Edison Marshall

“ I began to wonder, very much indeed, just what Miss Padgett had to tell. A trained nurse, knowing the secrets of homes, sometimes has most disquieting opportunities to learn the secrets of life.
“It's just a lot of drivel to which no sane man will listen or give any thought,” the doctor went on, careful as always of his prepositions. “It's wasting my time to repeat it, and I don't mean to do so. You are to go out there and do what you can for Farding and his wife. Whatever scared Miss Padgett—something that lived in the cellar, and poked its head out now and then—doesn't matter to you at all. ”

“ I had no reason for following my patient into his cellar. Under the circumstances, a man may be excused for not wanting to go back quietly to his room. And perhaps I would have never reached a decision if it had not been for the pistol shot that suddenly shattered to pieces the silence of the hall.
The response to such a violent sound as a pistol shot is never quite instantaneous. There is always a moment's partial paralysis, in which the muscles of the throat seem to contract and the heart stops beating. ”

“ Then a door opened softly, somewhere on the same floor with us. I tried not to hear it; but it simply would not go unheard. It wasn't that I was afraid of opening doors. A full-grown man outgrows such things. It was just that my peace of mind was rapidly going where the wind goes—a place from which it would not speedily return.
The clock in the hall had just struck twelve. It was an hour that the penny-dreadfuls love to mention, but which to a sane man is not greatly different from the hour of nine, or tea time in the afternoon. At first I did not think that Farding had heard the sound. ”

“ It had turned against one of them at last; and I had no doubt but that old Farding had fired his pistol in a vain attempt to repel its attack. The mole, the old man called it—and a mole is a thing that works beneath the ground. Only a mole could see in such darkness as this.
I had hoped that my eyes might become accustomed to the darkness, to make the conflict more even; but this hope was dispelled at once. The darkness was of too heavy a nature to ever fade except by the actual admission of light. ”

“ Doctor Clark does not call his internes in his office to tell of cures. Old Farding, out in the village of Horton, was not the case to be cured in the week. I spoke perhaps because I thought I was expected to say something, and perhaps, because silence in a room with Doctor Clark always becomes embarrassing. A person realizes that unless the doctor is kept busy with talk he will probe and probe with those curious eyes until he finds out all about one's past, most of one's future, and the exact weight and measurements of one's soul. ”

“ The lights were dim and ineffective; but the darkness was the same that is eternally suspended over half the world, and to which the human race has become more or less accustomed. Old man Farding was no better or no worse than I expected. ”

“ Her eyes seemed to be leaping all over me, at my clothes and into my face. “What do you want?”
“I am Doctor Long—and I've come to take Miss Padgett's place for a few days—until a capable woman nurse can be secured.”
She stood perfectly still an instant. She did not even flick an eyelash. To stand so very still is some way out of accordance with nature. It gives the effect of a terrifically violent start.
“A man?” she whispered at last. “We can't take a man. We can't ”
Then she paused, and seemed to be listening to some sound I could not hear. ”

“ It was the kind of house that the wind dearly loves to howl around—forsaking all the other houses in the neighborhood for a chance to clatter its windows and rattle its boards and whoop in its chimneys. ”

“ And this is never pleasing to the spirit.
“She says she won't spend another night in the Farding house,” the doctor told me, in the same tone that he would use to me if he were discussing the weather. “Not only that, but she's actually hysterical. Fancy it—a one-hundred-and-seventy-pound woman. Miss Padgett of all people! I didn't know she had a nerve in that heroic body. Of course I mean the kind of nerve that makes a woman fall on her face and whoop—of course she's got the other kind a-plenty. No matter what she tells. She has simply deserted—up and left—and you have to take her place.” ”

“ I had summoned all that great store of reserve strength that the human race has acquired in long centuries of crises—the strength that most men, sometimes in their lives, find that they possess. It was no longer a question of terror. ”

“ I thought, “or maybe that strange paralysis case out to Freemont.”
Perhaps he was going to operate that night, and I was to administer the anæsthetic. As an interne at the great seaside hospital, I did little else but administer anaesthetics. I didn't dream what he really wanted. It is a good thing human eyes cannot see into the future. If mine could have seen, I would have turned through a side door into the street, and left the famous doctor waiting vainly in the dusk. ”

“ It's good training for a young doctor. It's evidently a case a woman can't handle; and it will be interesting to you from a scientific point of view.” A rattling skeleton, stepping out for a walk from its sepulcher on a moonlit night would be interesting to Doctor Clark—from a scientific point of view. “There is nothing for you the next week ”

“ The longest-living author of this work died in 1967, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 56 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works. ”