The Lock and Key Library: The most interesting stories of all nations: American
General
The Lock and Key Library: The most interesting stories of all nations: American
Detective and mystery stories; Short stories, American
“Why don’t you turn around and look?” asked Mrs. Brigham in a
wondering and somewhat aggrieved way.
“I am in a hurry to finish this letter, if Mrs. Wilson Ebbit is
going to get word in time to come to the funeral,” replied Caroline
shortly.
Mrs. Brigham rose, her work slipping to the floor, and she began
walking around the room, moving various articles of furniture, with
her eyes on the shadow.
Then suddenly she shrieked out:
“Look at this awful shadow! What is it? Caroline, look, look!
Rebecca, look! WHAT IS IT?”
All Mrs. Brigham’s triumphant placidity was gone. Her handsome
face was livid with horror. She stood stiffly pointing at the
shadow.
“Look!” said she, pointing her finger at it. “Look! What is it?”
Then Rebecca burst out in a wild wail after a shuddering glance at
the wall:
“Oh, Caroline, there it is again! There it is again!”
“Caroline Glynn, you look!” said Mrs. Brigham. “Look! What is
that dreadful shadow?”
Caroline rose, turned, and stood confronting the wall.
“How should I know?” she said.
“It has been there every night since he died,” cried Rebecca.
“Every night?”
“Yes. He died Thursday and this is Saturday; that makes three
nights,” said Caroline rigidly. She stood as if holding herself
calm with a vise of concentrated will.
“It—it looks like—like—” stammered Mrs. Brigham in a tone of
intense horror.
“I know what it looks like well enough,” said Caroline. “I’ve got
eyes in my head.”
“It looks like Edward,” burst out Rebecca in a sort of frenzy of
fear. “Only—”
“Yes, it does,” assented Mrs. Brigham, whose horror-stricken tone
matched her sister’s, “only— Oh, it is awful! What is it,
Caroline?”
“I ask you again, how should I know?” replied Caroline. “I see it
there like you. How should I know any more than you?”
“It MUST be something in the room,” said Mrs. Brigham, staring
wildly around.
“We moved everything in the room the first night it came,” said
Rebecca; “it is not anything in the room.”
Caroline turned upon her with a sort of fury. “Of course it is
something in the room,” said she. “How you act! What do you mean
by talking so? Of course it is something in the room.”
“Of course, it is,” agreed Mrs. Brigham, looking at Caroline
suspiciously. “Of course it must be. It is only a coincidence. It
just happens so. Perhaps it is that fold of the window curtain
that makes it. It must be something in the room.”
“It is not anything in the room,” repeated Rebecca with obstinate
horror.
The door opened suddenly and Henry Glynn entered. He began to
speak, then his eyes followed the direction of the others’. He
stood stock still staring at the shadow on the wall. It was life
size and stretched across the white parallelogram of a door, half
across the wall space on which the picture hung.
“What is that?” he demanded in a strange voice.
“It must be due to something in the room, Mrs. Brigham said
faintly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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