THE party broke up early. Sally had made up her mind that nothing would induce her to stay another day. She took off her yellow dress. She got things out of a drawer and packed them. She laid out her London suit and the things that went with it and packed everything else. She should have felt a lot better after doing this, but she didn’t. What was the good of leaving Merefields behind her if she had to leave David there with Moira Herne? He had gone back to watching her. And he might have been thinking about Medusa, or he might have been thinking about Moira. Whichever it was she was poison, and the dreadful thing about poison was that you could get to have a liking for it—you could in fact become an addict. When Sally got to this point she took everything out of her suit-case again and put it away in drawers or hung it up. Even if she died of a combination of boredom and Wilfrid she wasn’t going to go away and leave David to become a poison addict.
Miss Silver engaged in her usual nightly routine. She removed the dark blue crepe-de-chine which was such a standby and put on the blue dressing-gown trimmed with handmade crochet, a very comfortable exchange since the evenings were chilly and though there was a fire in the drawing-room she really would have preferred to be wearing something warmer than silk. She removed her net, undid the neat plaits which disposed of her quite abundant hair, and proceeded to the thorough brushing which was her custom, after which she plaited it up, put all the pins back again, and controlled it with a net whose mesh was of dark brown silk instead of hair. From this point she would upon an ordinary night have proceeded to a more thorough undressing, to her nightly ablutions and the assumption of a cream Dayella nightgown made after a pattern some fifty years out of date and trimmed with a crochet edging similar in style but carried out in a finer thread than that which adorned her dressing-gown. But on this occasion after glancing at her watch she sat down in one of the chintz-covered chairs and composed herself for a vigil. She might be mistaken—she hoped very much that she was mistaken—but there lay heavily upon her mind the thought that during these hours of darkness some evil which had been planned was to be carried into effect. In these circumstances, she had resolved to be on the alert at any rate for some hours. Nothing of an unlawful nature would be attempted until the household had settled into sleep. It was now a little after half past ten. If the danger came from outside, it would not be set in motion whilst there was still traffic on the roads and among the lanes. If it came from inside, time would be allowed for the first and deepest slumber to lull every occupant of the house into unconsciousness. She would not, in fact, expect anything to happen on this side of midnight.
Having decided on a course of action, she set herself to occupy this time. There were letters that she could answer, amongst others a grateful one from Andrew Robinson, the husband of her niece Gladys. It appeared that Gladys was settling down again and had been talking of taking cooking lessons. This, if persevered with, would certainly add to the harmony of the Robinsons’ home. As she commended Gladys’s intention Miss Silver permitted herself to wonder how many marriages came to grief owing to the wife’s incompetence in the household arts. Gladys, who would spend hours over her hair, her face, her nails, considered herself a martyr if she was expected to expend time or thought upon preparing her husband’s meals.
The letter to Andrew was succeeded by an encouraging one to Gladys herself. By the time that Miss Silver thought it wise to put her writing things away it was close upon twelve o’clock. She opened her bedroom door and looked out into the corridor. The panelling upon the walls helped to darken it, but a low-powered bulb lighted the central landing to which the stairway rose. Miss Silver’s door, barely ajar, gave her this prospect, but only for a moment, because quite suddenly the light at the head of the stairs went out, leaving an even darkness everywhere. Standing on her own threshold, she opened the door to the length of her arm, turned off her own light, and listened.
There was no sound in all the house, no smallest sound. There were three ways in which the light could have been turned out—by a switch on the landing, by a switch in the hall below, and by turning off the current at the meter. The switch on the landing had certainly not been used. Anyone touching it would have been right under the light and directly in Miss Silver’s view. The current had not been switched off at the meter, since her own light was still burning. It followed that the landing light had been turned off by someone in the hall below.
Miss Silver stepped into the passage and began to feel her way along the wall. Since she was wearing the felt slippers which had been a kind gift from her niece by marriage, Dorothy Silver, she could count on making no sound. She reached the landing and feeling her way by the balustrade leaned over it and listened.
