The phantoms of the foot-bridge: 1895 — John Shaqi
The phantoms of the foot-bridge: 1895Craddock, Charles Egbert
General
The phantoms of the foot-bridge: 1895
Craddock, Charles Egbert
Fiction
A horse’s head suddenly looking out of the enveloping mist close to his
shoulder gave him the first intimation of the arrival, the secret silent
waiting, of those whom he had directed hither. That the saddles were
empty he saw a moment later. The animals stood together in a row,
hitched to the rack. No disturbance sounded from the silent building.
The event was in abeyance. The fugitive in hiding was doubtless at
ease, unsuspecting, while the noiseless search of the officers for his
quarters was under way.
With a thrill of excitement Keenan crept stealthily through an open
passage and into the old grass-grown spaces of the quadrangle. Night
possessed the place, but the cloud seemed denser than the darkness. He
was somehow sensible of its convolutions as he stood against the wall
and strained his eyes into the dusk. Suddenly it was penetrated by a
milky-white glimmer, a glimmer duplicated at equidistant points, each
fading as its successor sprang into brilliance. The next moment he
understood its significance. It had come from the blurred windows of the
old ball-room. Milli-cent had lighted her candle as she searched for the
fugitive’s quarters; she was passing down the length of the old house
on the second story, and suddenly she emerged upon the gallery. She
shielded the feeble flicker with her Hand; her white-hooded head gleamed
as with an aureola as the divergent rays rested on the opaque mist; and
now and again she clutched the baluster and walked with tremulous care,
for the flooring was rotten here and there, and ready to crumble away.
Her face was pallid, troubled; and Dundas, who had been warned by the
tramp of horses and the tread of men, and who had descended the stairs,
revolver in hand, ready to slip away if he might under cover of
the mist, paused appalled, gazing across the quadrangle as on an
apparition--the sight so familiar to his senses, so strange to his
experience. He saw in an abrupt shifting of the mist that there were
other figures skulking in doorways, watching her progress. The next
moment she leaned forward to clutch the baluster, and the light of the
candle fell full on Emory Keenan, lurking in the open passage. A sudden
sharp cry of “Surrender!” The young mountaineer, confused, swiftly drew
his pistol. Others were swifter still. A sharp report rang out into
the chill crisp air, rousing all the affrighted echoes--a few faltering
steps, a heavy fall, and for a long time Emory Keenan’s life-blood
stained the floor of the promenade. Even when it had faded, the rustic
gossips came often and gazed at the spot with morbid interest, until, a
decade later, an enterprising proprietor removed the floor and altered
the shape of that section of the building out of recognition.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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