"There's something—there's somebody in the house!" At the top of its register one voice was repeating the warning over and over again, and judging by direction this alarmist was shrieking her words through a keyhole on the floor below him. "I saw it—him—whatever it was. I opened my door to look out in the hall and it—he—was right there. Oh, I could have touched him! And then it ran and I didn't see him any more and I slammed the door and began screaming."

[Pg 61]

[Pg 61]

"You seen what?"

The strident question seemed to come from far below, down in the depths of the house, where the caretaker abided.

"Whatever it was. I opened the door and he was right in the hall there glaring at me. I could have touched it. And then he ran and I——"

"What was he like? I ast what was he like—it's that I'm astin' you!" The janitress was the one who pressed for an answer.

For the moment the question, pointed though it was, went unanswered. The main speaker—shrieker, rather—was plainly a person with a mania for details, and even in this emergency she intended, as now developed, to present all the principal facts in the case, and likewise all the incidental facts so far as these fell within her scope of knowledge.

"I was awake," she clarioned through the keyhole, speaking much faster than any one following this narrative can possibly hope to read the words. "I couldn't sleep. I never do sleep well when I'm in a strange house. And anyhow, I was all alone. My nephew by marriage—Mr. Edward Braydon, you know—had gone out with the gentleman who lives on the floor above to play cards, and he said he was going to be gone nearly all night, and my niece—I'm Mrs. Braydon's unmarried aunt from Poughkeepsie and I'm down here visiting them—my niece was called to Long Island yesterday by illness—it's her sister who's ill with something like the bronchitis. And he was gone and so she was gone, and so here I was all alone and he told me not to stay up for him, but I couldn't sleep well—I never can sleep in a strange house—and just a few[Pg 62] minutes ago I heard the bell ring and I supposed he had forgotten to take his latchkey with him, and so I got up to let him in. And I called down the stairs and asked him if it was him and he answered back. But it didn't sound like his voice. But I didn't think anything of that. But, of course, it was out of the ordinary for him to have a voice like that. But all the same 

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