Chapter Twenty.
The Man with the Crimson Button.
Pale and startled, she raised her finger in a gesture of silence, and we both stole noiselessly from the room, closing the door behind us.
Upon the thick carpet of the corridor we crept past Shaw’s door, and Asta disappeared into her own chamber, which adjoined, while I went on to mine.
I could not get that peculiar whistle out of my ears. It seemed as though it were a signal to somebody; yet though I went back to Shaw’s door and listened there for a full hour, I heard no sound of any movement. The room was in darkness, and he was, no doubt, already asleep.
When I turned in, I lay a long time thinking over the reason of Shaw’s friendship with the woman Olliffe. What Asta had told me only seemed to increase the mystery, rather than diminish it.
I must have dropped off to sleep about two o’clock, puzzled and fagged out by the long hours on the road, when I was suddenly awakened by hearing a loud, shrill scream.
I started up and listened. It was Asta’s voice shrieking in terror.
I sprang out into the corridor without a second’s hesitation and rapped upon the door, crying—