Hide in the Dark by Frances Noyes Hart

Author:Frances Noyes Hart
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road
Published: 2020-09-02T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter V

The group in the doorway stood staring at her like lunatics frozen in a nightmare, tranced in incredulous horror, staring at the red hands stretched out stiffly as a doll’s—staring at what lay beyond them.… Upstairs a door slammed, there was a quick clatter on the stairs, and someone shouted peremptorily: “Hey, what’s the racket down there? Holding a mass meeting?”

Kit Baird said in a low voice, “Shut up, you fool,” and Larry asked quietly from the hall, “Is something wrong?”

The voice from the stairs inquired in tones of startled indignation: “How do you get that way? What’s going on down there anyway?”

Chatty Ross, clinging to the table by the door, said in a flat little monotone:

“It’s Jill—Jill Leighton. She’s killed Doug King.”

And the girl with the red hands screamed again, straining frantically to push them farther from her.

Larry Redmond, shouldering his way through the huddled figures, said as quietly as before, “Stand still, darling. Close your eyes—don’t try to move. That’s my girl.” He took the dreadful little hands in his, wrapping his handkerchief about them, lifted her in his arms, and swung to confront the faces, still frozen in the dark doorway: “I gather you’d have stood there and let her go stark, staring mad before your eyes! You’re a fine crew, I’ll say that for you.” He stood, surveying them with a bitter and icy contempt. “Get a glass of water, someone.”

Sherry reached out and poured it blindly, the glass chattering against the lip of the pitcher, unheeded and unrestrained, while he remarked in a voice that wavered and slipped abruptly from control, “Well, this is s-some party, I’ll tell the world. S-some party.”

He put the pitcher down with a crash, and turned his face to the wall, his shoulders heaving.

It was Lindy who retrieved it and carried it across the floor. It was filled to the brim, but not a drop spilled; and though she was whiter than the girl in Larry’s arms, the voice of silver and dreams was as unshaken as her hand. She said gently, “Put her down there, Larry—in the chair, that way. See, she hasn’t fainted: she’s all right.” She knelt, slipping a hand behind the tawny head, holding the glass to the blanched lips. “Darling we didn’t mean to frighten you. It was just that people in a nightmare don’t move or act or speak like real people … and for a minute we were all in a nightmare. Drink this for Lindy—drink it for Lindy, because she loves you so.”

Jill, staring over the rim of the glass with the eyes of a desperate child, whispered through the stiffened lips:

“Lindy, I thought he was asleep…. Lindy, I thought he was asleep and I tried to wake him.… I tried—”

She pushed the glass from her, a terrible revulsion contracting her face, and buried her head on Lindy’s shoulder, shaken with something more dreadful than tears.

Larry asked, his eyes still gray ice, “Who was in this room at the time the

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