“What’s the matter. Let me in.”
In a few seconds she unbolted the door, and opening it I encountered her in a pale pink robe-de-chambre, her luxuriant chestnut hair falling about her shoulders, her large dark brown eyes haggard and startled, her hands clenched, her countenance white to the lips.
“What has happened, Miss Seymour?” I asked, glancing quickly around the room.
“I—I hardly know,” she gasped in breathless alarm. “Only—only,” she whispered, in a low voice, “I—I’ve seen the hand—the Hand of Death—again!”
“Seen it again!” I echoed; but she raised her finger and pointed to her father’s door.
“Tell me the circumstances,” I whispered. “There is something very uncanny and unnatural about this which must be investigated. Last night it appeared to me a hundred and twenty miles away, and now you see it to-night. Are you quite sure you saw it.”
I asked the latter question because it was still dark, and she had switched on the electric light.
“I felt a cold rough contact with my cheek, and waking saw the hand again! I burn a night-light—as you see,” and she pointed across to a child’s night-light in a saucer upon the washstand.
“And it vanished as before?”
“Instantly. I thought I heard a slight sound afterwards, but I must have been mistaken.”