THERE was no sound, and the darkness was unbroken. Yet someone had turned out the light, and it had been turned out from below. There was someone down there in the darkness, and the purpose which requires darkness for its pursuit is an evil purpose. Somewhere down there, out of sight and hidden in thought, this evil purpose moved to a premeditated end.
Miss Silver pondered gravely upon what her course should be. As she stood here she was in the very middle of the house. There lay beneath her the hall with its panelling and its portraits, and the rooms which opened from it. On either side of her stretched the two main corridors with the bedrooms which they served. To her left her own room and Miss Bray’s, Wilfrid Gaunt’s, two bathrooms, and the rooms occupied by Annabel Scott and Arnold Bray. To her right Sally Foster, David Moray, Moira Herne, two more bathrooms, and Lucius Bellingdon. If evil was intended to anyone in the house it would be to him. He had provoked a decision between himself and the unknown danger which threatened him, and strongly upon her every sense there pressed the conviction that this decision was at hand. She could wake him, acquaint him with her conviction, and very likely fail to induce him to believe in it. The light on the landing had gone out—she had no more to go on than that. If he did not believe her, she would have achieved nothing and the danger would merely be postponed. At the same time her decision must be swift. The main staircase was not the only means of communication between the ground floor and the one on which she stood. Towards the end of each of the bedroom corridors was a flight of stairs used by the staff. The threat to Mr. Bellingdon might come by either of these ways, the most likely being that which was nearest to his bedroom.
She felt her way to the stair-head, passed across it, and along the corresponding length of balustrade upon the other side. When she reached the entrance to the corridor she began to feel her way along the wall. One door, two doors, three doors were passed, and the next door on the right would be that of Lucius Bellingdon’s room. There was no thread of light beneath the door, no sound when she laid her ear against the panel. With the most meticulous caution she tried the door and found it was not locked. This was what she had both suspected and feared. She had urged the precaution upon him, and he had laughed and said that no one could enter his room without waking him, adding that anyone who tried would get the surprise of his life. The apprehension which she had been feeling for the last few hours increased upon her. Anyone in his household would know that he was a light sleeper. Anyone in his household might have taken steps to ensure that he would not sleep so lightly tonight. And there were others besides Miss Silver who could walk soft-foot in the darkness and turn the handle of a door without making any sound.
Standing there unseen and unregarded she made a swift decision. She did not know, she had no means of knowing, what margin of time she could count upon. If the threat impended it might fall at any moment, or linger out an interminable hour. It might not even fall at all. In which case Miss Maud Silver would have exposed herself to some derisive comment. There are other risks than those of a physical nature. She dismissed this one as firmly as she would have dismissed the chance of a bullet or a blow and, turning, made her way back to the room occupied by David Moray.
He slept the sleep of the young and healthy, the curtains drawn back, the cold spring air pouring into the room. Neither the opening nor the closing of the door disturbed the dream in which he walked. It was an odd dream, and when Miss Silver’s hand on his shoulder wakened him it vanished and left nothing that he could remember. He started up upon his elbow, saw her like a shadow between him and the window, and heard her say, “Hush, Mr. Moray.” The dream feeling had come with him out of the dream. It made it less strange that a decorous elderly lady should be standing at his bedside in the night and telling him not to make a noise. He sat up blinking, and she said “Hush” again. He found himself whispering too.
“What is it?”
Her answer convinced him that he must still be asleep and dreaming.
“I believe that an attempt is about to be made on Mr. Bellingdon’s life.”
“An attempt—”
“Pray do not raise your voice or make any sound. I want you to come with me. I think it advisable to have a witness.”
“To an attempt upon Mr. Bellingdon’s life?”
There was a tinge of severity in her voice as she replied,
“That is what I said, Mr. Moray.”
She was gratified to observe that he could move as silently as she did herself. She had had occasion before this to remark that large young men often possessed this characteristic. They came out into the corridor, and he closed the door with a most praiseworthy absence of sound.
