The girl paused in awed amazement; there was something detached and remote about the strange apparition, like a worshipper at some mysterious shrine. Then, slowly the figure turned and Betty slipped quickly behind the shelter of the grand piano's upraised top, a gasp of almost superstitious fear escaped her lips.
The strange figure was that of Mrs. Atterbury and her eyes were fixed in a glassy unseeing stare. Rigidly as if hypnotized, she moved toward the shrinking girl and Betty grasped the truth in a flash of mingled horror and relief. The woman was walking in her sleep.
CHAPTER XV.
The Portrait of Beethoven.
Betty held her breath as the tall figure in flowing white threaded its way unerringly among the grouped furniture and passing her so closely that she might have stretched forth her hand and touched it, glided through the doorway and up the stairs. The light she carried glimmered with diminishing radiance until it was suddenly extinguished and there came the echo of a softly-closing door.
The girl waited motionless, her very heartbeats stilled for an interminable length of time, but the house remained wrapped in utter darkness and no sound disturbed the eerie silence.
At last, convinced that the somnambulist had settled once more to rest and that no eye but her own had witnessed the weird visitation, Betty ventured from her hiding place, and groping her way to the smokers' stand, procured a match. Its flame sputtered angrily in her fingers as she applied it to her candle and she glanced about her in fresh terror lest its stroke had been heard, but the shadows were empty.
With faltering steps she approached the portrait and stood for long gazing into the benign eyes which seemed to meet hers with an almost living response. What was there about the huge picture which had so impressed itself upon her employer's unquiet mind that her subconscious instinct drew her to it? Surely not the subject alone, for Mrs. Atterbury had never evinced the slightest interest in it in the girl's presence.
Betty stepped back a few paces and regarded the portrait critically. Including the massive gold frame which surrounded it, the space it occupied was approximately five feet by eight or ten, and it had been hung with no consideration of the lighting effect, either from window or chandelier. The spacing, too, was bad, and its position was far too low upon the wall.
Had there been some special design in placing it there? Was it merely for ornamental purposes, or did it serve as a screen for something behind? Betty thought of the bookcase in the library which swung out, masking the safe that had been built into the wall; could it be that within a few paces of her another and more secret repository was concealed?