We bumped into a square hall and I sat down. It was very quiet all at once, and the only thing to be heard was the water dripping from us to the hardwood floor.
"If that's a velvet chair you're on it will be ruined," said Roger's voice out of the darkness.
"There is a telephone closet under the stairs."
"You know a lot about this house. Whose is it?"
"And you have a key like one of the family! Roger, you are engaged to her!"
"I was," he said. "The chances are when this gets out I won't be."
I don't know why now, but it struck me as funny. I sat and laughed like a goose, and the more I laughed the harder Roger breathed.
"You've got to see me through this, Clara," he said at last. "You can't telephone Carrie--you've fixed all that. But you can get your mother. Tell her the circumstances and have her send a car for you. I'll stay here to-night. And if you take my advice you'll meet Bill at the train to-morrow morning and beat Carrie to it. She'll be in town with a line of conversation by daybreak."
He found some dry matches and led me to the telephone. Something in the way I dripped, or because I padded across the floor in one stocking foot, made him a trifle more human.
"I'll close the curtains and light the log fire," he said. "Things are bad enough without your taking pneumonia."
The moment I took the receiver off the hook I knew the wires were down somewhere. I sat for a moment, then I opened the door. Roger was on his knees lighting the fire. He looked very thin, with his clothes stuck to him, and the hair that he wore brushed over the bare place had been washed down, and he looked almost bald.
"Roger," I said, with the calmness of despair, "the wires are down!"
"Hush," said Roger suddenly. "And close that door."
It seemed rather foolish to me at the time. Since they had followed us, they'd know perfectly well that if Roger was there I was.
_In walked Maisie Brown and about a dozen other people!_
I can still hear the noise they made coming in, and then a silence, broken by Maisie's voice.
"Awfully surprising to see you here--I mean, I expect you are surprised to see me here," said Roger's voice, rather thin and stringy. "The fact is, I was going by, and--it was raining hard, and I----"