A frown gathered on his brow. She shuddered in fear. Yet again the ready smile returned.
“Stories,” he said quietly, “must be told in just the right setting. This is not the time. Another day perhaps. Not now. I—”
He broke short off. His face took on a look of horror. “Wha—what was that?”
Up from the depths below, where darkness was falling among the black fir trees, rising like a siren, had come one long, piercing scream.
Then silence and falling darkness settled over them like a shroud.
CHAPTER XXII
THE WHITE FLARE
“That scream! What was it?” The figure of Percy O’Hara had suddenly grown tense. In the gathering darkness he seemed cast in bronze.
To the slim girl who but the moment before had thought of this marvelous violinist as a phantom, the whole thing seemed unreal. “Have you never heard it before?” she asked with a voice that trembled.
“Heard that scream before?” He stared at her.
“I heard it two nights ago. But that was late, near midnight,” she said. “There are people down below by a narrow lake. They come and go in an airplane. There’s a lodge of some sort and a small rowboat. They carried someone into the lodge, someone who was helpless, crippled or bound. I could not tell.”