Her hunted look and the solemn glance she gave me testified that she was as real to her as though Mrs. Drainger had not for twenty-four hours been dead. "She told me if a certain thing happened I was to call you."
Suddenly I saw. That tremendous woman was reaching at me over the very boundaries of life.
"I don't like it," continued Mrs. Mueller with an indescribable accent of fear and a sidelong look at me for support. "I don't like it. But she said the day before she died, she said, 'If Miss Emily uncovers my face when I am dead, you are to tell Mr. Gillingham,' she said. And she made me promise to watch."
She seemed to want to tell me something she could not put in words.
"It is terrible," she went on in a vague, haunted manner, "what I saw."
"What?"
"She was always a queer woman. 'If Miss Emily uncovers my face,' she said, 'you are to call Mr. Gillingham.' And she made me watch. I didn't want to. So when she died I came right over."
"How did you know when to come?"
"I don't know," she answered helplessly. "I just came. She told me Miss Emily wasn't to see me, but I was to watch. It is terrible."
We were at the door. I had a sudden distaste for the woman, though she was quite simply honest, and, as it were, the helpless and unconscious spy that Mrs. Drainger, in her grave, had set upon her daughter. I was anxious to get it over with.