Chapter IV

As those wild, unearthly cries rang through the house, Oran Delaney stood for a moment like one rooted to the floor. His face had whitened to the ghastliness of death, a smoldering fire flashed from his splendid dark eyes, he ground a fierce, smothered imprecation between his strong, white teeth.

“What is it? Oh! Mr. Delaney, what is it?” shuddered Aline, clinging convulsively to his arm.

He started, and looked down at the sweet, white face, with its frightened blue eyes and chattering teeth. He did not answer, for again that dreadful, diabolic shriek of anger, frightening all the sleeping echoes into hideous sound, rang through the house:

“Ah--h--h! Ah--h--h!”

This time it sounded nearer, as if the ghostly utterer were coming rapidly upon the scene. Horror flashed from Oran Delaney’s eyes.

With a sudden, swift, abrupt movement he shook the little, clinging hands from his sleeve, and moved toward the grand stairway that led to the upper regions of the house.

With his foot upon the stair, he turned and looked back, pierced by the low, reproachful wail of fear and pain that burst from Aline’s lips.

He saw the beautiful, graceful figure of the girl standing in the dark, gloomy hall, lighting its gloom with her beauty, like a flower or a star.

Like one distraught, he waved his hand to her.

“Fly, fly!” he shouted, hoarsely. “Lose not a moment! To linger in this terrible place means death!” Then he flew up the wide and winding stairway as if his feet were winged, and the girl, whose own willful folly and curiosity had brought her to this pass, stood like one rooted to the spot, filled with trembling and horror.

She knew not where to fly. She was in the center of a long, dark hall, with doors opening into rooms on either hand and at either end. Through one of these latter doors she had come with Oran Delaney to the dining-room, but to save her life she could not have told which one. Oh, how horrible it was standing there, with those strange shrieks ringing in her ears, and feeling, with a strange despair at her heart, that Oran Delaney had fled from her like a coward, and left her to perish of this mysterious, unknown danger, rushing nearer and nearer!

“Ah--h--h! Ah--h--h!” again rang shrilly in her frightened hearing, and, impelled by maddening fear, Aline sprung wildly forward and rushed to one of those wide hall doors, which she hoped would give her egress from this horror-haunted house, into sunshine and security again.

She reached out her white hand gropingly for the door-knob, opened and fled through it as if pursued by a legion of fiends. It swung to heavily behind her, and her feet sunk deep into the velvet pile of a fine, rich carpet like softest moss. She was in the long and lofty parlors, where the dust lay thick upon the linen covers of the costly furniture, and the gleaming mirrors and splendid paintings were curtained from the sight. A cry of despair escaped her lips as she realized the truth.

“It was the wrong door. I must retrace my steps,” she thought; but even as she laid her hand upon the knob she was startled by those hideous screams again--this time they seemed to come from the hall itself, and with a stifled exclamation Aline darted into the curtained alcove of a bay-window and let the heavy draperies of velvet and brocade fall heavily around her. She had scarcely done so before a hand turned the door-knob softly, something swished through the door, it closed again and she was conscious of an alien presence in the room. She could hear distinctly a heavy, muffled breathing, and the rustle of drapery trailed over the floor.

Aline’s heart seemed beating in her throat almost to suffocation. She crouched upon the floor, her young face pale as death, her sweet eyes wild with horror of she knew not what invisible evil that was approaching her with swift, cat-like movements across the echoless floor. Was it ghost or human? she asked herself, fearfully.

Crouching there, a little crumpled blue heap in the darkness, fearing to breathe lest her presence might be betrayed by even that stifled sound, Aline summoned courage to draw aside the lightest fold of the curtain to form a tiny aperture through which, herself unseen, she might see what or who had entered the darkened, dreary, deserted parlor. Curiosity, our little heroine’s besetting sin, had not deserted her yet, despite her fear and terror.

She gazed fearfully through the tiny crevice in the curtain, and it was only by the exercise of a strong will power that she prevented herself from crying out aloud.

A little dwarf-like, misshapen _something_, clothed in trailing garments like a woman, was approaching the alcove steadily and swiftly, as if guided by the unerring instinct of hate and murder to the hiding-place of its prey. The crooked hideous form was clothed with rich white satin and lace, all soiled and frayed as if from a terrible struggle, for there were wet and gory blood drops all spattered down the deep flounces of white lace that adorned the front breadth of the robe.

Over a monstrous head, covered with rough matted locks of coarse black hair was thrown a long and splendid bridal veil of costly Brussels lace, and this, too, was soiled and tattered like the bridal robe. There was no face visible, for a mask was worn above it--a horrible mask of thick black crape; and Aline shuddered as she thought of the distorted features it hid, for the narrow slits for the eyes were not cut in a level line below the brows, but by some dreadful freak of nature the eyes of the creature were placed one below the brow, the other far down upon the cheek, and in this distorted form they glared through the holes of the mask like the yellow orbs of a tigress filled with the spirit of destruction.

But these monstrous, baleful eyes were not all that struck terror to Aline’s heart as she knelt there, shuddering in the semi-darkness of the death-trap into which she had blindly rushed.

The long, skinny, claw-like hand of the creature presented a yet more terrible aspect to her straining gaze, for the long white kid gloves that covered them were stained with crimson gore, and one hand grasped a slender, jewel-hilted dagger, from whose shining blade dripped human blood!

The wild instinct of self-preservation blazed up in Aline’s heart. She thought of the beautiful, sunny world outside this horrible haunted house, and the fierce desire for life flamed up within her. Should she die here like some wild thing caught in a trap, without one effort for escape?

She sprung to her feet and made a desperate rush past that horrible creature toward the door, but the footsteps of hate were swifter even than those of fear. Even as she tore open the door she felt the sharp clutch of cruel fingers on her arm, she was whirled violently backward, and the murderous dagger, already red with human gore, flashed in the creature’s hand, and the next instant sheathed itself in Aline’s breast. She fell across the door-sill, and lay motionless in a pool of her own spurting life blood.