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Title: The Astonishing Adventure of Jane Smith

Author: Patricia Wentworth

Release Date: August 18, 2020 [EBook #62963]

Language: English

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                      THE ASTONISHING ADVENTURE OF
                               JANE SMITH


                                   BY
                           PATRICIA WENTWORTH

                               Author of
                  “A Marriage Under the Terror,” etc.

                     [Illustration: Publisher logo]

                                 BOSTON
                        SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY
                               PUBLISHERS

                            Copyright, 1923
                      By SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY
                             (Incorporated)

                Printed in the United States of America

                      THE MURRAY PRINTING COMPANY
                            CAMBRIDGE, MASS.
                     THE BOSTON BOOKBINDING COMPANY
                            CAMBRIDGE, MASS.




                THE ASTONISHING ADVENTURE OF JANE SMITH




                               CHAPTER I


The dining-room of Molloy’s flat had not been built to receive
twenty-five guests, but the Delegates of twenty-five affiliated
Organisations had been crowded into it. The unshaded electric light
glared down upon men of many types and nationalities. It did not flatter
them.

The air was heavy with the smoke of bad tobacco and the fumes of a very
indifferent gas fire. There was a table in the middle of the room, and
some dozen of the men were seated at it. The rest stood in groups, or
leaned against the walls.

Of the four who formed the Inner Council three were present. Most of the
Delegates had expected that the head of The Council, the head of the
Federated Organisations, that mysterious Number One whom they all knew
by reputation and yet had never seen in the flesh, would be present in
person to take the chair. But the Delegates who had entertained this
expectation were doomed to disappointment. Once again Number One’s
authority had been delegated to the other three members of The Council.
Of these, Number Three was Molloy, the big, handsome Irishman who rented
the flat. He sat facing the door, a fine figure of a man in the late
forties. Number Two leaned forward over the fire, warming his hands, his
pale, intellectual face expressionless, his eyes veiled. Belcovitch, who
was Number Four, was on his feet speaking. They were large, bony feet,
in boots which had most noticeably not been made for him. He spoke
fluently, but with a heavy foreign accent.

“Propaganda,” he said, and laughed; really he had a very unpleasant
laugh—“propaganda is what you call rot, rubbish, damn nonsense. What
else have we been about for years—no, generations—and where are we
to-day?”

Number Two drew his chair closer to the fire with an impatient jerk.
Number Four’s oratory bored him stiff. The room was cold. This gas fire
was like all gas fires. He pulled his fur coat together and spoke
sharply:

“Molloy, this room’s most infernally cold, and where in the world does
the draught come from?”

“Propaganda is dead,” said Number Four. He looked over his shoulder with
dislike at Number Two, and mopped his brow with a dirty handkerchief.
Molloy, just opposite him, turned a little and laughed.

“You bring the cold with you, Number Two,” he said. “Here’s Number Four
as hot as his own speeches. You’ve got all the fire, and the door’s
shut, and a screen in front of it, so what more do you want?”

“Propaganda is dead,” repeated Number Four. He stood with his back to
the door. Only the top panel of it showed above the black screen which
had been drawn across it. The screen had four leaves. On each leaf a
golden stork on one leg contemplated a golden water-lily. The light
shone on the golden birds and the golden flowers.

Number Four thrust his handkerchief back into his pocket, and rapped
sharply on the table. It was covered with a red cloth which had seen
better days. Number Fourteen had upset the ink only a few moments
before, and a greenish-purple patch was still spreading amidst the
crimson.

Belcovitch leaned forward, both his hands on the table, his raucous
voice brought to a dead level. “Instead of propaganda, what?” he said.
“Instead of building here, teaching there, what? That is what I’m here
to-night to tell you. To-morrow you all go to your own places, each to
his post; but before you go, I am authorised to prepare you for what is
to come. It will not be to-day, but it may be to-morrow, or it may not
be for many to-morrows yet. One final stage is lacking, but in
essentials The Process is complete. Propaganda is dead, because we no
longer need propaganda. Comrades”—his voice sank a little—“there are
enough of us. Every city in the world has its quota. What The Process
will effect”—he paused, looked round, caught Number Two’s slightly
sardonic expression, and struck the table with his open hand—“what The
Process will effect is this,” he cried—“in one word, Annihilation of the
whole human race! Only our organisation will be left.”

“Now what I am instructed to tell you is this,”—he spoke evenly,
swiftly, statement following statement—never had the attention of an
audience been so fully his; and then suddenly the thread was broken.
With a loud grating sound, Number Fifteen, sitting next to Molloy,
pushed his chair back, and sprang to his feet.

“The door!” he shouted. “The door!” Every man in the room looked where
Fifteen was looking. Above the water-lilies and the storks, where the
top panel of the door had shown, there was a dark, empty space. The door
was open.

Number Four whipped out a revolver and dragged the screen away. The door
was open, and in the doorway stood a girl in her nightdress. Her hands
were stretched out, as if she were feeling her way. Her eyes, of a
greenish hazel in colour, were widely opened, and had a dazed
expression. Her brown hair hung in two neat plaits. Her feet were bare.
Molloy pushed forward quickly.

“Well, there, if that wasn’t the start of our lives,” he said, “and no
reason for it when all’s said and done. It’s my daughter, Renata,
comrades, and she’s walking in her sleep. Now I’ll just take her back to
her room and be with you again.”

“A minute, I think, Molloy,” said Number Two. He got up slowly out of
his chair, and came across to where the girl stood motionless, blinking
at the light. “I _said_ there was a most infernal draught. Will you come
in, Miss Molloy?” he added politely, and took the girl by the hand. She
yielded to his touch, and came into the room, shivering a little. Some
one shut the door. Molloy, shrugging his shoulders, pulled the crimson
cloth from the table and wrapped it about his daughter. The ink-soaked
patch came upon her bare shoulder, and she cried out, cast a wild look
at the strange and terrifying faces about her, and burst into a flood of
tears.

Molloy, standing behind her, looked around as she had looked, and his
face darkened. Number Four had his back against the door, and his
revolver in his hand. There was only one face in the whole circle that
was not stamped with suspicion and fear, and behind the fear and the
suspicion there was something icy, something ruthless. Number Two, with
a slightly bored expression, was feeling in his waistcoat pocket. He
produced a small glass bottle, extracted from it a tiny pellet, and
proceeded to dissolve it in the glass of water which had stood neglected
at Number Four’s right hand.

“Now, Miss Molloy,” he said, but Molloy caught him by the wrist.

“What the devil——” he stammered, and Number Two laughed.

“My dear Molloy,” he said, “how crude! You might know me better than
that.”

He held the glass to Renata’s lips, and she took it and drank. When she
had set down the glass, she felt her way to a chair and leaned back with
closed eyes. The room seemed to whirl about her. A confusion of sound
was in her ears, loud, angry, with sentences that came and went. “If she
heard,”—then another—“How long was she there? Some one must have seen
the door open.”

“Who did, then?” Then in the harshest voice of all, “I don’t care if
she’s Molloy’s daughter fifty times over, if she heard what Four said
about The Process, she must go.” Go where?

There was something cold and wet touching her shoulder. The cold seemed
to spread all over her. Now her father was speaking. She had never heard
his voice quite like that before. And now the man in the fur coat, the
one who had given her the glass of water:

“Yes, certainly, elimination if it is necessary. We’re all agreed about
that. But let us make sure.” His voice had quite a gentle sound, but
Renata’s heart began to beat with great thuds.

“Miss Molloy,”—he was speaking to her now, and she opened her eyes and
looked at him. His face was of a clear, even pallor. His eyes, light
blue and without noticeable lashes, looked straight into hers. The veil
was gone from them. They held a terrifying intelligence.

Renata sat up. The crowd of men had cleared away. She, and her father,
and the man in the fur coat were in an angle formed by the table and the
black screen, which had been drawn close around them. Her father sat
between her and the fire. His head was turned away, and he drummed
incessantly on the table with the fingers of his right hand. Beyond the
screen Renata could hear movements, and it came to her that the other
men were there, waiting. The man in the fur coat spoke to her again. His
voice was pleasant and cultivated, his manner reassuring.

“You are better now? Please don’t be frightened. I am a doctor; your
father will tell you that. Being wakened suddenly like that gave you a
shock, but you are better now.”

“Yes,” said Renata. She wished that her heart would stop beating so
hard, and she wished that the man in the fur coat would stop looking at
her.

“Now, Miss Renata, I am your doctor, you know, and I want you to answer
just a few questions. You have walked in your sleep before?”

“Yes,” said Renata—“oh yes.”

“Often?”

“Yes.”

“What was the first time?”

“I think—I think I was five years old. They found me in the garden.”

Molloy let out a great breath of relief. If she had forgotten, if her
account had differed from his—well, well, their luck was in.

There was a whispering from behind the screen. Number Two frowned.

“And the last time?”

“It was at school. I walked into another dormitory and frightened the
girls.”

The man in the fur coat nodded. “So your father said.” And for a moment
Molloy stared over his shoulder at him. “And to-night? Do you dream on
these occasions?”