To David Moray the whole thing had an unreal quality. He had come up out of deep sleep and found himself moving in the darkness with no volition of his own. That someone was attempting or was about to attempt Mr. Bellingdon’s life was the sort of statement which could only seem natural in a dream. His mind boggled and refused to deal with it. Meanwhile Miss Silver’s hand was on his arm, her touch impelled him. Somewhere on their left she opened a door, drew him across the threshold, and partially closed the door again. The dampness on the air and the smell of scented soap informed him that they were standing in the bathroom immediately opposite Lucius Bellingdon’s room. He bent to what he supposed to be the approximate neighbourhood of Miss Silver’s ear and said on the lowest possible level of sound,
“What is all this?”
Miss Silver said, “Hush—”
Nearer to the door than himself, she had seen a momentary dancing spark at the head of the stairs. It danced, it slid to light the entrance to the corridor, and it went out again, but she had caught behind it the impression of a shadow that moved. One shadow, or two? She thought that there were two, but she could not have sworn to it. Or to anything at all except that dancing spark. There was a sense of something that was not exactly sound or movement. She took a half step back and drew the door with her until it was nearly closed. The movement which could not be distinguished as movement, the sound that was not quite sound, drew nearer and ceased. It ceased just on the other side of the bathroom door, and the door was three fingers’ width ajar. Her hand was still on David Moray’s arm, its pressure intensified.
And right on the other side of the door a whispering voice said,
“Well, what now?”
There had certainly been two shadows, for one spoke and the other answered just above the edge of sound. The one that answered said,
“We go in.”
David Moray put the flat of his hand on the jamb and leaned forward over Miss Silver’s head to catch the whispered words. He thought that the person who had spoken first was a man, and that he spoke again.
“You’re sure he won’t wake?”
The other was a woman. She said,
“Well, I put two of those things in his coffee. He said how sleepy he was and went off early.”
The man said, “It ought to do the trick. You open the door. If he wakes you can say you heard him call out in his sleep and came to see if there was anything wrong. Go on— get it over!”
The two who stood there moved. They crossed the corridor and came to the opposite threshold. The handle turned. They listened, and then went forward.
David straightened himself, stepped back, and opened the bathroom door. Miss Silver had released him. Her hand dipped into the pocket of her dressing-gown and came up with the electric torch which she had provided for this night’s vigil. With her finger on the switch she moved quickly and silently across the passage. The door into Lucius Bellingdon’s room had been closed but not latched. She pushed it and went in. The curtains were drawn back from the two large windows. The sky was not clear, but somewhere behind the veil of cloud there was a moon. They had been standing in the dark for so long that the room was quite visible in a kind of twilight. There was the great black mass of wardrobe, a tallboy, the lesser bulk of a dressing-table, and away to the right the straight, plain outline of the bed.
Straight and plain but not unbroken. The head of the bed was against the right-hand wall, and on either side of it a black shadow stooped. David Moray, a step behind Miss Silver, found his mind groping. Two voices that had whispered in the dark, two shadows leaning together across the bed on which Lucius Bellingdon lay—he was conscious of these things, but he hadn’t begun to think what they could mean, and before he got any farther than that Miss Silver made a quick step backwards and pressed down the wall switch which was just inside the door.
The room sprang into light, and he no longer had to think. He saw. There was a cut-glass bowl in the middle of the ceiling. The light dazzled in rainbows on its facets and shone down upon the bed where Lucius Bellingdon lay, straight and tall and very deeply asleep. It shone down upon the man and woman who leaned together across the low pillow and the sleeping face. They held another pillow between them, and when the sudden revealing light came on they had been lowering it. Just for an instant they were there like that, with outstretched hands and the pillow coming down. Then the picture broke. It was the man who had his back to David and Miss Silver. He dropped his end of the pillow and ran for the open window. He had a leg across the sill, when David’s two hands came down upon his shoulder and hauled him back. They went down on the floor with a thump, the large Mr. Moray on top. After a passing glance Miss Silver spared them no more of her attention. She needed it all for Moira Herne who stood on the far side of the bed and stared at her as if she saw a ghost. Perhaps she did. The ghosts of dead hopes, dead plans, dead fortunes. After a moment she pulled the dropped pillow towards her, and as she did so Lucius stirred. He threw up an arm, muttered unintelligibly, and blinked at the light. Moira spoke. She said in a dragging voice,
“What do you want?” and Miss Silver said, “To stop a crime.”
