He broke short off. From the wall where the broad reflector stood facing the open window there had come a sound.
“Like a whisper,” Johnny thought. Whisper or not, it made no sense. So again the room fell into silence. Only the crackle of the fire, the racing tick-tock, tick-tock of the little clock on the mantel told that this little gray house was still the habitation of man.
* * * * * * * *
That night, over a cup of tea in Grace Krowl’s parlor, with the Whisperer looking on “from his tower a mile away” Nida McFay told her story. It was a strange story filled with smiles and tears.
For three glorious years she had worked in the book department of one of America’s most beautiful stores. Surrounded by books, with congenial fellow workers and cultured customers, she had learned what it meant to truly live.
“And then—” The little book seller looked away. “Then a man, a very little, wistful old man who lived in my rooming house, brought me some books from his library; anyway, he said they were from his library. He asked me to sell them for him at a second-hand store.
“They were valuable books. I—I sold them.”
She paused to sit for a time staring into her tea cup. It was as if she sensed the fact that someone was looking in upon them from afar, and that she dreaded to go on.
From the reflector in the corner came a strange sound. “Like someone stifling a cough,” Grace thought with a shudder.
“The books—they had been stolen from our store,” Nida went on after a time. “A detective was put on my trail. The little old man disappeared. A—a house detective, with eyes like steel blades, accused me of stealing the books!”