The house was as still as death, for it was after ten o’clock now, and everybody, even Miss Walters, seemed to be in bed.
Billie almost ran up the second and third flights, stumbling over her white robe and shielding the flickering candle with her hand for fear it would go out.
When she reached the fourth floor, which was really the attic, she went more slowly, for the place was dark and “spooky”—so she said—and the noise of her footsteps frightened her. The tiny light of her candle seemed to make the shadowy corners of the place all the more startlingly black.
Once she thought she heard a noise and stopped short, her heart beating suffocatingly in her throat. But it was only the wind sighing drearily around the place, and she went on again, more slowly now, starting at every real or imaginary sound.
The stairway that led to the third tower was at the very end of the long attic, and as she came near to it Billie’s courage almost failed her. It seemed to her that something sinister and terrible was closing in around her, and she pressed her hand against her mouth to keep from screaming.
She could see the dim outline of the stairway right before her, but she was afraid to go forward—and she dared not go back.
What would the girls say if she went back to them and confessed that she had been too cowardly to stand the test? She would be disgraced forever in the eyes of her chums, her reputation for daring and bravery would be gone, she might even be asked to resign from the Ghost Club.
For a long minute she stood there, fighting the desire to rush back to friends and human companionship. Then, with a sharp intake of breath, she forced herself to approach the stairs.
With every step she stopped and listened, glancing about her fearfully. But nothing save the sound of her own rapid breathing broke the musty, heavy silence of the place.
“I must go on, I must go on!” she kept telling herself over and over again. “To the very top of the tower—to the top of the tower——”