I found her cowering by a dying fire in the library. She had a highball beside her, but her hands shook so she could scarcely lift it. “I suppose I’m all kinds of a damned fool,” she said, “but I was about to have an attack of the yelling heebie jeebies.”

She refused to be left alone, and the three of us made a careful circuit of the house, including the basements. We found everything locked, however, and at last I induced her to go to bed. I heard her bolt herself in and then, with O’Brien on guard, went to my old room and undressed.

I was tired, but I could not sleep. For one thing, it was strange to be back in those familiar quarters, where I had been at once so happy and so wretched. I lay there thinking over the past six months: the talk at Lydia’s that night, of Don’s murder, Julian’s arrest, and that strange appointment of Maud’s with Lydia the night she was killed. Lydia saying vaguely, “She said something about Audrey.” Why Audrey? Where was Audrey in all this mystery?

It was then I thought I heard the elevator. The shaft was near my room, and it seemed to me the car was moving. It never made any real sound. In the activity of daylight it seemed entirely noiseless. But I was uneasy. I got up and went out into the hall. O’Brien, as Bessie had insisted, was sitting on the stairs, the remnants of his supper tray beside him, and his revolver in his hand.

“I thought I heard the elevator,” I whispered.

He grinned. “Got you too, has it?” he said. “Kinda spooky at night, isn’t it? Good thing I got no nerves.”

Reassured, I went back to bed. But not to sleep. I had hardly gotten back to bed when I heard a movement of some sort overhead. It worried me. The servants’ rooms were mostly over the east wing, and over my own I knew was the trunk room, a huge place filled with trunks and with shelves around it for suitcases and small luggage. And the sound itself was strange. It was like the stealthy movement of a trunk sliding along the floor. Or inching across it, for the movement was infinitely slow. I listened for some time. The sound would come, stop, and start again; but at last it was undeniable, and I called to O’Brien. He was not in sight. On my second shout, however, he appeared in the lower hall, evidently amused.

“Got ’em again?” he inquired.

“Don’t be such a fool,” I said hysterically. “There’s someone in the trunk room upstairs. I can hear him plainly.”

He was still highly diverted. “Maybe some of the help packing to get out, miss. I don’t know as I blame them.”

But then I heard another sound. The elevator was on its way down. I yelled at O’Brien and headed for the lower floor, but the car did not stop there. It moved steadily down to the basement. The light in it was not turned on, and there was something horrible about that almost silent passage. O’Brien, who had followed me, looked stunned with surprise.