"Hello!" I cried. "Is that you, Isobel?"
"Yes!" came her reply, and I noted the agitation in her voice. "I am more dreadfully frightened than I have ever been in my life. If only you were here! Is it possible for you to come at once?"
"What has alarmed you?" I asked anxiously.
"I can't explain," she replied. "It is a dreadful sense of foreboding—and all the dogs in the neighborhood seem to have gone mad!"
"Dogs!" I cried, a numbing fear creeping over me. "You mean that they are howling?"
"Howling!" she answered. "I have never heard such a pandemonium at any time. In my present state of nerves, Jack, I did the wrong thing in coming to this funny lonely little house. I feel deserted and hopeless and, for some reason, in terrible danger."
"Are you alone, then?" I asked, in ever growing anxiety.
To my utter consternation:
"Yes!" she replied. "Aunt Alison was called away half an hour ago—to identify some one at a hospital who had asked for her—"
"What! an accident?"