She was taking down the bar. He was sure of it. But why was she so long about it? And it seemed to him that in the simple process she made an unnecessary amount of noise. And she kept talking, rapidly now, her voice raised, her utterances almost incoherent as though she labored under some tremendous excitement:
“Don’t you see I am opening the door? But you must step back, down the steps. I’ll hear you going. I am afraid. You might reach out and seize me. Just a minute now, only a minute. I don’t hear you though. You must go down the steps. Then I will come out; then you can come in. I am hurrying—hurrying as fast as I can.”
It only whetted his suspicion. What was going on just ten feet from him, beyond that wall? There was no loophole through which an out-thrust gun barrel could menace him, he had seen to that. And, if a gun was thrust out as the door opened, he could strike first; he was ready. But if he went back down the steps—
Suddenly he knew. He heard a little scraping sound which, low as it was, rose above the sound of Paula’s young voice. It was at that other door at the back. Some one was there, opening it cautiously. The forest came down close to the house at the back.
He leaped down the steps and ran around the side of the house, of no mind to have them give him the slip this way.
“Hurry!” Paula had heard him, had guessed his purpose as he theirs, and was screaming, “Hurry! He is coming!”
The rear door, little used perhaps, had caught. But as Sheldon raced around the corner of the cabin the door was flung violently open and an astonishingly, wildly uncouth figure shot out, making strange, horrible sounds in his throat as he ran.
It was a man, so tall and gaunt that it seemed rather the caricature of a man. Clad in shirt and trousers, the flying feet were bare. The head was bare, and from it the hair, long and snow white, floated out behind him. The beard, long and unkempt, was as white as the hair of his head.
His eyes—Sheldon saw them looking for one brief moment straight into his own—were the burning, brilliant eyes of a madman. Had there been doubt in the case of the girl there was room for no doubt here. The man was only too clearly a maniac.
Just the one look into the terrible eyes was given to Sheldon. The man ran as Paula had run this morning, but with a greater, more frantic speed. Crying out strange, broken fragments of words he dashed into the trees. And Sheldon stopped.