"Hello!" I cried. "Is that you, Isobel?"

"Yes!" came her reply, and I noted the agitation in her voice. "I am
more dreadfully frightened than I have ever been in my life. If only
you were here! Is it possible for you to come at once?"

"What has alarmed you?" I asked anxiously.

"I can't explain," she replied. "It is a dreadful sense of
foreboding--and all the dogs in the neighborhood seem to have gone
mad!"

"Dogs!" I cried, a numbing fear creeping over me. "You mean that they
are howling?"

"Howling!" she answered. "I have never heard such a pandemonium at any
time. In my present state of nerves, Jack, I did the wrong thing in
coming to this funny lonely little house. I feel deserted and hopeless
and, for some reason, in terrible danger."

"Are you _alone_, then?" I asked, in ever growing anxiety.

To my utter consternation:

"Yes!" she replied. "Aunt Alison was called away half an hour ago--to
identify some one at a hospital who had asked for her--"

"What! an accident?"

"I suppose so."

"But the servants?"

"Cook left this morning. You remember Aunt told you she was leaving."

"There is the girl, Mary?"

"Aunt 'phoned for her to join her at the hospital!"

"What! I don't understand! _'Phoned_, you say? Was it Mrs. Wentworth
_herself_ who 'phoned?"

"No; I think not. One of the nurses, Mary said. But at any rate, she
has gone, Jack, and I'm frightened to death! There's something else,"
she added.

"Yes?" I said eagerly.

She laughed in a way that sounded almost hysterical.

"Since Mary went I have thought once or twice that I have seen some
one or something creeping around outside the house in the shadows
amongst the trees! And just a while ago something happened which
really prompted me to 'phone you."

"What was it?"

"I heard a sort of scratching at an upper window. It was just like--"

"Yes! Yes!"

"Like a great _cat_ trying to gain admittance!"

"See that all the doors and windows are fastened!" I cried. "Whatever
happens or whoever knocks don't open to any one, you understand? We
will be with you in less than half an hour!"

Still in that frightened voice:

"For heaven's sake," she begged, "don't be long, Jack!..."

I became aware of a singular rasping sound on the wires, which
rendered Isobel's words almost unintelligible. Then:

"Jack," I heard, in a faint whisper, "there is a strange noise ...
just outside the room...."

Silence came. But, vaguely, above that raspin