“Shh, don’t be cross. This has been a charming evening. I won’t have it spoiled.”
“Are you quite well? Your colour is so high, and your eyes are unnaturally bright.”
“Don’t suggest that I am getting anything,” she cried, in mock terror. “Small-pox? How dreadful! That is our little recreation, you know. When a San Franciscan has nothing else to do he goes off to the pest-house and has small-pox. But come, come.”
He followed her into the room at the end of the corridor, and she lit a taper and conducted him up a steep flight of stairs which was little more than a ladder. At the top was a narrow door. It yielded to the knob, and Thorpe found himself in what was evidently the attic of the Mission.
“I was up here a month or two ago with the girls,” said Nina. Her voice shook slightly. “I know there are candles somewhere—there were, at least. Stand where you are until I look.”
She flitted about with the taper, a ghostly figure in the black mass of shadows; and in a few moments had thrust a half-dozen candles into the necks of empty bottles. These she lit and ordered Thorpe to range at intervals about the room. He saw that he was in a long low garret, at one end of which was a pile of boxes, at the other a heap of carpeting.
To the latter Nina pointed with her lighted taper. “Sit down there,” she said, and disappeared behind the boxes.
Thorpe did as he was bidden. His hands shook a little as he adjusted the carpet to his comfort. The windows were closed. A tree scraped against the pane, jogged by the angry wind. The candles shed a fitful light, their flames bending between several draughts. The floor was thick with dust. Rafters yawned overhead, black and festooned with cobwebs. It was an uncanny place, and the sudden apparition of a large and whiskered rat scuttling across the floor in terrified anger at having his night’s rest disturbed was not its most enlivening feature.
“Dudley!” said Nina, sharply.