Renata was reassured. Every moment it was more like an ordinary visit to
a doctor. She had been asked all these questions so often. Her voice no
longer trembled as she answered. “Yes, I dream. I walk in my sleep
because of the dream; now to-night....”

“Yes, to-night?”

“I dreamt I was back at school, and I thought I heard talking in the
next dormitory. You know we are not allowed to talk, and I am—I mean I
was a prefect. So I got up, and went to see what was the matter, and
some one pulled the screen away, and there was such a light, and such a
noise.” She put out a shaking hand, and Number Two patted it kindly.

“Very startling for you,” he said. “So you opened the door and came in
and heard us all talking. Can you tell me what was being said?” His hand
was on Renata’s wrist, and he felt the pulses leap. She spoke a shade
too quickly:

“I don’t know.”

“Perhaps I can help you. Your father, you know, travels for a firm of
chemists, a firm in which I and my friends are also interested. We were
discussing a new aniline dye which, we hope, will capture the markets of
the world. Now did you hear that word—aniline—or anything like it? You
see I want to find out just what woke you. What tiresome questions we
doctors ask, don’t we?”

He smiled, and Renata tried to collect her thoughts. They were in great
confusion.

Aniline—annihilate—the two words kept coming and going. If her head had
been clearer she would almost certainly have fallen into the trap which
had been laid for her. Molloy stopped drumming on the table and clenched
his hand. With all his strength he was praying to the saints in whom he
no longer believed. Behind the screen twenty-three men waited in a dead
silence. Renata was not frightened any more, but she was tired—oh, so
dreadfully tired. Annihilate—aniline—the words and their similarity of
sound teased her. She turned from them with a little burst of petulance.

“I didn’t hear anything like that. Oh, do let me go to bed! I only heard
some one call out....”

“Yes?” said Number Two.

“He said, ‘The door, the door!’ and then there were all those lights.”




                               CHAPTER II


Jane Smith sat on a bench in Kensington Gardens. Her entire worldly
fortune lay in her lap. It consisted of two shillings and eleven pence.
She had already counted the pennies four times, because there really
should have been three shillings. She was now engaged in making a list
in parallel columns of (_a_) those persons from whom she might seek
financial assistance, and (_b_) the excellent reasons which prevented
her from approaching them.

Jane had a passion for making lists. Years and years and years ago Mr.
Carruthers had said to her, “My dear, you must learn to be businesslike.
I have never been businesslike myself, and it has always been a great
trouble to me.” And then and there he and Jane had, in collaboration,
embarked upon the First List. It was a thrilling list, a list of toys
for Jane’s very first Christmas tree. Since then she had made lists of
her books, lists of her clothes, shopping lists, and an annual list of
good resolutions.

Jane stopped writing, and began to think about all those other lists.
She had always showed them to Mr. Carruthers, and he had always gazed at
them with the same vague benignness, and said how businesslike she was
getting.

Dear Cousin James—Jane was rich instead of poor when she thought about
him. She looked across at the trees in their new mist of green, and then
suddenly the thin April sunshine dazzled in her eyes and the green swam
into a blur. Cousin James was gone, and Jane was alone in Kensington
Gardens with two-and-elevenpence and a list.

She opened and shut her eyes very quickly once or twice, and fixed her
attention upon (_a_) and (_b_) in their parallel columns. At the top of
the list Jane had written “Cousin Louisa,” and the reason against asking
Cousin Louisa’s assistance was set down as, “Because she was a perfect
beast to my darling Jimmy, and a worse beast to me, and anyhow, she
wouldn’t.”

In moments of irreverence the late Mr. Carruthers—_the_ Mr. Carruthers,
author of five monumental volumes on Ethnographical Differentiation—had
been addressed by his young ward and cousin as “darling Jimmy.”

Professor Philpot came next. “A darling, but he is sitting somewhere in
Central Africa in a cage learning to talk gorilla. I do hope they
haven’t eaten him, or whatever they do do to people when they catch
them.”

It will be observed that Miss Smith’s association with the world of
science had not succeeded in chastening her grammar.

Jane’s pencil travelled down the list.

“Mr. Bruce Murray. In Thibet studying Llamas.”

“Henry”—Jane shook her head and solemnly put two thick black lines
through Henry’s name. One cannot ask for financial assistance from a
young man whose hand one has refused in marriage—“even if it was three
years ago, and he’s probably been in love with at least fifteen girls
since then.”

“Henry’s mamma—well, the only time she ever loved me in her life was
when I refused Henry, so I should think she was an Absolute Wash Out—and
that’s the lot.”

Jane folded up the list and put it into her handbag. Two silver
shillings and eleven copper pennies, and then the workhouse!

It was at this moment that a stout lady with a ginger-coloured pug sat
heavily down upon the far end of Jane’s bench. The ginger-coloured pug
was on a scarlet leather lead, and after seating herself the stout lady
bent forward creaking, and lifted him to a place beside her.

Jane wondered vaguely why a red face and a tightly curled fringe should
go with a passion for bugled bonnets and pugs.

“Was ’ums hungry?” said the stout lady.

The pug breathed stertorously, after the manner of pugs, and his
mistress at once produced two paper bags from a beaded reticule. From
one of them she took a macaroon, and from the other a sponge finger. The
pug chose the macaroon.

“Precious,” cooed the stout lady, and all at once Jane felt entirely
capable of theft and murder—theft from the stout lady, and murder upon
the person of the ginger pug. For at the sight of food she realised how
very, very hungry she was. Bread and margarine for breakfast six hours
before, and the April air was keen, and Jane was young.

The pug spat out the last mouthful of macaroon, ignored the sponge
finger, and snorted loudly.

“Oh, naughty, naughty,” said the stout lady. She half turned towards
Jane.

“You really wouldn’t believe how clever he is,” she observed
conversationally; “it’s a cream bun he’s asking for as plain as plain,
and yesterday when I bought them for him, he teased and teased until I
went back for macaroons; though, of course, a nice plain sponge finger
is really better for him than either. I don’t need the vet. to tell me
that. Come along, a naughty, tiresome precious then.” She lifted the pug
down from the seat, put the paper bags tidily back into her reticule,
rose ponderously to her feet, and walked away, trailing the scarlet lead
and cooing to the ginger pug.

Jane watched her go.

“Why don’t I laugh?” she said. “Why doesn’t she amuse me? One needn’t
lose one’s sense of humour even if one is down and out.”

It was at this unpropitious moment that the tall young man who had sat
down unseen upon Jane’s other side, laid his hand upon hers and observed
in stirring accents:

“Darling.”

Jane whisked round in an icy temper. Her greenish-hazel eyes looked
through the young man in the direction of the north pole. He ought to
have stiffened to an icicle then and there, instead of which he
murmured, “Darling,” again, and then added—“but what’s the matter?” Jane
stopped looking at him or through him. He had simply ceased to exist.
She picked up her two shillings and her eleven pence, put them into her
purse, and consigned her purse to her handbag. She then closed the
handbag with a snap, and rose to her feet.

“Renata!” exclaimed the young man in tones of consternation.

Jane paused and allowed herself to observe him for the first time. She
saw a young man with an intellectual forehead and studious brown eyes.
He appeared to be hurt and surprised. She decided that this was not a
would-be Lothario.

“I think you have made a mistake,” she said, and was about to pass on.

“But, Renata, Renata, darling!” stammered the young man even more
desperately. Jane assumed what Cousin Louisa had once described as “that
absurdly grand manner.” It was quite kind, but it induced the young man
to believe that Jane was conversing with him from about the distance of
the planet Saturn.

“I think,” she said, “that you must be taking me for my cousin, Renata
Molloy.”

“But I’m engaged to her—no, I mean to you—oh, hang it all, Renata,
what’s the sense of a silly joke like this?”

Jane looked at him keenly. “What is my cousin’s middle name?” she
inquired.

“Jane. I hate it.”

“Thank you,” said Jane. “My name is Jane Renata Smith, and I am Renata
Jane Molloy’s first cousin. Our mothers were twin sisters, and I have
always understood that we were very much alike.”

“Alike!” gasped the young man. Words seemed to fail him.

Jane bowed slightly and began to walk away, but, before she had gone a
dozen paces, he was beside her again.

“If you’re really Renata’s cousin, I want to talk to you—I must talk to
you. Will you let me?”

Jane walked as far as the next seat, and sat down with resignation.

“I don’t even know your name.”

“It’s Todhunter—Arnold Todhunter.” He seemed a trifle breathless. “My
sister Daphne was at school with Renata, and she came to stay with us
once in the holidays. I said we were engaged, didn’t I? Only, nobody
knows it. You won’t tell Mr. Molloy, will you?”

“I’ve never spoken to Mr. Molloy in my life,” said Jane. “There was a
most awful row when my aunt married him, and none of us have ever met
each other since. My aunt died years and years ago. I think Mr. Molloy
is an Anarchist of some sort, isn’t he?”

“Yes, yes, yes,” said Mr. Todhunter, with violence. He banged the back
of the iron seat with his hand. Jane reflected that he must be very much
in love if he failed to notice how hard it was.

