I will confess that my nerves were unstrung, and they were therefore scarcely prepared for the shock they had now to endure. For coming down the corridor, straight towards where I stood drawn up against the wall, was a little figure in a white garment, and with fair flowing hair over its shoulders; and that figure came swiftly straight towards that new door which opened to the floor. While I stood there, paralysed by the sight, certain words floated back to my mind.
"You will be restless, and you will seek to get out into the air. But all the doors will be bolted, and the windows fastened. So you will turn to the eastern corridor, and will pass along there to the end wall ... and then you will walk on into the air.... You will do this at midnight!"
With a great horror upon me, I leapt in a moment, though dimly, to what was meant. The girl was walking to her death, and walking in her sleep. In what devilish fashion Bardolph Just had contrived the thing, or what ascendency he had gained over her that he could suggest the very hour at which she should rise from her bed and do it, I did not understand; but here was the thing nearly accomplished. She was within a couple of feet of the opening, and was walking straight out into the air at that giddy height, when I sprang forward and caught her in my arms.
She shrieked once—a shriek that seemed to echo through the night; then, with a long sobbing cry, she sank into my arms, and hid her face on my shoulder. And at the same moment I heard a door open down below in the house, and heard running footsteps coming towards me. I knew it was the doctor, and I knew for what he had waited.
CHAPTER V.
I AM DRAWN FROM THE GRAVE.
You are to picture me, then, standing in that wind-swept corridor, open at one end to the stars, and holding in my arms the sobbing form of Debora Matchwick, and waiting the coming of Dr. Bardolph Just. I awaited that coming with no trepidation, for now it seemed as though I stood an equal match for the man, by reason of this night's work; for if someone had shouted "Murder!" in the silence of the house, the thing could not have been proclaimed more clearly. I saw now that in that trance into which he had thrown her he had by some devilish art suggested to the girl what she should do, and at what hour, and then had thrown open the end of the corridor, that she might step out to her death.
Exactly how much she suspected herself, or how much she had had time to grasp, since the moment when I had so roughly awakened her, I could not tell; but she clung to me, and begged me incoherently not to let her go, and not to let the man come near her. Feeling that the thing must be met bravely, I got my arm about her, and advanced with her down the corridor to meet the doctor.
He came with a light held above his head; he was panting from excitement and hurry. I know that he expected to run to the end of that corridor, and to look out, and to see what should have lain far below him; but he came upon us advancing towards him instead, and he stopped dead and lowered his light.