By midnight the house had settled down. In his room next to his mother’s Carlton was snoring comfortably. Janice was apparently asleep. From the transom over Susie’s door came a light and the odor of a burning cigarette, and Marian had not reappeared. Hilda went cautiously into the old lady’s room and stood listening. She was asleep, breathing quietly, but the air in the room was close and hot. Mrs. Fairbanks had refused to have a window open. She stood in the darkness, worrying. There should be air. Heart cases needed oxygen. She tiptoed to a window and suddenly stopped.

There was a sound behind her, a faint scraping sound as though something had been moved. She turned sharply, but the room was as it had been. The old lady had not stirred. Then she saw it. The door to the closet which held the safe was slowly moving. In the light from the hall it edged out six inches or more, creaking as it came.

She stared at it incredulously. Then she took a quick step forward, and as carefully as it had opened it began to close again. Not entirely. The latch did not click. But close it did, and she found herself staring at it, the very hair on her scalp lifting with horror. She did not dare give herself time to think. She walked over with buckling knees and stood outside of it.

“Come out,” she said in a low voice. “Whoever is in there, come out or I’ll raise an alarm.”

There was no reply, and when she tried the door it swung open easily in her hand. The closet was empty. The shoebag hung undisturbed, the safe was closed, the row of dresses harbored no lurking figure. She felt deflated, as though all the breath had gone out of her. It’s a trick, she thought furiously. A part of the campaign to terrify the old lady. A trick! A dirty trick! And it’s been tried tonight because her heart hasn’t been too strong. If she had wakened and seen it—

She hurried out into the hall. Nothing there had changed, however. Carlton was still snoring, and when she went back along the hall to Susie’s open door that lady put down a magazine with a lurid cover and stared at her.

“Hello!” she said. “Anything wrong?”

Hilda studied her, the gleam of cold cream on her face, the half-smoked cigarette in her fingers.

“Somebody’s playing tricks around this house,” she said. “And don’t tell me I imagine it, or that it’s done with mirrors. It’s got to stop. I’ve got a patient to consider.”

Susie sat up in bed.

“What sort of tricks?” she inquired with interest.

“Were you in your husband’s room just now, Mrs. Fairbanks?”

Susie raised her eyebrows and grinned. The connecting door into Carlton’s room was open, and through it came the unmistakable snoring of a sleeping man, which begins softly and rises gradually to an ear-splitting snort.

“Listen to that,” she said. “If you think Carl is in any mood for amorous dalliance—”