“My dear Mrs. McDermott, whatever is the matter?” he said.
“The voice! did you not hear the voice!” she gasped.
“What voice? whose voice?” said Tom, with an arm round her waist.
“A voice which spoke to me out of the clock!” she said, with a shiver.
“Out of the clock?” said Tom. “We can soon see whether anybody’s hidden there.” Speaking thus, he withdrew his arm, and flung open the door of the clock. Enough light came from the lamp on the stairs to show that the old case was empty of everything, save the weights, chains, and pendulum of the clock.
“Wherever else the voice may have come from, it is plain that it couldn’t come from here,” said Tom, as he proceeded to relight the widow’s candle.
“It came from there, I’m quite certain. There were three distinct raps from the inside as well.”
“Is it not possible that it may have been a mere hallucination on your part? You have not been well, you know, for some time past.”
“Whatever it may have been, it was very terrible,” said Mrs. McDermott, drawing her skirts round her with a shudder. “I have not forgotten what you told me yesterday.”
“Allow me to accompany you as far as your room door,” said Tom.
“Thanks. I shall feel obliged by your doing so. You will say nothing of all this downstairs?”
The following day Mr. Bristow was not at luncheon. There were one or two inquiries, but no one seemed to know exactly what had become of him. It was Mrs. McDermott’s usual practice to retire to the library for an hour after luncheon—which room she generally had all to herself at such times—for the ostensible purpose of reading the newspapers, but, it may be, quite as much for the sake of a quiet sleep in the huge leathern chair that stood by the library fire. On going there as usual after luncheon to-day, what was the widow’s surprise to find Mr. Bristow sitting there fast asleep, with the “Times” at his feet where it had dropped from his relaxed fingers.
She stepped up to him on tiptoe and looked closely at him. “Rather nice-looking,” she said to herself. “Shall I disturb him, or not?”
Her eyes caught sight of some written documents lying out-spread on the table a little distance away. The temptation was too much for her. Still on tiptoe, she crossed to the table in order to examine them. But hardly had she stooped over the table when the same hollow voice that had sounded in her ears the previous night spoke to her again, and froze her to the spot where she was standing. “Fanny McDermott, you must get away from this house,” said the voice. “If you stop here you will be a dead woman in three months!”