“Yes, yes, he is,” repeated Mr. Todhunter, “and worse; and Renata is in
the most dreadful position. I must talk to somebody, or I shall go mad.”

“Well, you can talk to me,” said Jane soothingly. “I have always wanted
to meet Renata, and I should love to hear all about her.”

Mr. Todhunter hesitated.

“Miss Smith—you did say Smith, didn’t you?—it’s so difficult to begin.
You’ll probably think I’m mad, or trying it on, but it’s like this: I’ve
just qualified as an engineer, and I’ve got a job in South America.
Naturally I wanted to see Mr. Molloy. Renata wouldn’t let me. She hardly
knows her father, and she’s most awfully scared of him. We used to meet
in the Park. Then one day she didn’t come. She went on not coming, and I
nearly went mad. At last I went to Molloy’s flat and asked to see her.
They said she had left town, but it was a lie. Just before the door
shut, I heard her voice.” Mr. Todhunter paused. “Look here, you won’t
give any of this away, will you? You know, it’s awfully confusing for
me, your being so like Renata. It makes my head go round.”

“Go on,” said Jane.

“Well, the bit I don’t want you to tell any one is this—I mean to say,
it’s confidential, absolutely confidential: when I was at the
Engineering School, I knew a chap who had got mixed up with Molloy’s
lot. He didn’t get deep in, you’ll understand. They scared him, and he
backed out. Well, I remembered a yarn he had told me. He was in Molloy’s
flat one night, and it was raided. And I remembered that he said a lot
of them got away down the fire-escape into a yard, and then out through
some mews at the back. Well, I went and nosed about until I found that
fire-escape, and I got up it, and I found Renata’s room and talked to
her through the window. It’s not so dangerous as it sounds, because they
lock her in the flat at night, and go out. And she’s in a frightful
position—oh, Miss Smith, you simply have no idea of what a frightful
position she’s in!”

“I might have, if you would tell me what it is,” said Jane dryly. She
found Mr. Todhunter diffuse.

“Well, she’s a prisoner, to start with. They keep her locked in her
room.”

“Who’s they?” interrupted Jane.

Mr. Todhunter rumpled his hair. “She doesn’t even know their names,” he
said distractedly. His voice dropped to a whisper. “It’s the most
appalling criminal organisation, Miss Smith. Molloy’s one of them, but
they won’t even let Molloy see her alone now. You see, they think she
overheard something. They don’t know whether she did or not. If they
were sure that she did, they would kill her.”

“Well, did she?” said Jane.

“I don’t know,” said Mr. Todhunter gloomily. “She cried such a lot, and
we were both rather confused, and she’s most awfully frightened, you
know.” He glared at Jane as if she had something to do with Renata being
frightened. “If I’m to take up this job of mine, I have to sail in three
days’ time. I want her to marry me and come too; but she says that, if
she runs away, they’ll make sure she heard something, and, if it’s the
farthest ends of the earth, they’ll find her and kill her. It seems
Molloy told her that. And if she stays here and they bully her again,
she doesn’t know what she may give away. It’s a frightful position,
isn’t it?”

“Why don’t you go to the police?” said Jane.

“I thought of that, but they’d laugh at me. I haven’t heard anything,
and I don’t know anything. Molloy would only say that Renata was under
age, and that he had locked her in to prevent her running away with me.
Then they’d kill her.”

“I see,” said Jane. Then—“What do you want me to do?” she asked.

All the time that Mr. Todhunter had been glooming and groaning, running
his fingers through his hair and depicting Renata’s appalling position,
the Great Idea had been slowly forming itself in his mind. Every time
that he looked at Jane, her likeness to Renata made him feel quite
giddy. The Great Idea intoxicated him. He began to decant it.

“Miss Smith, if you would—you see, if we could only get a clear
start—what I mean to say is, South America’s a long way off——”

“Quite a distance,” Jane agreed.

“And if they thought that you were Renata, they wouldn’t look for
her—and once we were clear away——”

“My _dear_ Mr. Todhunter!” said Jane.

“I could take you up the fire-escape,” said Mr. Todhunter, in low,
thrilling accents. “It would be quite easy. They would never know that
Renata was not there. You do see what I mean, don’t you?”

“Oh yes,” said Jane in rather an odd voice. “You’ve made it beautifully
clear. Renata is in a position of deadly peril—I think that’s what you
called it—and the simple way out is for Renata to elope with you to
South America, and for me to be in the position of deadly peril instead.
It’s a beautiful plan.”

“Then you’ll do it?” exclaimed the oblivious Mr. Todhunter.

Jane looked away. Immediately in front of her was a strip of gravelled
path. Beyond that there was green grass, and a bed of pale blue
hyacinths, and budding daffodils. Two-and-elevenpence, and then the
workhouse—the ascent of a fire-escape in the April darkness, and at the
top of the fire-escape a position of deadly peril.

“Of course,” said Jane, speaking to herself in her own mind. “I might
try to be a housemaid, but one has to have a character, and I don’t
believe Cousin Louisa would give me one.”

She turned back to the chafing Mr. Todhunter.

“Let’s talk,” she said briefly.




                              CHAPTER III


Jane took down the telephone directory, opened it, and began to run her
finger along the column of “M’s.” As she did so, she wondered why the
light in public call offices is so arranged as to strike the top of the
occupant’s head, and never by any chance to illumine the directory.

“Marbot”—“Marbottle”—“March, The Rev. Aloysius”—“March, George William
Adolphus”—“March, Mrs. de Luttrelle.”

Jane made a mark opposite the number.

When Rosa Mortimer married Henry Luttrell March, she thought, and often
said, how much nicer the Luttrell would look if it were written de
Luttrelle. If her husband had died six months earlier than he actually
did, the name in this improved form would most certainly have been
inflicted upon an infant Henry. As it was, the child was baptized and
registered as Henry Luttrell, and ten years later took up the struggle
over the name where his father had left it. Eventually, a compromise was
effected, Mrs. March flaunting her de Luttrelle, and Henry tending to
suppress his Luttrell under an initial. His mother never ceased to
bemoan his stubbornness.

“Any one would think that Henry was not proud of his family, and he may
say what he likes, but there were de Luttrelles for hundreds of years
before any one ever heard of a Luttrell. And Luttrell Marches is bound
to come to him, or practically bound to, because, whatever Henry may
say, I am quite sure that Tony will never turn up again.”

The very sound of the aggrieved voice was in Jane’s ears as she unhung
the receiver and gave the number. She supposed that Henry still lived
with his mother, and that Mrs. March would still keep an indignant
bridge table waiting whilst she discoursed upon Henry—his faults, his
foibles, his ailments, and his prospects of inheriting Luttrell Marches.

At that moment Henry, appropriately enough, was gazing at a photograph
of Jane. It must not be imagined that this was a habit of his. Three
years ago was three years ago, and Jane had receded into the distance
with a great many other pleasant things. But to-night he had been
looking through some old snapshots, and all of a sudden there was that
three-years-old Cornish holiday, and Jane. Henry sat frowning at the
photograph.

Jane—why was one fond of Jane? He wondered where she was. It was only
last week that some one had mentioned old Carruthers, and had seemed
surprised that Henry did not know how long he had been dead.

The telephone bell rang, and Henry jumped up with relief.

“Hullo!” said a voice—and “Hullo!” said Henry.

“Is that Captain March?”

“Speaking,” said Henry.

“It’s Jane Smith,” said the voice, and Henry very nearly dropped the
receiver. There was a pause, and then Jane said:

“I want to come and see you on business. Can you spare the time?”

“Er—my mother’s out,” said Henry, and he heard her say, “Thank
goodness,” with much sincerity. The next moment she was apologising.

“Oh, I say, Henry, that sounded awfully rude, but I really do want to
see you about something very important. No, you can’t come and see me.
I’m one of the great unemployed, and I’m not living anywhere at present.
No, I won’t meet you at a restaurant either. Just tell me your nearest
Tube Station, and I’ll come along. All right then; I won’t be more than
ten minutes.”

Henry turned away, feeling a little dazed. Being a methodical young man,
he proceeded to put away the photographs with which the table was
littered. A little snapshot of Jane he kept to the last, and ended by
not putting it away at all. After he had looked at it for some time, he
put it on the mantelpiece behind the clock. The hands pointed to nine
o’clock precisely. Then he looked at himself in the glass that was over
the mantel, and straightened his tie.

Henry’s mother naturally considered him the most beautiful of created
beings. Without going quite as far as this, Henry certainly approved of
his own looks. Having approved of himself, he proceeded to move the
clock back half an inch, and to alter the position of the twisted
candlesticks on either side of it. Then he poked the fire. Then he began
to walk up and down the room. And then the bell rang.

Henry went out into the hall and opened the door of the flat, and there
on the threshold stood Jane in a shabby blue serge coat and skirt, with
an old black felt hat. Not pretty, not smart—just Jane. She walked in
and gave him her hand.

“Hullo, Henry!” she said. Then she laughed. “Or, do I call you Captain
March?”

“You call me Henry,” said Henry, and he shut the door.

