“If you would only tell me, Mrs. Brane,” I began earnestly,—“if you would only tell me something, about this fortune of yours, I feel that I might be able to help you. Mrs. Brane, does any one know? Mr. Dabney, for instance?”
“No,” she murmured. “I have never told any one; I ought not to tell you.—Oh, Mary, is that you? How you made me jump! I suppose it's bedtime.”
“Yes'm,” said Mary, “and past bedtime. Don't you want to get strong and well, Mrs. Brane?”
She laughed and stood up obediently, gave me a look that said “Hush,” and followed Mary out. I took up a book and began to read.
After an hour or two, oppressed by the dead stillness of the house, I went upstairs to my own room.
But I did not undress. The most overwhelming desire possessed me suddenly to go down to the bookroom and to discover, if I could, the secret of the bookcase. There is no doubt about it, there is the blood of adventurers in my veins. Danger is a real temptation to me, danger and the devious way. I would rather, I believe, be playing with peril than not.
The house was very silent. I was alone in the old wing. My nerves had been badly shaken only that afternoon, but I was keen for adventure. Curiosity was far stronger than my fears. I took off my shoes and opened the door. A faint light shone at the far end of the passage, the night light that Mrs. Brane had been burning there since Robbie's death. I walked along the hallway to the stairs. I had never realized before how noiseless one may be in stocking feet, nor how noisy an old floor is of itself under the quietest step. Boards snapped under me like pistol shots. But no one in the sleeping house seemed the wiser for my stealthy passing. I got down the stairs and found my way into the bookroom, saw that the shutters were all tightly fastened and the shades drawn down. Then I lighted the gas-jet near the Russian collection and knelt before it on the floor.
I began quietly to take out the books, as I had seen the Baron take them. I had removed perhaps half a dozen from the middle shelf when the strangest feeling made me look around.
The door of the bookroom was open and I had left it shut. I rose to my feet. At the same instant something just outside the threshold of the door seemed to rise to its feet. I looked at it. It was myself.
There is no way of describing the horror of such a sight.