"What was that?" queried Bailey dazedly, with a feeling as if some
great winged creature had brushed at him and passed.
Lizzie answered from the doorway.
"Oh, oh!" she groaned in stricken accents. "Somebody knocked me
down and tramped on me!"
"Matches, quick!" commanded Miss Cornelia. "Where's the candle?"
The Doctor was still trying to explain his curious action of a
moment before.
"Awfully sorry, I assure you--it dropped out of the holder--ah,
here it is!"
He held it up triumphantly. Bailey struck a match and lighted it.
The wavering little flame showed Lizzie prostrate but vocal, in
the doorway--and Dale lying on the floor of the Hidden Room, her
eyes shut, and her face as drained of color as the face of a marble
statue. For one horrible instant Bailey thought she must be dead.
He rushed to her wildly and picked her up in his arms. No--still
breathing--thank God! He carried her tenderly to the only chair
in the room.
"Doctor!"
The Doctor, once more the physician, knelt at her side and felt for
her pulse. And Lizzie, picking herself up from where the collision
with some violent body had thrown her, retrieved the smelling salts
from the floor. It was onto this picture, the candlelight shining
on strained faces, the dramatic figure of Dale, now semi-conscious,
the desperate rage of Bailey, that a new actor appeared on the scene.
Anderson, the detective, stood in the doorway, holding a candle--as
grim and menacing a figure as a man just arisen from the dead.
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