Doors were already opening overhead, voices calling, voices
answering, the alarm running like wildfire from room to room. Soft
feet pattered in the gallery and down the stairs about my very ears.
I do not know what made me put on my own shoes as I heard them, but
I think that I was ready and even longing to walk out and give
myself up. I need not say what and who it was that alone restrained
me. I heard her name. I heard them crying to her as though she had
fainted. I recognized the detested voice of my bete noir, Alick
Carruthers, thick as might be expected of the dissipated dog, yet
daring to stutter out her name. And then I heard, without catching,
her low reply; it was in answer to the somewhat stern questioning of
quite another voice; and from what followed I knew that she had never
fainted at all.
"Upstairs, miss, did he? Are you sure?"
I did not hear her answer. I conceive her as simply pointing up the
stairs. In any case, about my very ears once more, there now
followed such a patter and tramp of bare and booted feet as renewed
in me a base fear for my own skin.
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