Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922, 1918-12-03

trance with its scarcely dared men,
cries reminded him that what he
was about to do was an outrage
against the dead man. He had to
remind himself of the steely pur-
pose with which Howells had mark
ed him as the murderer; and the
mans power persisted after death.
In such contest he was justified.
He took the candle from the
table. Through the stair-weil the
murmur OF Graham's voice, occa-
sionally interrupted by Groom's
heavy tones or the languid accents
of Paroles. drifted encouragingly.
Trying to crush his premonitions,
Bobby entered the corridor. In
stead of Illuminating the narrow
passage the candle seemed half
smothered by its blackness. For
the first time in his memory Bobby
faced the entrance of the sinister
room alone. He pushed open the
broken door. He paused on the
threshold. 1t impressed him as not
unnatural that he should experience
such misgivings. They sprang not
alone from the fact that within
twenty-four hours two men had
| died unaccountably within these
| faded walls. Nor did the evidence
pointing to his own unconscious
guilt wholly account for them. At
the bottom of everything was the
fact that from the earliest childhood
he had looked upon the room as
cosecrated to death; had consequent
ly feared it; had, he recalled, al
ways hurried past the disused cor
| ridor leading in its direction.
Through its wide spaces the light
of the candle scarcely penetrated
| No more than an indefinite radiance
thrust back the obscurity and out
lined the bed. He could barely see
the stark, black form outstretched
there.
The dim, vast room, as he advanc-
ed, imposed upon him a sense of
isolation. Katherine in the upper
hall, the others downstairs, whose
| voices no longer reached him.
| seemed all at once far away. He
stood in a place lonelier and more
remote than the piece of woods
where he had momentarily opened
his eyes last night; and, instead of
the straining trees and the figure in
the black mask which he had called
his conscience, he had for motion
and companionship only the swayins
of the curtains in the breeze from
the open window and the dark, pros
trate thing whose face as he went
closer was like a white mask-a
mask with a fixed and malevolent
sneer.
The wind caught the flame of the
candle, making it flicker. Tenuous
shadows commenced to dance
across the walls. He paused with a
tightening throat, for the form on
the bed seemed moving, too, with sly
and scarcely perceptible gestures.
Then he understood. 1t was the
effect of the shaking candle, and he
forced himself to go on, put a
sense of a multiple companionship
accompanied him-a sense of a
shapeless, soundless companionship
that projected an idea of steady
regard. There swept through his
mind procession of figures in quaint
dress and with faces not unlike his
own, remembered from portraits
and family legends, men and women
to whom this room had been fa-
miliar, within whose limits they had
suffered, cried out a too-powerful
agony, and died. 1t seemed to him
that he waited for voices to guide
him, to urge him back, because he
was an intruder in a company whose
habit was strange and terrifying.
He forced his glance from the
shadows which seemed more active
along the walls. He raised his
candle and stared at tho dead man.
The cast was undoubtedly there.
The coat, stretched tightly across
the breast, outlined it. He stood at