“Ring for the servants,” said someone shakenly, I think Charlton Oxford.
“Listen! . . . It’s not there any more. . . . It’s stopped.” We listened with Mrs. Bartholomew; beyond our taut breathings and the tick-tack-tock of the carcase in the corner—nothing.
“Ring for the servants, I tell you!”
“Listen! It’s out there.”
“Out there!”
“On the lawn.”
Unmistakably now the low wordless cry came through the half-opened french window leading to the broad lawns beyond the entrance drive. Pendleton was across the room in a trice, heedless of Alberta’s protest; so were Maryvale and Cosgrove and I; so were all of us. We followed our host through the window-entrance. Out to the darkness we went from the bright-lit hall in a little throng, and when we were outside, hearing the lonesome, half-whining cry no more, we recoiled and huddled a little, like scared titmice.
Hardly a quarter of a minute—prolonged by our bewilderment and dread—could have gone by, and we stood irresolute upon the fringe of the lawn, when the cry came toward us again, and now it was followed by a woman’s voice, different from the cry:
“Oh, come here, come here! I couldn’t call you and leave her alone.”
At the sound of that voice Cosgrove stamped like a raving beast. “Paula,” he bellowed, and plunged across the obscurity of the lawn.