The Dower House Mystery by Patricia Wentworth

door, there came to her faintly the mewing of a cat.
    She and Ellen ate their supper together, and left the tray in the sitting-room until the morning. When they went to bed Amabel opened the connecting door between the two rooms, and set a chair against it to keep it in position. It was just as they were getting into bed that they heard the sound of something thudding against the front door.
    Ellen was in the room in a moment, an odd figure in a red flannel dressing-gown, her hair in tightly plaited tails. She caught Amabel by the arm and held her with stiff, bony fingers.
    â€œOh, ma’am, you’ll not go down! ” she cried.
    â€œEllen dear!”
    The thudding came again—scratch, scratch, thud, thud; and then a thin, faint sound, half whine, half howl.
    â€œIf it’s Marmaduke—” said Amabel.
    She was sitting on the edge of the bed, her long fair hair thrown back, one hand at her throat. Ellen clutched her tighter.
    â€œYou mustn’t go down. Oh, you mustn’t!”
    â€œIf it’s Marmaduke—if he’s hurt or ill—”
    â€œIt isn’t Marmaduke,” declared Ellen fiercely. “It isn’t a yuman, natural thing at all, and you shan’t go down, my dear. Why, if it was Marmaduke, ’e’d bark same as ’e always ’ave done. It stands to reason ’e would, and not go making that there creepsy, ’owling sound.”
    â€œIf he’s been hurt—” said Amabel again.
    She spoke just under her breath, and they both stayed motionless, listening. A minute passed, and another. Ellen’s grasp had begun to relax, when, for the third time, something thudded against the door, and a faint crying followed. Amabel started to her feet.
    â€œEllen, I must go down. He may have been caught in some trap and have dragged himself loose. No, it’s no use. I really must go.”
    She was out on the landing turning the lights on before Ellen could stop her, and without giving herself time to think, she ran down the short flight into the hall, and heard Ellen follow her. They stood by the door for a moment, and then Amabel turned the key with a jerk. She meant to open only an inch or two, but the door swung back as heavily as if someone had been pushing against it. She began to say, “Duke, are you there?” but the words never passed into sound, for, with a suddenness that was like a blow, all the lights went out. She heard herself give some sort of a cry. She heard Ellen scream. And then something passed between them in the dark, and the door swung to with a slam. Some one touched her. She thought it was Ellen, and said her name; and as she fell against her, a dead weight, the mewing of a cat seemed to fill the hall.
    Amabel never quite knew how she got Ellen upstairs again. The mewing went on all the time, sometimes faint and pitiful, sometimes long-drawn out and with a horrid note of pain.
    Ellen was not quite fainting, but very near it. In Amabel herself, thought, energy, and feeling had narrowed to one single aim—to get upstairs, to get to her room, to get into the light. Once on the level, it was not so hard—about fifteen steps to the bedroom door. They managed it, and she guided Ellen to the bed.
    There were candle and matches on the chest of drawers, she knew; but, before feeling for them, she tried the switch by the head of the bed. Instantly the light came on; the whole room showed at once—Miss Harriet’s bureau; the great press which filled all the wall space opposite; the bed with poor Ellen sunk in a heap against the foot of it; and one thing more—in the middle of the floor a chair lying over on its side. Amabel looked beyond it, and saw what she had known that she would see. The connecting door between her room and Ellen’s was shut.
    When Ellen had recovered a little they brought in her mattress and bedding from the next room, and spent the rest of the night together, after locking