with his search, abandoning this course which
logic had suggested, but which was fraught, he had no doubt, with
positive apprehension to Nora. Why not, indeed, satisfy her curiosity
now? But his pride denied the impulse. He wanted first something more
tangible, something more provocative of her praise.

"It frightens me here," Nora breathed. "I've the queerest desire to--to
scream."

Her laugh was scarcely audible.

Her words had set Garth's memory to work. He knew again what he missed
in this silent house--the amorphous screams of a woman in an agony
powerless to express itself. How she must have wanted to speak! How
horribly she had tried until the supreme, the enduring silence had
clutched about her throat! The sullen and sepulchral air of the room
seemed to vibrate with the wraiths of those efforts.

Was the door open to the next room where she had struggled and died?

Garth stirred uneasily.

Nora spoke.

"How long?"

"Not long," Garth whispered, "or I'll turn the lights on. I'll look."

His thoughts swung back to the next room and the despair it had
harbored. Could such passionate resistance to circumstance perish
utterly? Could the violent will behind it accept silence and pass with
the body into nothingness?

What had she wanted to say?

A movement, scarcely audible, reached him from the next room.

Nora's hand touched his arm. He was aware of the trembling of her
fingers. He leant forward, listening. He scarcely caught Nora's voice.

"You heard--that?"

The movement was repeated--somebody--something stirred in the dark room
where the woman had died.

Nora swayed against him. Her other hand touched his shoulder. His heart
leapt, but he realized that this contact was only an impersonal appeal
for protection. So he drew his arms back, but his brain was clearer. He
no longer answered to the fancy that the echoes of those screams
tortured his ears.

"Stay here quietly," he whispered.

"Don't go in there, Jim."

He pushed her hands gently away. His movements as he crossed the floor
were stealthier than those which still persisted in the bedroom. He
paused in the doorway. The darkness was complete, yet he could locate
the movements now against the farther wall.

He drew out his revolver and his flashlight. He pressed the button. The
glare splintered the blackness and centered on the figure of a man who
bent over the open drawer of a desk.

"Throw your hands up!" Garth said.

In the dressi