“Can’t you damned women keep still,” Stokes ground out between his teeth.
Rawson reentered. He had heard them as he came up the path and stopped on the threshold looking at Anne, waiting to see if she would speak. But she said nothing, standing by Bassett, her hand braced against a table, her glance on the floor. She knew Rawson was watching her and willed her form to an upright immobility, her face to a stony blankness. If she could hold herself this way, not move or speak, she could bear the tension. A touch, a word, and she felt that her body might break to pieces and her voice ascend in long-drawn screams to the skies.
The screen under its white covering was set in the place Shine had indicated, the projector put some distance back, facing it. To some of them these preparations had the hideous significance of those preceding an execution and all of them felt the deadly oppression of the approaching climax. The room was very still as if an enchantment lay on it. At intervals Mrs. Cornell drew her breath with a low moaning sound, Stokes’ hands clenched and unclenched on the chair-back and Williams looked at his watch. He began a guttural mutter of impatience and stopped as the door opened and Shine came in.
He came quickly, bringing an air of excitement to the already highly charged atmosphere. There was a bewildered agitation in his face, and his words were broken and uncertain as he answered Williams’ questions:
“Oh, yes, I got it—something—I can’t quite make out—got me sort of flustered hurrying so. You’ll have to stand away there, folks.” He made a waving gesture and they drew back, pushing against one another till they stood massed in the rear of the room. He turned to the projector, adjusting it, then held the negative out toward Williams. “We’ll probably lose this, Mr. Williams. Doing it so quickly I couldn’t fix it. It’ll likely melt with the heat in here, won’t last more than a few minutes. You don’t want to keep it, do you?”
“Go ahead. It’s only the picture—that’s all that concerns us.”
“All right—it’s your say-so. You’ll get it in a minute now and by gum, I want to see—” he stopped, his breath caught, his hands busy over the machine. “Now then, we’re ready. Some one please put out the lights.”
Miss Pinkney pressed the button and the room dropped into darkness. Through it the projector cast a golden shaft that rested on the screen in a bright circle. The reflection painted their faces with a spectral glow. Every face, eyes staring, lips dropped agape or pressed together in a taut line, watched the bright disk of gold.
“Now,” came Shine’s voice whisperingly.
A picture leaped into being on the screen. A door-frame backed by solid indistinguishable black, the edge of a door, and beyond it, the outlines melting into the darkness, the suggestion of a head and shoulders only the face showing clear, looking at them with wide questioning eyes—Sybil Saunders’ face.