Meanwhile the detective confronted Doctor Wells.
"You say, Doctor, that you came back to take these women away from
the house. Why?"
The Doctor gave him a dignified stare.
"Miss Van Gorder has already explained."
Miss Cornelia elucidated. "Mr. Anderson has already formed a
theory of the crime," she said with a trace of sarcasm in her tones.
The detective turned on her quickly. "I haven't said that." He
started.
It had come again--tinkling--persistent.--the phone call from
nowhere--the ringing of the bell of the house telephone!
"The house telephone--again!" breathed Dale. Miss Cornelia made
a movement to answer the tinkling, inexplicable bell. But Anderson
was before her.
"I'll answer that!" he barked. He sprang to the phone.
"Hello--hello--"
All eyes were bent on him nervously--the Doctor's face, in
particular, seemed a very study in fear and amazement. He clutched
the back of a chair to support himself, his hand was the trembling
hand of a sick, old man.
"Hello--hello--" Anderson swore impatiently. He hung up the phone.
"There's nobody there!"
Again, a chill breath from another world than ours seemed to brush
across the faces of the little group in the living-room. Dale,
sensitive, impressionable, felt a cold, uncanny prickling at the
roots of her hair.
A light came into Anderson's eyes. "Where's that Jap?" he almost
shouted.
"He just went out," said Miss Cornelia. The cold fear, the fear
of the unearthly, subsided from around Dale's heart, leaving her
shaken but more at peace.
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