"Bill, did you hear that curious noise just now?" Frances asked it
sharply before I could say a word. Her manner was confused; she looked
straight at me; and there was a tremor in her voice she could not hide.
"There's wind about," I said, "wind in the trees and sweeping round the
walls. It's risen rather suddenly." My voice faltered rather.
"No. It wasn't wind," she insisted, with a significance meant for me
alone, but badly hidden. "It was more like distant thunder, we thought.
How you ran too!" she added. "What a pace you came across the terraces!"
I knew instantly from the way she said it that they both had already
heard the sound before and were anxious to know if I had heard it, and
how. My interpretation was what they sought.
"It was a curiously deep sound, I admit. It may have been big guns at
sea," I suggested, "forts or cruisers practicing. The coast isn't so
very far, and with the wind in the right direction--"
The expression on Mabel's face stopped me dead.
"Like huge doors closing," she said softly in her colorless voice,
"enormous metal doors shutting against a mass of people clamoring to get
out." The gravity, the note of hopelessness in her tones, was shocking.
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