latch. The handle was shattered, but the lock did not yield. He shook his head. As he paused for a moment, and there was complete silence, Susie distinctly heard a slight noise. She put her hand on Arthur’s arm to call his attention to it, and with strained ears they listened. There was something alive on the other side of that door. They heard a curious sound: it was not that of a human voice, it was not the crying of an animal, it was extraordinary.
It was a sort of gibber, hoarse and rapid, and it filled them with an icy terror because it was so weird and so unnatural.
“Come away, Arthur,” said Susie. “Come away.”
“There’s some living thing in there,” he answered.
He did not know why the sound horrified him. The sweat broke out on his forehead.
“Something awful will happen to us,” whispered Susie, shaking with uncontrollable fear.
“The only thing is to break the door down.”
The horrid gibbering was drowned by the noise he made. Quickly, without pausing, he began to hack at the oak door with all his might. In rapid succession his heavy blows rained down, and the sound echoed through the empty house. There was a crash, and the door swung back. They had been so long in almost total darkness that they were blinded for an instant by the dazzling light. And then instinctively they started back, for, as the door opened, a wave of heat came out upon them so that they could hardly breathe. The place was like an oven.
They entered. It was lit by enormous lamps the
