THE COURAGE OF CAPTAIN PLUM
throat. He drew back shivering in every limb, and the voice followed him, shrieking now in a sudden burst of insane mirth and dying away a moment later in a hollow cackling laugh that seemed to curdle the blood in his veins. Mad! Obadiah Price was mad! Step by step Nathaniel fell back from the door. He felt himself trembling from head to foot. His heart thumped within his breast like the beating of a hammer. For an instant there was silence—a silence in which strange dread held him breathless while he watched the glow in the door and listened. And after that quiet there came suddenly a cry that ended in the exultant chattering of a name.
At the sound of that name Nathaniel sprang forward again. It was Marion's name and he strained his ears to catch the words that might follow it. As he listened, his head thrust half in at the door, Obadiah's voice became lower and lower, until at last it ceased entirely. Not a step, not a deep breath, not the movement of a
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