“I expect you’d like to come into the drawing-room”—this came hurriedly
after a moment’s pause. He moved across the hall, switched on the light,
and stood aside for her to pass. Jane looked in and saw more pink
cushions and pink lamp-shades than she would have believed it possible
to get into one small room. There were also a great many pink roses, and
the air was heavy with scent.

“I’m sure that’s not where you see people on business,” said Jane, and
Henry led the way into the dining-room.

“This is my room,” he said, and Jane sat down on a straight, high-backed
chair and leaned her elbows on the table.

“Now, Henry,” she said, “I’ve come here to tell you a story, and I want
you to sit down and listen to it; and please forget that you are you,
and that I am I. Just listen.”

Henry sat down obediently. It was so good to see Jane again that, if she
liked to sit there and talk till midnight, he had no objection.

“Now attend,” said Jane, and she began her story.

“Once upon a time there were twin sisters, and they were called Renata
and Jane Carruthers. They had a cousin James—you remember him—my darling
Jimmy? Jimmy wanted to marry Renata, but she refused him and married
John Smith, my father, and when I was five years old she and my father
both died, and Jimmy adopted me. Now we come to the other twin. Her name
was Jane, and she ran away to America with a sort of anarchist Irishman
named Molloy. She died young, and she left one daughter, whom she called
Renata Jane. I, by the bye, am Jane Renata. The twin sisters were so
much alike that no one ever knew them apart. Jimmy had photographs of
them, and even he could never tell me which was my mother and which was
my Aunt Jane. Now, Henry, listen to this. My Cousin Renata is in London,
and it seems that she and I are just as much alike as our mothers were.
In fact, it’s because Renata’s young man took me for Renata this
afternoon that I am here, asking your advice, at the present moment.”

Henry smiled a somewhat puzzled smile. “Have you asked my advice?” he
said; but Jane did not smile. Instead, she leaned forward a little.

“Are you still at Scotland Yard, Henry?”

He nodded.

“Criminal Investigation Department?”

He nodded again.

“Then listen. Renata is in what her young man calls ‘a position of
deadly peril.’ In more ordinary language, she’s in a nasty hole. Do you
know anything about Cornelius Molloy? That’s the Anarchist Uncle,
Renata’s father, you know.”

“There aren’t any anarchists nowadays,” said Henry meditatively.

“I was brought up on anarchists, and I don’t see that it matters what
you call them,” said Jane. “‘A’ for Anarchist, ‘B’ for Bolshevik, and so
on. The point is, do you know anything about Molloy?”

“I’ve heard of him,” Henry admitted.

“Nothing good?”

“We don’t hear much that’s good about people—officially, you know.”

“Well, Arnold Todhunter says that Renata is supposed to have overheard
something—something that her father’s associates think so important that
they’re keeping her under lock and key, and seriously contemplating
putting her out of the way altogether.”

“Did she overhear anything?” asked Henry, just as Jane had done.

“No one knows except Renata, and she won’t tell. Molloy goes back to the
States to-morrow. They won’t let him take Renata with him, and Arnold
Todhunter wants to marry her and carry her off to Bolivia, where he’s
got an engineering job.”

“That appears to be a good scheme,” said Henry.

“Yes, but you see they’ll never let her go so long as they are not sure
how much she knows. Arnold says she was walking in her sleep, and
blundered in on about twenty-five of them, all talking the most deadly
secrets. And they don’t know when she woke or what she heard.
And”—Jane’s eyes began to dance a little—“Arnold has a perfectly
splendid idea. He takes Renata to Bolivia, and I take Renata’s place.
Nobody knows she has gone, so nobody looks for her.”

“What nonsense,” said Henry; then—“What’s this Todhunter like?”

“A mug,” said Jane briefly. She paused, and then went on in a different
voice:

“Henry, who is at Luttrell Marches now? Did your Cousin Tony ever turn
up?”

Henry stared at her.

“Why do you ask that?”

“Because,” said Jane, with perfect simplicity, “Renata is to be sent
down to Luttrell Marches to-morrow, and somebody there—somebody,
Henry—will decide whether she is to be eliminated or not.”

Henry sat perfectly silent. He stared at Jane, and she stared at him. It
seemed as if the silence in the room were growing heavier and heavier,
like water that gathers behind some unseen dam. All of a sudden Henry
sprang to his feet.

“Is this a hoax?” he asked, in tones of such anger that Jane hardly
recognised them.

Jane got up too. The hand that she rested upon the table was not quite
steady.

“Henry, how dare you?” and her voice shook a little too.

Henry swung round.

“No, no—I beg your pardon, Jane, for the Lord’s sake don’t look at me
like that. It’s, it’s—well, it’s pretty staggering to have you come here
and say....” He paused. “What was it you wanted to know?”

“I asked you who is living at Luttrell Marches.”

Henry was silent. He walked to the end of the room and back. Jane’s eyes
followed him. Where had this sudden wave of emotion come from? It seemed
to be eddying about them, filling the confined space. Jane made herself
look away from Henry, forced herself to notice the room, the furniture,
the pictures—anything that was commonplace and ordinary. This was
decidedly Henry’s room and not his mother’s, from the worn leather
chairs and plain oak table to the neutral coloured walls with their
half-dozen Meissonier engravings. Not a flower, not a trifle of any
sort, and one wall all books from ceiling to floor. Exactly opposite to
Jane there was a fine print of “The Generals in the Snow.” The lowering,
thunderous sky, heavy with snow and black with the omens of Napoleon’s
fall, dominated the picture, the room. Jane looked at it, and looked
away with a shiver, and as she did so, Henry was speaking:

“Jane, I don’t want to answer that question for a minute or two. I want
to think. I want a little time to turn things over in my mind. Look
here, come round to the fire and sit down comfortably. Let’s talk about
something else for a bit. I want all your news, for one thing. Tell me
what you’ve been doing with yourself.”

Jane came slowly to the fireside. After all, it was pleasant just to put
everything on one side, and be comfortable. Henry’s chair was very
comfortable, and the day seemed to have lasted for weeks, and weeks, and
weeks. She put out her hands to the fire, and then, because she noticed
that they were still trembling a little, she folded them in her lap.
Henry leaned against the mantelpiece and looked down at her.

“Where have you been?” he asked.

“Well, that summer at Upwater—you know we were lodging with the woman
who had the post office—Jimmy and I stayed on after all the other
visitors were gone. I expect it was rather irregular, but I used to help
her. You see her son didn’t get back until eighteen months after the
armistice, and she wasn’t really up to the work. In the end, you may say
I ran that post office. I did it very well, too. It was something to do,
especially after Jimmy died.”

“Yes, I heard. I wondered where you were.”

“I stayed on until the son came home, and then I couldn’t. He was awful,
and she thought him quite perfect, poor old soul. I came to London and
got a job in an office, and a month ago I lost it. The firm was cutting
down expenses, like everybody else. And then—well, I looked for another
job, and couldn’t find one, and this morning my landlady locked the door
in my face and kept my box. And that, Henry, is why I am thinking
seriously of changing places with my Cousin Renata, who, at least, has a
roof over her head and enough to eat.”

“Jane,” said Henry furiously, “you don’t mean to say—so that’s why
you’re looking such a white rag!”

Jane was horrified to find that her eyes had filled with tears. She
laughed, but the laugh was not a very convincing one.

“I did have a cup of coffee and two penny buns,” she began; and then
Henry was fetching sandwiches from the sideboard and pressing a cup of
hot chocolate into her not unwilling hands.

“They leave this awful stuff over a spirit lamp for my mother, and she
always has sandwiches when she comes in. It’s better than nothing,” he
added in tones of wrath.

“It’s not awful,” protested Jane; but Henry was not mollified.

“I don’t understand,” he said. “Why are you so hard up? Didn’t Mr.
Carruthers provide for you?”

Jane’s colour rose.

“He hadn’t much, and what he had was an annuity. You know what Jimmy
was, and how he forgot things. I am really quite sure that he had
forgotten about its being an annuity, and that he thought that I should
be quite comfortable.”

Henry swallowed his opinion of Mr. Carruthers.

“Was he your only relation?”

“Well,” said Jane, who was beginning to feel better, “you can’t really
count Cousin Louisa; she was only Jimmy’s half-sister, and that makes
her a sort of third half-cousin of my mother’s. Besides, she always
simply loathed me.”

“And you’ve no other relations at all?”

“Only the Anarchist Uncle,” said Jane brightly. She gave him her cup and
plate. “Your mother has simply lovely sandwiches, Henry. Thank you ever
so much for them, but what will she do when she comes home and finds I
have eaten them all?”

“I don’t know, I’m sure.” Henry’s tone was very short. “Look here, Jane,
you must let—er, er, I mean, won’t you let....” He stuck, and Jane
looked at him very kindly.

“Nothing doing, Henry,” she said, “but it’s frightfully nice of you, all
the same.”

There was a silence. When Jane thought it had lasted long enough, she
said:

“So, you see, it all comes back again to Renata. Have you done your
thinking, Henry?”

