazing dreamily at Mary Louise as though the latter were a creature of another world come vaguely intruding.
There was a curious atmosphere of restraint. Mary Louise sat waiting for the other woman to speak, her hands in her lap, her fingers slowly weaving in and out. After a momentary silence she asked in a politely casual tone, "What really did happen, Mrs. Mosby? Was he much hurt?"
Mrs. Mosby continued staring for an instant before she replied: "It really was the strangest thing. You know I did not even know that Joseph was in this part of the country. And at ten o'clock last night they came carrying him in. Of course, I was terribly excited and upset, and I did not find out the particulars exactly." She paused and took a delicate little shuddering breath. "You see, Mr. Burrus' warehouse—the one down by the creek, you know? Well, something happened—the bank on which it stood caved in, in some way, and the rear wall collapsed, and from all I can understand there was quite a wreck, quite a lot of damage, for he had it crammed full of winter goods." She paused and looked intently at Mary Louise with eyes that were visualizing the events of the night before. "Well, to continue. It seems that someone with a lantern, investigating the place around the back, ran across poor Joseph lying in the creek in the water, with one leg doubled up under him. He told the man he had fallen off the bridge. That was all he said. Just what he could have been doing there at such a time I cannot imagine. It seems that he had been working with a road-construction company about three miles out on the road to Guests. I found that out from a perfect stranger." She paused again and the line of her mouth took on a grimmer straightness. "One of the men, who brought him in—a great rough boor he was—had the audacity to suggest that Joseph was around there seeing what he could pick up. I silenced him quickly enough. But can you imagine what brought him to such a place at such a time?"