I met Tish on the stairs after she had seen him off. There was a strange look on her face, I remembered later; but after she had settled Emmie for the night she took up her knitting quietly enough. She always contributes a number of knitted pairs of bedroom slippers to the Old Ladies’ Home at Christmas.
Aggie and I retired early, taking Emmie’s bell with us at Tish’s orders, so she could not disturb us during the night, and were soon fast asleep.
But judge of our horror when, at two o’clock or thereabouts, we heard a dreadful shriek from Emmie’s room, followed by a strange, rushing sound. As soon as I could move I got out of bed and turned on the lights; Aggie was reaching for her teeth, with her eyes fixed on the door.
“I left that door open, Lizzie,” she said in an agonized whisper. “Somebody’s closed it.”
Well, it certainly was closed, and when I tried it, it was locked and the key was on the outside! And, to add to the dreadfulness of our position, there was no further sound whatever; no whimpering from Emmie’s room; no sound of Tish in short and sharp remonstrance. No anything.
Never have we passed through such a half hour as followed. That both our wonderful Tish and Emmie had fallen to the knife or other method of some deadly assassin we never doubted. And when at the end of that time we heard halting but inevitable footsteps slowly climbing the staircase, both of us were certain that our hour had come. When they stopped outside the door and an unseen hand fumbled with the key, Aggie gave a low moan and made for the window, but she was stopped before it was too late by the entrance into the room of Tish herself!
She was a curious dead-white color, and she came in limping and closed the door.
“I’d like to borrow your tweezers, Lizzie,” she said, in a toneless sort of voice. “I ran out when I heard Emmie scream, and I’ve got something in my foot.”
“But Emmie!” we inquired in unison. “What has happened to her?”
It was a moment before she replied. Both Aggie and I remembered that hesitation later and that there was a hard and determined look on her face. But when she did reply, it was reassuring.