“Yes,” said Henry. He drew a chair to the table and sat down half turned
to the fire—half turned to Jane. Sometimes he looked at her, but oftener
his gaze dwelt intently on the rise and fall of the flames.

“What makes you think that your cousin is to be taken to Luttrell
Marches? Did these people tell her so?”

“No,” said Jane—“of course not. As far as I can make out from Arnold
Todhunter, Renata is locked in her room, but there’s another key and she
can get in and out. She can move about inside the flat, but she can’t
get out of it. Well, one night she crept out and listened, though you
would have thought she had had enough of listening, and she heard them
say that, as soon as her father was out of the way, they would send her
to Luttrell Marches and let ‘Number One’ decide whether she was to be
‘eliminated.’ Since then she’s been nearly off her head with terror,
poor kid. Now, Henry, it’s your turn. What about Luttrell Marches?”

Henry’s face seemed to have grown rigid. “It’s impossible,” he said in a
low voice.

The clock above them struck ten, and he waited till the last stroke had
died away.

“I don’t know quite what to say to you, but whatever I say is
confidential. You’ve heard my mother talk of the Luttrells, and you may
or may not know that my uncle died a year ago. You have also probably
heard that his son, my Cousin Anthony, disappeared into the blue in
1915.”

“Then Luttrell Marches belongs to you?” For the life of her, Jane could
not keep a little consternation out of her voice.

“No. If Tony had been missing for seven years, I could apply for leave
to presume his death, but there’s another year to run. My mother—every
one—supposes that I am only waiting until the time is up. As a matter of
fact—Jane, I’m telling you what I haven’t told my mother—Anthony
Luttrell is alive.”

“Where?”

“I can’t tell you. And you must please forget what I have told
you—unless——”

“Unless?”

“Unless you have to remember it,” said Henry in an odd voice. “For the
rest, Luttrell Marches was let during my uncle’s lifetime to Sir William
Carr-Magnus. You know who I mean?”

“_The_ Sir William Carr-Magnus?” said Jane, and Henry nodded.

Jane felt absolutely dazed. Sir William Carr-Magnus, the great chemist,
great philanthropist, and Government expert!

“He is engaged,” said Henry, “on a series of most important
investigations and experiments which he is conducting on behalf of the
Government. The extreme seclusion of Luttrell Marches, and the lonely
country all round are, of course, exactly what is required under the
circumstances.”

Quite suddenly Jane began to laugh.

“It’s all mad,” she said, “but I’ve quite made up my mind. Renata shall
elope, and I will go to Luttrell Marches. It will be better than the
workhouse anyhow. You know, Henry, seriously, I have a lot of
qualifications for being a sleuth. Jimmy taught me simply heaps of
languages, I’ve got eyes like gimlets, and I can do lip-reading.”

“What?”

“Yes, I can. Jimmy had a perfectly deaf housekeeper, and it worried him
to hear us shouting at each other, so I had her taught, and learned
myself for fun.”

Henry crossed to the bookcase and came back with a photograph album in
his hand. Taking a loose card from between the pages, he put it down in
front of Jane, saying:

“There you may as well make your host’s acquaintance.”

Jane looked long at the face which was sufficiently well known to the
public. The massive head, the great brow with eyes set very deep beneath
shaggy tufts of hair, the rather hard mouth—all these were already
familiar to her, and yet she looked long. After a few moments’
hesitation, Henry put a second photograph upon the top of the first, and
this time Jane caught her breath. It was the picture of a woman in
evening dress. The neck and shoulders were like those of a statue,
beautiful and, as it were, rigid. But it was the beauty of the face that
took Jane’s breath away—that and a certain look in the eyes. The word
hungry came into her mind and stayed there. A woman with proud lips and
hungry eyes, and the most beautiful face in the world.

“Who is it?” she asked.

“Raymond Carr-Magnus. She is Lady Heritage, and a widow now—Sir
William’s only child. He gave her a boy’s name and a boy’s
education—brought her up to take his place, and found himself with a
lovely woman on his hands. This was done from Amory’s portrait of her in
1915—the year of her marriage. She was at one time engaged to my Cousin
Anthony. If you do go to Luttrell Marches, you will see her, for she
makes her home with Sir William.”

Henry’s voice was perfectly expressionless. The short sentences followed
one another with a little pause after each. Jane looked sideways, and
said very quick and low:

“Were you very fond of her, Henry?”

And when she had said it, her heart beat and her hands gripped one
another.

Henry took the photograph from her lap.

“I said she was engaged to Tony.”

“Yes, Henry, but were you fond of her?”

“Confound you, Jane. Yes, I was.”

“Well, I don’t wonder.”

Jane rose to her feet.

“I must be going,” she said. “I have an assignation with Arnold
Todhunter, who is going to take me up a fire-escape and substitute me
for Renata.”

Henry took out a pocket-book.

“Will you give me Molloy’s address, please?” And when she had given it:
“You know, my good girl, there’s nothing on earth to prevent my having
that flat raided and your cousin’s deposition taken.”

“No, of course not,” said Jane—“only then nobody will go down to
Luttrell Marches and find out what’s going on there.”

She looked straight at Henry as she spoke.

“I’m going, whatever you say, and whatever you do, and I only came to
you because——”

“Because——”

“Well, it seemed so sort of lonesome going off into situations of deadly
peril with no one taking the very slightest interest.”

Jane’s voice shook absurdly on the last word. And in an instant Henry
had his arm round her and was saying, “Jane—Jane—you shan’t go, you
shan’t.”

Jane stepped back. Her eyes blazed. “And why?” she said.

She tried to say it icily, but she could not steady her voice. Henry’s
arm felt solid and comfortable.

“Because I’m damned if I’ll let you,” said Henry very loud, and upon
that the door opened and there entered Mrs. de Luttrelle March, larger,
pinker, and more horrified than Jane had ever seen her. She, for her
part, beheld Henry, his arms about a shabby girl, and her horror reached
its climax when she recognised the girl as “that dreadfully designing
Jane Smith.”

“Henry,” she gasped—“oh, Henry!”

Jane released herself with a jerk, and Mrs. de Luttrelle March sat down
in the nearest chair and burst into a flood of tears. Her purple satin
opera cloak fell away, disclosing a peach-coloured garment that clung to
her plump contours and seemed calculated rather for purposes of
revelation than concealment. Large tears rolled down her powdered
cheeks, and she sought in vain for a handkerchief.

“Henry—I didn’t think it of you—at least not here, not under my very
roof. And if you were going to break my heart like your father, it would
have been kinder to do it ten years ago, because then I should have
known what to expect, and anyhow, I should probably have been dead by
now.”

She sniffed and made a desperate gesture.

“Oh, Henry, I can’t find it! Haven’t you got one, or don’t you care
whether my heart’s broken? And I haven’t even got a handkerchief to cry
with.”

Henry produced a handkerchief and gave it to her without attempting to
speak. Years of experience had taught him that to stay his mother’s
first flood of words was an impossibility.

Jane felt rather sick. Mrs. March was so very large and pink, and the
whole affair so very undignified, that her one overmastering desire was
to get away. She heard Henry’s “This is Miss Smith, Mother. She came to
see me on business”; and then Mrs. March’s wail, “Your father always
called it business too, and I didn’t think—no, I didn’t think you’d
bring a girl in here when my back was turned.”

Jane stood up very straight, but Henry had taken her hand again.

“I beg your pardon,” he said, in a very low voice. “She—she had a rotten
time when she was young”; then, in a tone that cut through Mrs. March’s
sobs as an east wind cuts the rain, he said:

“My dear mother, you are making some extra-ordinary mistake. The last
time that I saw Miss Smith was three years ago. I then asked her to
marry me, and she refused. I would go on asking her every day from now
to kingdom come if I thought that it was the slightest good. As it
isn’t, I am only anxious to be of use to her in any possible way. She
came here to-night to ask my advice on an official matter.”

Mrs. March fixed her very large blue eyes upon her son. They were
swimming with tears, but behind the tears there was something which
suddenly went to Jane’s heart—something bewildered and hurt, and rather
ungrown-up.

“You always were a good boy, Henry,” said Mrs. March, and Henry’s
instant rigid embarrassment had the effect of cheering Jane. She came
forward and took the limp white hand that still clutched a borrowed
handkerchief.

“I’m sure he’ll always be a good son to you, and I wouldn’t take him
away from you for the world. He’s just a very kind friend. Good-night,
Mrs. March.”

She went out without looking back, but Henry followed her into the hall.

“You’re not really going to plunge into this foolish affair?” he said as
they stood for a moment by the door. It was Jane who opened it.

“Yes, I am, Henry. You can’t stop me, and you know it.”

Jane’s eyes looked straight into his, and Henry did know.

“Very well, then. Read the agony column in _The Times_. If I want you to
have a message, it will be there, signed with the day of the week on
which it appears. You understand? If the message is in _The Times_ of
Wednesday, it will be signed, ‘Wednesday.’ And if there are directions
in the message, you will obey them implicitly.”

“How _thrilling_,” said Jane.

“Is it?”

Henry looked very tired.

