For two eternal seconds she was edging stealthily down toward the outer door; then, in no time at all, found herself on the landing and—confronted by a fresh complication, one unforeseen: how to leave the house without being observed, stopped, and perhaps detained until too late? There would be men at the door, beyond doubt; possibly police, stationed there to arrest all persons attempting to leave….
No time for weighing chances. The choice of two alternatives lay before her: either to return to the alcove or to seek safety in the darkness of the upper floors—untenanted, as she had been at pains to determine. The latter seemed by far the better, the less dangerous, course to pursue. And at once she took it.
There was no light on the first-floor landing—it having presumably been extinguished by the janitor early in the evening. Only a feeble twilight obtained there, in part a reflected glow from the entrance hall, partly thin and diffused rays escaping from Maitland's study. So it was that the first few steps upward took the girl into darkness so close and unrelieved as to seem almost palpable.
At the turn of the staircase she paused, holding the rail and resting for an instant, the while she listened, ere ascending at a more sedate pace to a haven of safety more complete in that it would be more remote from the battle-ground below.
And, resting so, was suddenly chilled through and through with fear, sheer childish dread of the intangible and unknown terrors that lurked in the blackness above her. It was as if, rendered supersensitive by strain and excitement, the quivering filaments of her subconsciousness, like spiritual tentacles feeling ahead of her, had encountered and recoiled from a shape of evil, a specter of horror obscene and malign, crouching, ready to spring, there, in the shadow of night. . . .
And her breath was smothered in her throat and her heart smote so madly against the frail walls of its cage that they seemed like to burst, while she stood transfixed, frozen in inaction, limbs stiffening, roots of her hair stirring, fingers gripping the banister rail until they pained her; and with eyes that stared wide into the black heart of nothingness, until the night seemed pricked with evanescent periods of dim fire, peopled with monstrous and terrible shadows closing about her. . . .
Yet—it was absurd! She must not yield to such puerile superstitions.
There was nothing there. . . .
There was something there . . . something that like an incarnation of hatred was stalking her. . . .
If only she dared scream! If only she dared turn and fly, back to the comfort of light and human company!…