Then surely this killing had been no common quarrel, but a planned assassination, the culmination of some prearranged plot.
This knowledge, while it set my heart throbbing in realization of new danger, yet served also to stiffen my nerves.

What had we blindly drifted into?
What was behind this lawlessness which could make murder commonplace?
What mystery lurked about this haunted, hideous house where death skulked in the dark?
My thought was not so much concerned with myself, and my own danger, as with that of the young woman whom I was bound to protect.

She had come innocently, driven by desperation, to play a part she already loathed in this tragedy, and now I alone stood between her and something too awful to contemplate.

Now, before she awoke I must discover the truth, and thus be prepared to get her safely away.
I closed the door on the silence, and stole quietly downstairs.

There was no movement, no sound in the great house.