nse; in household rites they
renounce the world, and if the spirit does not sour, little by little,
they take wordless vows and obliterate themselves in service. This woman
who stood before me, with skirts and apron blown about her substantial
figure by the chill wind that poured into the vestibule, seemed at first
to be one of them. It was only when I perceived that her eyes were
filled with some guilty fear, and that her hands were half raised as if
to ward off some impending danger, that I began to suspect that hers was
one of those masks which hypocrisy and deceit grow upon the countenance
of evil souls.

"I wish to see Mr. Estabrook," said I.

"He is not at home. He is away."

"Mrs. Estabrook."

"She is not well, sir. She cannot see anybody."

These conventional answers seemed to put an end to the interview: if
she had not spoken again, with that strange look of apprehension and
terror rising to her eyes, I would have bowed and turned away. But her
voice trembled as she moved toward me timidly and said, "Will you leave
a message? Will you call again? Will you say--will you say--"

Her sentence failed like that. As it did, words sprang to my mouth. I
looked at her accusingly.

"Yes," I snapped. "On the second story of the Marburys' house there is,
of course, a partition. I called to ask Mrs. Estabrook what was on _her_
side of that wall."

This information acted like dynamite. You would have said that it had
blown to pieces some vital organ of the old servant. The color ran out
of her face as if her head had lost its connection with her body.

"This is terrible," she choked. "Oh, 'tis awful! Who are you? Who can
you be? Somebody has sent you."

She caught the edge of the door and pushed it toward me.

"I know who you are," she exclaimed. "You are somebody that is sent by
_him_!"

With a final shove, then, she closed the crack which had remained, the
locks moved again, the light in the vestibule went out, and I was alone
on the step.

Such was the success of my first attempt to find an answer to
MacMechem's question--to solve the riddle of the blue wall. But I
realized, as I stood there, looking up into the gray sky of night with
its wind-driven clouds, that the presence of some peculiar form of good
or evil was no longer in doubt; that little Virginia, with the sensitive
receptiveness of childhood, of suffering, and of her own endearing,
unworldly personality, had not been wrong; that MacMechem, lik