“I don’t know if I’ve done right, but I can’t tell you any more just
now. By the way, Molloy’s flat will be watched, and I shall know whether
you go to Luttrell Marches or not. Good-bye, Jane.”

“Good-bye, Henry.”

Henry watched the lift disappear.




                               CHAPTER IV


“This,” said Arnold Todhunter, “is the fire-escape.” His tone was that
of one who says, “This is our Rembrandt.” Proud proprietorship pervaded
his entire atmosphere.

“Ssh!” said Jane.

They stood together in a small back-yard. It seemed to be quite full of
things like barrows, paving-stones, old tin cans, and broken crockery.
Jane had already tripped over a meat tin and collided with two chicken
coops and a dog kennel. She reflected that this was just the sort of
back-yard Arnold would find.

Everything was very dark. The blackest shadow of all marked the wall
that they were to climb. Here and there a lighted window showed, and
Jane could see that these windows had rounded parapets jutting out on a
level with the sill.

Arnold, meanwhile, was tugging at something which seemed to be a short
plank.

“What on earth?” she whispered.

“We shall need it. I’d better go first.”

And forthwith he began to climb, clutching the plank with one hand and
the iron ladder with the other.

Jane let him get a good start, and followed.

The ladder was quite easy to climb; it was only when one thought of how
immensely far away the skyline had looked, that it seemed as if it would
be very uncomfortable to look down instead of up, and to see that horrid
little yard equally far below.

Jane did look down once, and everything was black and blurred and
shadowy. It was odd to be clinging to the side of a house, with the dark
all round one, and the steady roar of the London traffic dulled almost
to nothingness.

The night was very still, and a little cold. Somewhere below amongst the
tin cans a cat said, “Grrrwoosh,” not loud, but on a softly inquiring
note. The inquiry was instantly answered by a long, piercing wail which
travelled rapidly over four octaves, and then dwelt with soulful
intensity upon an agonising top note.

With a muttered exclamation, Arnold Todhunter dropped his plank. It
grazed Jane’s shoulder, and fell among the cats and crockery with a most
appalling clatter.

Jane shut her eyes, gripped the ladder desperately, and wondered whether
she would fall first and be arrested afterwards, or the other way about.
Nothing happened. Apparently the neighbourhood was inured to the
bombardment of cats.

After a moment Jane became aware of Arnold’s boots in close proximity to
her head. A wave of fury swept away her giddiness, and she began to
descend with a rapidity which surprised herself.

Once more they stood in the yard.

Once more Arnold groped for his plank.

“I’m going up first,” said Jane, in a low tone of rage. “I won’t be
guillotined on a public fire-escape. Which floor is it?”

“The top,” said Arnold sulkily, and without more ado Jane went up the
ladder.

It was exactly like a rather horrid dream. The ladder was very cold and
very gritty, and you climbed, and climbed, and went on climbing without
arriving anywhere.

Pictures of the Eiffel Tower and New York skyscrapers flitted through
Jane’s mind. She also remembered interesting paragraphs about how many
million pennies placed on end would reach to the moon. And at long, long
last the escape ended at a window-sill with a parapet-enclosed space
beneath it.

Jane sat down on the window-sill and shut her eyes tight. She had a
horrid feeling that the building was rocking a little. After a moment
Arnold crawled over the edge of the coping, dragging his plank. He was
panting.

“This,” he said, with his mouth close to Jane’s ear—“this window only
leads to the landing where the lift shaft ends. We’ve got to get across
to the next one, which is inside Molloy’s flat. That’s what the plank is
for.”

“You’re blowing down my neck,” said Jane.

Arnold Todhunter felt that he had never met a girl whom he disliked so
much. Extraordinary that she should look so like Renata and be so
different.

He knelt just inside the parapet, and pushed the board slowly out into
the dark until it rested on the parapet of the next window.

“Will you go first, or shall I?” he whispered.

“I will.”

Jane felt sure that, if she had to watch Arnold balancing on that plank
miles above the ground, she would never be able to cross it herself.

The reflection that it was Renata, and not she, who would have to make
the descent fortified her considerably. Even so, she never quite knew
how she crossed to the other window. It was an affair of clenched teeth
and a mind that shut out resolutely everything except the next groping
clutch of the hand—the next carefully taken step.

She sank against the window-sill and heard Arnold follow her. Just at
the end he slipped; he seemed to change his feet, and then with a heavy
thud pitched down on the top of Jane.

She thought he said “Damn!” and she was quite sure that she said
“Idiot!”

There was an awful moment while they listened for the fall of the plank,
but it held to the coping by a bare half-inch.

“Thank goodness I’m not Renata!” said Jane, with heartfelt sincerity.
And—

“Thank goodness, you’re not!” returned Mr. Todhunter, with equal
fervour, and at that moment the window opened.

There was a little sobbing gasp, and a girl was clinging to Arnold
Todhunter and whispering:

“Darling—darling, I thought you’d never come.”

Arnold crawled through the open window, and from the pitch-black hall
there came the sounds of demonstrative affection.

“Good gracious me, there’s no accounting for tastes!” said Jane, under
her breath. And she too climbed down into the darkness.

Arnold appeared to be trying to explain Jane to Renata, whilst Renata
alternated between sobs and kisses.

Jane lost her temper, suddenly and completely.

“For goodness’ sake, you two, come where there’s a light, and where we
can talk sense. Every minute you waste is just asking for trouble.
What’s that room with the light?”

It is difficult to be impressive in a low whisper, but Renata did stop
kissing Arnold.

“My bedroom,” she said—“I’m supposed to be locked in.”

Jane groped in the dark and got Renata by the arm.

“Come along in there and talk to me. We’ve got to talk. Arnold can wait
outside the window. I don’t want him in the least. You’re going to spend
the rest of your life with him in Bolivia, so you needn’t worry. I
simply won’t have him whilst we are talking.”

Arnold loathed Jane a little more, but Renata allowed herself to be
detached from him with a sob.

Inside the lighted bedroom the two girls looked at one another in an
amazed silence.

In height and contour, feature and colouring, the likeness was without a
flaw.

Facing them was a small wardrobe of painted wood. A narrow panel of
looking-glass formed the door. The two figures were reflected in it, and
Jane, tossing her hat on to the bed, studied them there with a long,
careful scrutiny.

The same brown hair, growing in the same odd peak upon the forehead, the
same arch to the brow, the same greenish-hazel eyes. Renata’s face was
tear-stained, her eyelids red and swollen—“but that’s exactly how I look
when I cry,” said Jane. She set her hand by Renata’s hand, her foot by
Renata’s foot. The same to a shade.

The other girl watched her with bewildered eyes.

“Speak—say something,” said Jane.

“What shall I say?”

“Anything—the multiplication table, the days of the week—I want to hear
your voice.”

“Oh, Jane, what an odd girl you are!” said Renata—“and don’t you think
Arnold had better come in? It must be awfully cold out there.”

“Presently,” said Jane. “It’s very hard to tell, but I believe that our
voices are as much alike as the rest of us.”

She opened her bag, and took out The List and a pencil.

“Now, write something—I don’t care what.”

Renata wrote her own name, and then, after a pause, “It is a fine day.”

“Quite like,” said Jane, “but nearly all girls do write the same hand
now. I can manage that. Now, tell me, where were you at school?”

“Miss Bazing’s, Ilfracombe.”

“When did you leave?”

“Two months ago.”

“Have you been in America?”

“Not since I was five.”

“Anywhere else out of England?”

“No.”

“What languages do you know?”

“French—I’m not good at it.”

“Well, that’s that. Now, Arnold tells me you heard them say you were to
go to Luttrell Marches?”

Renata looked terrified.

“Yes, yes, I did.”

“You’re not supposed to know? They haven’t told you officially?”

“No—no, they haven’t told me anything.”

“Your father goes away to-morrow. Have they told you that?”

“I can’t remember,” said Renata, bursting into tears. “Oh, Jane, you
don’t know what it’s like!—to be locked in here—to have them come and
ask questions until I don’t know what I’m saying—and to know, to know
all the time that if I make one slip I’m lost.”

“Yes, yes, but it’s going to be all right,” said Jane.

“I can’t sleep,” sobbed Renata, “and I can’t eat.” She held up her wrist
and looked at it with interest. “I’ve got ever so much thinner.”

Jane could have slapped her. She reflected with thankfulness that
Bolivia was a good long way off.

“Now, look here,” she said, “you talk about ‘they’—who are ‘they’?”

“There’s a man in a fur coat,” faltered Renata—“that is to say, he
generally has on a fur coat; he always seems to be cold. He’s the worst;
I don’t know his name, but they call him Number Two. He’s English. Then
there’s Number Four. He’s a foreigner of some sort, and he’s
dreadful—dreadful. I think—I think”—her voice dropped to a whisper—“my
father is Number Three.” Then almost inaudibly, “Number One is at
Luttrell Marches. It’s Number One who will decide about me—about me. Oh,
Jane, I’m so dreadfully frightened!”

Renata’s eyes, wide and terrified, stared past Jane into vacancy.

