When Patsy came to herself she was still in the picture gallery. She was leaning against Miss Martha, who was engaged in holding smelling salts to her niece’s nose. To her right clustered Bee, Mabel and Eleanor, anxious, horror-filled faces fixed upon her. Back of them stood Emily, her black eyes rolling, her chocolate-colored features seeming almost pale in the brighter light the lamps now gave.
As Patsy’s gray eyes roved dully from one face to another, she became again alive to sounds which had assailed her ears at the moment when consciousness had briefly fled. She was still hearing those demoniac shrieks, mingled with savage snarls. Now there was something vaguely familiar about them. But what? Patsy could not think.
“What—is it?” she stammered. “Where—is—it?”
She had begun to realize that the horror she glimpsed in her companions’ faces had to do with those same shrieks rather than her own momentary swoon.
“It’s behind this picture.”
It was her father’s voice that grimly answered her. He stood at one side of the tarnished gilt frame, examining a rope. The rope appeared to spring from halfway down the frame, between the canvas and the frame itself. It ended in loose coils, which lay upon the floor of the gallery.
Patsy stared at the picture, from behind which rose the tumult of horrid sound. For an instant she listened intently.
“Why—why—I know who it is! It’s old Rosita. I’m sure that’s her voice.”
“So the girls here think,” replied her father. “Bee tells me you lassoed her.”