“Mercy, I’m glad I’m not on duty in the south wing,” said someone else, and all the eyes at the table immediately focussed on me.
“Well, whatever it is, I wish it would be settled,” announced Miss Ferguson vigorously. “I’m getting so nervous I drop everything I touch. And my neck is stiff from twisting it to look back over my shoulder.”
Melvina Smith cleared her throat and I left the table at once. I have nothing against Melvina, but if she had been in the south wing during the past week she would have got her fill of horrors.
With the gathering darkness the feeling of impending catastrophe that had hung over us all day intensified itself. By midnight I was as jumpy as a race horse, my heart leaping to my throat at every sound and my hands shaking so that I could scarcely turn off my alarm clock and adjust my cap.
The storm had grown steadily worse and by twelve o’clock was blowing a gale with thunder and lightning making the night hideous. The old building seemed to tremble at each onslaught, and every window casing rattled and every curtain flapped and the whole place seemed to quiver and shudder as if it were alive.
On the way down to the south wing, I don’t mind saying that I suffered from something very near to stage fright, at least there was a rock in the pit of my stomach and the backs of my knees felt shaky and not to be depended upon. I very nearly shrieked when I heard footsteps back of me on the stairs, but it was only Maida, going down to duty, and together we walked through those deserted, creaking halls.
I had not been on duty more than twenty minutes when I found a note pinned to the order blank and addressed “Miss Keate”! It was sealed, and across the paper was a single sentence splashed hurriedly:
When the red light shines above 18 answer it.
I wheeled to stare down the length of corridor toward that closed, inscrutable door at its far end. The corridor lost itself in the shadows and the door was itself indistinguishable, but it seemed to me that the faraway panes of glass in the south door caught green glints of light from the shade above my head.
“When the red light shines above 18 answer it.”