Then came another sound—the sing-song voice of the Chinaman, crooning something in a rhythmic chant. Louie could not understand the words, but there was a swing and lilt to the thing that had a curious effect on him: he felt as if he were being rocked to sleep.
He threw off this mood with a start. There had come another sound—the squealing of many rats. And there was a grating noise, as if a heavy body were dragging itself about the floor. The rat chorus swelled. The creatures evidently had been turned loose, and were racing about the floor in an agony of terror.
The chorus thinned. Something was happening to them. Presently the last of the rats emitted one long, agonized squeal, and was still.
Louie Martin made his way out of the cellarway and hurried dizzily back to the shelter of the bushes. He didn’t know what had been happening behind that horrible door, but he knew that it was something which turned his flesh to ice. A strange smell had come to him from under the door—
Louie noted with relief that the lights in Colonel Knight’s rooms had been snapped off. That meant that the Colonel had gone to bed. Soon he would be sleeping, and then Louie could put his plan into execution—that would enable him to forget this baffling but vaguely horrible experience.
Somehow, he felt as if great unseen creatures were flying about him, striking at him with black, featherless wings. The air seemed to be in motion.
He caught himself firmly.
“Got to cut it out!” he mumbled under his breath. “Getting dippy! Likely to bite somebody! Got to think about something else!”
He began to think about the jewels; and then his mind shifted, and he was thinking of the woman from whom he and his companions had stolen the pendant. She had been called “Mother of the Friendless.” The jewels had been given to her by a rich patron, to assist in the work of providing for the many who were dependent on her for charity.
The wolves had done a clever bit of work that time. They had caught the jewels while they were in process of transfer from the original owner to the old woman—