“This is Miss Keate,” I said in a low voice, hoping that the sound of it would not carry past those closed doors. “I am very anxious to see you.”
He must have caught the urgency in my voice.
“Shall I come right out?”
“Yes. At once.”
“Very well. In fifteen minutes.”
The receiver clicked, I hung up my own softly, straightened my cap and walked back to the south wing. Maida was not to be seen. I sat down at the desk and found that in my haste to get to the telephone I had upset the red ink I was in the act of using. It was meandering gayly across the desk, reddening everything it touched, and I seized some trash out of the waste basket for a blotter. It was while I was mopping up the ink that all at once, without even a warning flicker, the light above the desk went out, leaving me in total darkness. It was so unexpected that I gasped and cried out.
Then I turned as if to look down the corridor, but nothing but a close black curtain met my eyes. There was not a gleam of light. Every signal light was gone; there was not even a glimmer of light from under the doors of kitchen or drug room or linen closet. I was suspended in a breathless black void.
And down that black emptiness, only five nights ago, two men had been violently done to death!
My breath began to come in painful, rasping gasps. I must do something. I must find Maida. I must get a lamp. Must make my way to the basement switch-box and replace a burned-out fuse—or find what had caused the trouble.
Or was it an accident? Had a fuse actually gone? Could it be that the lights had purposely been disconnected?