Read The Cases of Susan Dare for Free Online Page B

large-boned, with a heavy, dark face, thick, iron-gray hair done high and full on her head, and long, strong hands. She was dressed after a much earlier fashion; one which, indeed, Susan was unable to date.
    “We were expecting you,” she said. “Caroline, however, was obliged to go out.” She paused just under the light and beside a long mirror.
    Susan had a confused impression of the house, in that moment; an impression of old, crowded elegance. The mirror was wavery and framed in wide gilt; there were ferns in great marble urns; there were marble figures.
    “We’ll go up to your room,” said Jessica. “Caroline said you would be in Chicago for several days. This way. You can leave your bag here. James will take it up later; he is out just now.”
    Susan put down her small suitcase, and followed Jessica. The newel post and stair rail were heavy and carved. The steps were carpeted and thickly padded. And the house was utterly, completely still. As they ascended the quiet stairs it grew increasingly hot and airless.
    At the top of the stairs Jessica turned with a rigid motion of her strong body.
    “Will you wait here a moment?” she said. “I’m not sure which room—”
    Susan made some assenting gesture, and Jessica turned along the passage which ran toward the rear of the house.
    So terrifically hot the house was. So crowded with old and almost sentient furniture. So very silent.
    Susan moved a bit restively. It was not a pleasant house. But Caroline had to be afraid of something—not just silence and heat and brooding, secretive old walls. She glanced down the length of hall, moved again to put her hand upon the tall newel post of the stair rail beside her. The carved top of it seemed to shift and move slightly under the pressure of her hand and confirmed in the strangest way her feeling that the house itself had a singular kind of life.
    Then she was staring straight ahead of her through an open, lighted doorway. Beyond it was a large room, half bedroom and half sitting room. A lamp on a table cast a circle of light, and beside the table, silhouetted against the light, sat a woman with a book in her lap.
    It must be Marie Wray—the older sister; the adopted Wray who was more like old Ephineas Wray than any of them. Her face was in shadow with the light beyond it, so Susan could see only a blunt, fleshy white profile and a tight knot of shining black hair above a massive black silk bosom. She did not, apparently, know of Susan’s presence, for she did not turn. There was a kind of patience about that massive, relaxed figure; a waiting. An enormous black female spider waiting in a web of shadows. But waiting for what?
    The suggestion was not one calculated to relieve the growing tension of Susan’s nerves. The heat was making her dizzy; fanciful. Calling a harmless old woman a black spider merely because she was wearing a shiny black silk dress! Marie Wray still, so far as Susan could see, did not look at her, but there was suddenly the flicker of a motion on the table.
    Susan looked and caught her breath in an incredulous little gasp.
    There was actually a small gray creature on that table, directly under the lamplight. A small gray creature with a long tail. It sat down nonchalantly, pulled the lid off a box and dug its tiny hands into the box.
    “It’s a monkey,” thought Susan with something like a clutch of hysteria. “It’s a monkey—a spider monkey, is it?—with that tiny face.”
    It was turning its face jerkily about the room, peering with bright, anxious eyes here and there, and busily, furiously eating candy. It failed somehow to see Susan; or perhaps she was too far away to interest it. There was suddenly something curiously unreal about the scene. That, thought Susan, or the heat in this fantastic house, and turned at the approaching rustle of skirts down the passage. It was Jessica, and she looked at Susan and then through the open doorway and smiled coldly.
    “Marie is deaf,” she