“How slowly the time goes!” she sighed. “I wish I did have a lock to that door! But I don’t suppose anything human will annoy me here. Otho Maury would, I know, if he dreamed that I was here; but, of course, he is searching for me in New York, hoping all the while that I’m dead and out of Maybelle’s way. Oh-h-h! what was that?”
She shuddered and groaned, for a sound had reached her ears in the awfully still old house—an eerie sound!
It came up from the parlor below, and sounded like a discord played by unskilled hands upon the piano keys.
It had been caused, in fact, by Otho Maury, stumbling against the piano, in his furtive search for Floy.
Floy’s heart thumped terrifically against her side for a moment, then she recovered herself as memory recalled her first night at Suicide Place.
“It’s just the mice running over the piano keys,” she laughed.
A full half an hour passed, and she grew nervous and restless, startled by muffled sounds of footsteps in the house.
“What can it be?—the wind or the rats?” she muttered, in alarm. “I have never heard such strange noises in the house before. Can any one have dared enter?”
Instinctively she caught up a dagger that she had found in a drawer of the old-fashioned bureau and laid on the table for self-protection.
Drawing the keen, shining blade from its sheath, she held it in her hand, her flashing eyes turned toward the door.