“I didn’t dare. I’ve had courage for everything in this world, sir,” she said. “But I didn’t dare to open that door! I’m glad somebody else has come into this dreadful house!”
“Which is the room?” I asked.
“Come with me,” she replied, beginning her climb of the broad stairs.
Her feet made no noise on the soft carpeting; nor did mine. The whole house, indeed, seemed stuffy with motionless air, as if not even sound vibrations had disturbed the deathlike fixity of that interior. As we turned at the top toward the paneled white door, which I knew as by instinct was the one we sought, for the first time I became conscious of the faint ticking of a clock somewhere on the floor above us.
“I’ve forgot to wind the rest,” whispered the old servant, as if she had divined my thought. “They were driving me mad.”
I nodded to show her that now I, too, was beginning to feel the effect of the strange state of affairs which I had first sensed from the other side of the blue wall.
“Leave me here,” I said to her softly. “Go down to Mr. Estabrook. He is in the vestibule. He has a message for you from long ago.”
I may have spoken significantly; she may have been at that moment peculiarly sharp to read the meanings behind plain sentences. Whatever the case, her face lit up with joy—the characteristic, joyful expression that never comes to the faces of men and few times to the face of a woman. For a moment youth seemed to return to her. The last traces of the limber strength of body, gone with her girlhood, came back. She wore no longer, at that second, the mien of a nun of household service. She was transfigured.
“It’s Monty Cranch!” she cried under her breath. “He isn’t dead! I knew he wasn’t. I knew it always.”
“Go now,” I said. “Mr. Estabrook has something of a story to tell you.”