Free There is No Return by Anita Blackmon

blood in my veins crawled as something slid across my instep. I thought for one awful minute that it was a worm which she had brought with her out of the tomb. Then I saw it was merely the extension cord to the red lamp which was attached to a floor socket half the width of the room from the table upon which it sat.
    Sheila Kelly had turned again to Thomas Canby, who cowered in his seat. “You destroyed my soul!” she cried. “Doomed me to wander forever without peace, but I will no longer wander alone!”
    Her voice had risen to a screech, the hair stirred upon my scalp.
    Behind me I heard Chet Keith smother a cry. Ella clutched my hand, and then the lights went out, followed almost at once by that horrible groan which at times still echoes in my ears. For a moment I think we were all frozen in our seats. I know I was still sitting there, petrified with horror, when Chet Keith snapped on the central chandelier. Even then I could not move. I do not think anybody moved or even breathed. The girl, Sheila Kelly, was lying in a huddle in the centre of the room, and in his chair Thomas Canby was weaving slowly from side to side with a hideous gash in his throat from which the blood gushed in a ghastly fountain.

6
    It is difficult even now, in spite of how often it has been threshed over, for me to say exactly what happened in those dreadful ten minutes after the lights came on again and we saw Thomas Canby gasping in his death agony, unable to speak because his throat was cut from ear to ear, but with the most terrible urgency in his sunken eyes as his thin, bloodless hands clawed the air.
    I have a confused recollection of Judy Oliver burying her head against Jeff Wayne’s shoulder, of his arms tightening about her; of Dora Canby sitting there in a state of suspended animation, staring not at the dying man beside her but at that limp figure huddled on the floor at her feet; of Lila Atwood catching her husband’s sleeve and turning him away so he could not see his uncle; of Hogan Brewster for once in his life confronting something which he could not meet with flippancy; of Patrick Oliver holding onto the back of his chair and crying “Oh, God!” over and over in a thin whisper; of Professor Matthews, looking suddenly old and stricken, covering his face with an agued hand.
    At my side Fannie Parrish, being completely without inhibitions, was indulging in a fit of hysterics. Ella had gone quite rigid.
    Back of me Miss Maurine Smith was uttering a series of sharp bleating cries, not unlike a stuck sheep. The young mother was trying to tell the dyspeptic old gentleman that he must not look while he was assuring her that he had no intention of doing so, although he did not once remove his eyes from that crimson gap in Thomas Canby’s throat which widened as life went out of the body and the head fell back against the top of the chair.
    Over by the door Chet Keith still stood with his hand on the light switch. I have never seen anything sharper than his blue eyes as he looked us all over.
    “Don’t touch him!” he said sharply when Patrick Oliver took a tentative step toward the dead man.
    “But oughtn’t we to do something?” demanded Lila Atwood, only the slightest tremor marring her lovely voice. “He – maybe he isn’t dead.”
    Chet Keith’s blue eyes raked hers. “He’s dead all right,” he said. “No doubt of that.”
    I glanced at that ashen face lying back against the headrest of the chair. No, there was nothing anybody could do for Thomas Canby.
    “The authorities will want everything left exactly as it is,” Chet Keith went on. His voice grated, “After all, this is murder.”
    “Murder!” whispered Sheila Kelly.
    She had dragged herself to her feet. She stood there trembling.
    Nobody went to her assistance. Everyone stared at her with unconcealed horror. She flung up her hand as if to ward off our hostile gaze or possibly to shut out the sight of that sagging form in the chair.
    “I didn’t kill