The youth stifled a shriek and
simultaneously the match went out; but not before
Bridge had seen in the momentary flare of light a par-
tially open door at the far end of the hall in which they
stood.
Beneath them the stairs creaked now and the chain
thumped slowly from one to another as it was dragged
upward toward them.
"Quick!" called Bridge. "Straight down the hall and
into the room at the end." The man was puzzled. He
could not have been said to have been actually afraid,
and yet the terror of the boy was so intense, so real, that
it could scarce but have had its suggestive effect upon
the other; and, too, there was an uncanny element of
the supernatural in what they had seen and heard in
the deserted house--the dead man on the floor below, the
inexplicable clanking of a chain by some unseen THING
from the depth of the cellar upward toward them; and,
to heighten the effect of these, there were the grim stor-
ies of unsolved tragedy and crime. All in all Bridge
could not have denied that he was glad of the room at
the end of the hall with its suggestion of safety in the
door which might be closed against the horrors of the
hall and the Stygian gloom below stairs.
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