Lucius Bellingdon got up upon his elbow. He had the look of a man who is dazed or drugged. Moira spoke again.
“He was having a bad dream—he called out. I came in to bring him another pillow.”
Miss Silver crossed the room, slim and upright in her blue dressing-gown. She put out a hand to the pillow which Moira had brought. The movement took Moira by surprise. She stepped back, but not in time. Miss Silver’s hand falling from the linen cover was already damp.
It all took so short a time to happen. Of the two struggling men on the floor one lay prone and the other, David Moray, was getting to his feet. If he was still quite at a loss to know why a man with a handkerchief over his face and two slits cut in it for eyeholes should have been trying to smother Lucius Bellingdon in his bed, he was at least quite sure in his own mind that that was what had been happening, and that if ever a fellow had asked for it, it was the fellow whose head he had just had the pleasure of banging on the floor. Though in no case at the moment to offer any further resistance, it was desirable that he should be well and truly secured. Looking back on it afterwards, David was astonished at his own temerity, but at the time it seemed perfectly natural to approach Miss Silver and not so much ask for as demand the cord of her dressing-gown. Since she immediately complied, he was able to tie his captive up and make a good job of it, by which time Lucius was on his feet and dominating the scene. It struck David forcibly that he showed no surprise, yet the scene must be considered an unusual one, including as it did one man barefoot and in his pyjamas, another unconscious on the floor, Moira Herne clutching a draggled pillow and looking like death, to say nothing of Miss Silver in the blue dressing-gown.
Lucius, however, looked at one person and one person only. He looked at Moira Herne, and she looked back at him.
The first impact of the shock was very great. There are things which the mind does not readily receive. If it is obliged to do so it cannot immediately accustom itself to the alien presence. The girl who stood there facing him with the naked stare of hatred was the child that Lily had brought into his house all those years ago. Lily had had no right to do it without asking him. Any man would have been angry about it, and they had quarrelled. But Moira had been a child in his house. He wondered now whether his anger and Lily’s resentment were the parents of the hatred with which she looked at him. He had not loved her—was that the head and front of his offending? He wondered whether Lily had loved her either. If a child was starved of love, would hatred take its place? He did not formulate these things, he felt them. But something in him rose in protest. He had not been unkind. If it had been possible, he would have loved her. You cannot love at will, and even when she was a child it was not love that Moira wanted. She wanted to have her way, to be admired, to be deferred to. She wanted all the glittering toys of life. She wanted money, and she wanted power, and if they were not hers as a willing gift she would take them, and at any cost.
David got up from the floor. The man who remained there would not get away. The cord of Miss Silver’s dressing-gown was strong. He dusted his hands and became aware of the group by the bed—the group by the bed and the silence in the room. It was broken when Lucius Bellingdon spoke. He said in his ordinary voice—and it seemed strange to all of them that there should be no change in it,
“What were you going to do?”
When Moira had no answer, Miss Silver gave one.
“You had been drugged, and that pillow is wet. They were going to smother you in your bed.” Her tone was low and sad. It did not accuse. It stated a dreadful fact, and it carried a dreadful conviction.
Lucius turned away from the girl who had been his daughter. He spoke to David Moray.
“Who is the man?”
David said, “There’s a handkerchief over his face.”
“Take it off!”
The man on the floor was moving. There was an attempt to raise the bound hands, to struggle up. He had got to his knees, when the handkerchief was ripped away and there was nothing any more to cover his face. Most people had thought it a pleasant one, the face of an ordinary pleasant man—not dark, not fair, not anything very much at all—a face to pass in a crowd and leave no strong impression behind. But now it wasn’t like that at all. It was informed by something that made it dreadfully different—hatred and the lust to kill. It was the face of a killer, and it was horribly and unmistakably the face of Clay Masterson.