“You needn’t be in the least frightened; you’re going to Bolivia,” said
Jane briskly.

“I must tell some one,” said Renata, still in that whispering
voice—still staring. “I didn’t tell them, I wouldn’t tell them, but I
must tell some one. Jane, I must tell you what I heard.”

Quick as lightning Jane put her hand over the other girl’s mouth.

“Wait!” she said, and in the pause that followed two things stood out in
her mind clear and sharp. If Renata told her secret, Jane’s danger would
be doubled. If Renata did not tell it, the crime these men were planning
might ripen undisturbed. Jane had a high courage, but she hesitated.

Her hand dropped slowly to her side. She saw Renata’s mouth open
protestingly, and there came on her a wild impulse to stave things off,
to have time, just a little time before she let that secret in.

“We’ve got to change clothes,” she said. “Quick, give me that skirt and
take mine. Yes, put on the coat, and I’ll give you my shoes, too. My
hat’s on the bed; you’d better put it on.”

Renata obeyed. A resentful feeling of being hustled, ordered about,
treated like a child, was upon her; but Jane moved and spoke so quickly,
and seemed so sure of herself, that there seemed no opening for protest.
She thought Jane’s blue serge shabby and old fashioned—not nearly as
nice as her own—and Jane’s shoes were terribly worn and needed mending.

“Now, listen,” said Jane.

“If Arnold likes to go to my rooms and pay up two weeks’ rent, he can
get my box and all my other clothes for you. There’s not very much, but
it’ll be better than nothing. I’ll write a line for him to take, and put
the address on it. And will you please remember now and from henceforth
that you are Jane Renata Smith, and not Renata Jane Molloy?”

Jane was scribbling a couple of lines as she spoke, and as she turned
and gave the paper into Renata’s hand, she knew that she must decide
now. The moment of grace was up, and whether she bade Renata speak or be
silent, there could be no drawing back.

“What were you going to tell me?” she said.

Renata stood silent for a long minute. She was twisting and turning the
slip of paper which Jane had given her. She looked down at her twisting
fingers; her breath began to come more quickly. Then with great
suddenness she pushed the note into her pocket, and caught at Jane with
both hands.

“Yes, I must tell you—I must. It will be coming nearer all the time, and
I must tell some one, or I shall go mad.”

“Tell me, then,” said Jane. “You were walking in your sleep, and you
opened the door and heard—what did you hear?”

Jane’s eyes were bright and steady, her face set. She had taken her
decision, and her courage rose to meet an unknown shock.

“I was walking in my sleep,” repeated Renata, in a low, faltering voice,
“and I opened the door, and I heard——”

“What did you hear?”

“There was a screen in front of me, and just beyond the screen a man
talking. I heard—oh, Jane, I heard every single word he said! I can’t
forget one of them—if I could, if I only could!”

“What did you hear?” said Jane firmly.

Renata’s grip became desperate. She leant forward until her lips touched
Jane’s ear. In a voice that was only a breath, she gave word for word,
sentence by sentence, the speech in which Number Four had proclaimed the
death sentence of the civilised world. It was just a bald transcript
like the whisper of a phonograph record, as if the words and sentences
had been stamped on an inanimate plate by some recording machinery, to
be released again with utter regularity and correctness.

Every vestige of colour left Jane’s face as she listened. Only her eyes
remained bright and steady. Something seemed to knock at her heart.
Renata’s last mechanical repetition died away, and with a sob of relief
she flung her arms round Jane.

“Oh, Jane, I do hope they won’t kill you! Oh, I do hope they won’t!”

“So do I,” said Jane.

She detached herself from Renata, and as she did so, both girls heard
the same thing—from beyond the two closed doors the groan and grind of
the lift machinery in motion.

“They’ve come back,” said Renata, in a whisper of terror.

Jane’s hand was on the electric-light switch before the words had left
Renata’s lips.

As darkness sprang upon the room she had the door open. Her grip was on
Renata’s wrist, her arm about Renata’s waist, and they were in the hall.
It seemed pitch black at first, with a gloom that pressed upon their
eyes and confused the sense of direction.

The lift rose with a steady rumble.

Then, as Jane stared before her, the oblong of the window sprang into
view. She took a step forward and felt Renata’s head against her
shoulder.

“I’m going to faint,” came in a gasp.

“Then you’ll never see Arnold again. Do you want to be caught like
this?”

“Jane, I can’t.”

Jane dragged her on.

“Renata, you rabbit!—if they don’t kill you, I will. Faint in Bolivia as
much as you like, but I forbid you to do it here.”

“Oh, Jane!”

Jane’s arm felt the weight of a limp, sagging figure, but they had
reached the window. From the sill Arnold bent, listening anxiously.

“Quick!” gasped Jane.

And, as his arm relieved the strain, she pinched Renata with all her
might. There was a sob—a gasp—Arnold lifted, Jane pushed, and somehow
the thing was done. Arnold and Renata were outside, crouched down
between the parapet and the window, whilst Jane leaned panting against
the jamb.

As the lift stopped with a jerk, her rigid fingers drew the window down
and fastened it. Now, horribly loud, the clang of the iron gate. Steps
outside—voices—the grate of a key in the lock.

Jane knew now what Renata had felt. Easy, so easy to yield to this
paralysis of terror, and to stand rooted there until they came! With all
her might she pushed the temptation from her and roused to action.

Thank Heaven, she had had no time to put on Renata’s shoes!

After the first movement strength and swiftness came to her. She was
across the hall without a sound. The bedroom door closed upon her. As it
did so, the door of the flat swung wide.




                               CHAPTER V


Jane stood in the dark, her hand upon the door knob. Slowly, very
slowly, she released it. As she leaned there, her head almost touching
the panelling, she could hear two men talking in the hall beyond. They
spoke in English, but only the outer sound of the words came to her.

With an immense effort she straightened herself, and was about to move
away when a thought struck her like a knife-blow—the key—the second
tell-tale key—if she had forgotten it!

Her hand slid back, touched the cold key, turned and withdrew it, moving
with a steady firmness that surprised herself.

Then she made a half-turn and tried to visualise the room as she had
seen it in the light.

Immediately opposite, the cupboard with the looking-glass panel. The
window in the right-hand wall, and the bed between window and cupboard.
At the foot of the bed a chair, and on the same side as the window a
chest of drawers with a looking-glass upon it and Renata’s plain
schoolgirlish brush and comb.

When she had placed everything, Jane began to move forward in the
direction of the window. Her left hand touched the rail of the bed-foot,
her right, groping, brushed the counterpane and rested on something
oddly familiar. Her heart gave a sudden jerk, for this was her own bag,
which Renata should have taken. She opened it with quick, trembling
fingers, took out her handkerchief, and then stuffed the bag right down
inside the bed.

A couple of steps brought her to the window, and she pressed closely to
it, listening, and wished she dared to open it. There was no sound from
outside. She leaned her forehead against the glass, and wondered how
many years had passed since the morning. It seemed impossible for this
day to come to an end.

Then quite suddenly a key turned in the lock, and the door opened, not
widely, but as one opens the door of a room where some one is asleep. A
man’s head was silhouetted against the hall light. Part of his shoulder
showed in a dark overcoat.

He spoke, and a hint of brogue beneath a good deal of American twang
informed Jane that this was her official father.

“Are you awake, Renata?”—and, as he asked the question, a second man
came up behind him and stood there listening.

“Yes,” said Jane, muffling her voice with her handkerchief.

He hesitated a moment, and then said:

“Well, good-night to you”—and the other man, speaking over his shoulder,
said in an easy, cultivated voice without any accent at all:

“Pleasant dreams, Miss Renata.”

Jane’s “Good-night” was just audible and no more, but obviously it
satisfied the two men, for the door was shut, the key turned and
withdrawn, and presently the hall light went out, and the darkness was
absolute and unrelieved, except where the midnight sky showed just less
black than the interior of the room.

After what seemed a long, long time, Jane undressed and got to bed. It
was strange to grope for and find Renata’s neatly folded nightdress.

Presently she lay down, and presently she slept. Time ceased; the day
was over.

She woke suddenly a few hours later. It was still dark. She came broad
awake at once, and sat up in bed as if some one had called to her. Her
mind was full of one horrifying thought.

The plank—what had Arnold done with the plank?

Impossible that he should have helped Renata down the fire-escape and
carried the plank as well, and somehow Jane did not see Arnold troubling
to come back for it.

One thing was certain; if Arnold had left the plank in its compromising
position, it must be removed before daylight.

Jane got out of bed, shivering. She went to the window, opened it, and
leaned out. The yard, mews, wall, and parapet—all were veiled in the
same thick dusk. She strained her eyes, but it was impossible to
distinguish anything. There was nothing for it but to cross that horrid
little hall again, open the window, and make sure.

With the key in her hand, and mingled rage and terror in her heart, she
felt her way to the door, opened it noiselessly, and crossed barefoot to
the window. The hasp was stiff, it creaked, and the window stuck.

Recklessness took possession of Jane. With a jerk she pushed it up; as
it chanced, recklessness made less noise than caution would have done.
She leaned right out, and there, sure enough, was the plank.

