A black, ugly, unwholesome object, he thought, as she
disappeared into the darkness below, and the last flicker of her candle
threw a queer-shaped shadow along the wall and over the ceiling.
Without hesitating a moment, Shorthouse threw himself into his clothes
and went out of the house. He preferred the storm to the horrors of that
top floor, and he walked the streets till daylight. In the evening he
told the landlady he would leave next day, in spite of her assurances
that nothing more would happen.
"It never comes back," she said--"that is, not after he's killed."
Shorthouse gasped.
"You gave me a lot for my money," he growled.
"Waal, it aren't my show," she drawled. "I'm no spirit medium. You take
chances. Some'll sleep right along and never hear nothin'. Others, like
yourself, are different and get the whole thing."
"Who's the old gentleman?--does he hear it?" asked Jim.
"There's no old gentleman at all," she answered coolly. "I just told
you that to make you feel easy like in case you did hear anythin'. You
were all alone on the floor."
"Say now," she went on, after a pause in which Shorthouse could think of
nothing to say but unpublishable things, "say now, do tell, did you feel
sort of cold when the show was on, sort of tired and weak, I mean, as if
you might be going to die?"
"How can I say?" he answered savagely; "what I felt God only knows.
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