Even Jane’s anger could provide her with nothing more cutting than, “How
exactly like Arnold Todhunter.”

She stood quite still and considered.

A bold course was the only one. Remembering the plank’s previous fall
and the perfect calm with which the neighbourhood had received it, she
decided to take the same chance again—only, she must be quick and have
it all planned in her head: first a shove to the plank, then down with
the window and latch it, five steps—no, six—across the hall, and then
her own door, and on no account must she forget the key.

She drew a long breath, leaned out, and pushed. The board was heavier
than she had supposed—harder to move. She had to pull it in, until the
sudden weight and strain told her that it was clear of the coping upon
which the farther end had rested. Then she pushed with all her might,
and as it fell, her hands were on the window quick and steady. Next
moment she was crouching in Renata’s bed, the clothes clutched about
her, the door key cold in her palm. She pushed it far down beneath the
clothes, and sat breathless—listening.

The crash with which the plank had landed seemed to have deafened her,
but as the vibrations died away, she heard, sharp and unmistakable, the
click of a latch and hurrying footsteps.

The next moment her door was opened and her light switched on. Quick as
thought her hand was over her eyes and the sheet up to her chin.

Molloy stood in the doorway, and beyond him the other.

“What’s doing? Did you hear it?” he stammered, and then the other man
pushed him aside.

“I’d like a look from your window if you’ll excuse me, Miss Renata,” he
said, and crossed the room.

As he leaned out, Jane watched him from beneath her hand, and recalled
Renata’s words, “He generally wears a fur coat; they call him Number
Two.” This man wore a fur coat over pale blue silk pyjamas. When he
turned, saying, “I can’t see a thing,” she was ready with her stammered,
“What was it?”

“You heard it, then?” said Molloy.

“Such a fearful crash! It—it frightened me most dreadfully,”—and here
Jane spoke the literal truth.

“I don’t know.” It was Molloy who answered again, but the other man’s
eyes travelled round the room, and a feeling of terror came over Jane.

If she had forgotten anything, if there were one shred of incriminating
evidence, those eyes would miss nothing! She felt as if they must pierce
the bedclothes and see her bag and the hidden key, but he merely nodded
to Molloy, and they left the room, switching out the light and locking
the door.

Jane drew a long breath of relief, turned upon her side, and in five
minutes was asleep again.

The day came in with a thick mist. Jane opened her eyes upon it
sleepily.

She began to think what a strange dream she had had, and then, as sleep
ebbed from her, she remembered that it was not a dream at all. She was
Renata Molloy under lock and key, and in front of her stretched a day
that might be even more crowded with adventure than yesterday.

She jumped out of bed, and as she dressed her eyes brightened and her
courage rose. With Renata’s scissors she unpicked the initials which
marked her underclothes. This was a game at which one must not make a
single slip. Her bag worried her a little, but it was just such a plain
leather bag as any one might possess. She ransacked it carefully, and
frowned over an envelope addressed to Miss Jane Smith. What in the world
was she to do with it?

There were no matches, so it could not be burned. After some thought she
soaked it in water, scratched the name to shreds with a hairpin, and
crumpling the wet paper into a ball, tossed it out of the window.

By the time her door was unlocked, she was very hungry. This time, it
appeared, she was being summoned to bid the departing Mr. Molloy a fond
farewell.

His luggage was already being carried out to the lift, and two or three
men were coming and going. The man in the fur coat stood with his back
to the window, smoking a cigarette. Obviously Molloy’s farewell was not
to be said in private.

Jane looked at him with some curiosity—a tall man, strongly built, with
a bold air and a florid complexion.

It was he who had opened the door, and he stood still holding the handle
and looking, not at Jane, but over her shoulder. For this she felt
grateful.

“Well, well then, I’m off,” said Molloy. “You’ll be a good girl and do
as you’re bid, and I’ll be having you out to keep house for me in less
than no time.”

From what she had seen of Renata, Jane fancied that a sob would meet the
occasion. She therefore sobbed, and pressed her handkerchief to her
eyes.

“There, there,” said Molloy hastily.

He bent and deposited an awkward kiss upon the top of her head. Then he
took his hand from the door and was gone.

The lift gate clanged, and Jane realised that the real adventure had
begun.

The man by the window threw the end of his cigarette into the fireplace
and came towards her.

“Parental devotion is a beautiful thing, isn’t it, Miss Renata? Suppose
we have some breakfast.”

A meal, a proper meal, enough to eat! As she passed into the dining-room
and beheld a ham, coffee, and boiled eggs, Jane felt as if she could
confront any one or anything. Besides, the first trick was hers.

In the full light of day, and under those cold, pale eyes, she had
passed as Renata.

She allowed herself to sigh and dab her eyes, and then—oh, how good was
the rather stale bread, the London egg, and the indifferent ham.

The man watched her quizzically.

As she finished her second cup of coffee, he remarked that she had a
good appetite, and there was something in his tone that cast a chill
upon the proceedings.

Jane pushed back her chair.

“I’ve finished,” she said.

“Well, then,” said the man, “I think we must talk. Yes, sit down again,
please. I won’t keep you very long.”

Jane did as she was told.

“Well, Molloy’s gone,” he said. “You know what that means? He’s washed
his hands of you. Just in case—just in case, you’ve been relying on
Molloy, I would like to point out to you that his own position is none
too secure. The firm he works for has not been entirely satisfied with
him for some time. It is, therefore, quite out of the question that he
should influence any decision that may be come to with regard to
yourself. His going off like this shows that he realises the position
and accepts it. Self-preservation is Molloy’s trump suit, first, last,
and all the time. I shouldn’t advise you to count upon trifles like
parental devotion, or anything of that sort. In a word—he can’t help
you, _but I can_.”

The man leaned forward as he spoke, and a sudden smile changed his
features.

“Just be frank,” he went on. “Tell me what you really heard, and I’ll
see you through.”

Jane let her eyes meet his. That smile had puzzled her; it was so
spontaneous and charming, but it did not reach his eyes.

She looked and found them cold and opaque, and as she looked, she saw
the pupils narrow, expand, and then narrow again.

He got up from his chair, walked to the mantelpiece, stopped for a light
to his cigarette, and came back again with a thin blue haze of smoke
about him.

“Perhaps I haven’t been altogether frank with you,” he said. “That
little romance of mine about a firm of chemists who employ your
father—you didn’t really believe it? No, I thought not. The fact is,
that first night I took you for just a schoolgirl, and one can’t tell
schoolgirls everything. But now, now I’m talking to you as a woman. I
can’t tell you everything, even so, but I can tell you this. It’s a
Government matter, a most important one, and it is vital that I should
know just what you overheard.”

Jane looked down.

“I don’t understand,” she said in a low voice. “I was dreaming and I
waked up suddenly. There was a screen in front of me, and some one on
the other side of the screen called out very loud, ‘The door, the door!’
That’s what I heard.”

She felt the pale eyes upon her face. Then with an abrupt movement the
man came over to her.

“Stand up,” he said.

Jane stood up.

“Look at me.”

Jane looked at him.

After what seemed like a very long time, he threw out his hand with an
impatient gesture. It struck the table edge with a sharp rap, the spring
that held his wrist watch gave, and the watch on its gold curb flew off
and fell on the floor behind Jane.

She turned, glad of an excuse to turn, and bent to pick it up. The back
of the watch was open; her fingers caught and closed it instantly, but
not for nothing had she told Henry that she had gimlet eyes. The back of
the watch contained a photograph, and Jane had seen the photograph
before. Henry’s voice sounded in her ears. “It was done from Amory’s
portrait of her, in 1915—the year of her marriage.”

Number Two, the man in the fur coat, Renata’s “worst of them all,” had
in the back of his watch a photograph of Lady Heritage!

Jane laid the watch on the table without giving it a second glance.




                               CHAPTER VI


As the watch slid back into its place beneath his shirt cuff, the man
spoke with an entire change of manner.

“Well, Miss Renata, that was all very stiff and businesslike. You
mustn’t hold it up against me, because I hope we’re going to be friends.
Don’t you want to know your plans?”

Jane looked at him with a little frown.

“My plans?”

“What is going to happen to you. Oh, please, don’t look so grave! It’s
nothing very dreadful. You have heard of Sir William Carr-Magnus?”

“Yes, of course,” said Jane. She hoped that she looked innocent and
surprised.

“Well,” said the man in the fur coat, “I happen to be his secretary, and
that reminds me, I don’t believe you know my name. Your father and his
friends use a ridiculous nickname which sticks to me like a burr ... but
let me introduce myself—Jeffrey Ember, and your friend, if you will have
me.”

The charming smile just touched his face, and then he said in a quiet,
serious way:

“Sir William’s daughter, Lady Heritage, has commissioned me to find her
an amanuensis—companion—no, that’s not quite right either. She doesn’t
want a trained stenographer, or a young person with a business training,
but she wants a girl in the house—some one who’ll do what she’s told,
write notes, arrange the flowers.... I dare say you can guess the sort
of thing. She is willing to give you a trial, and your father has
agreed. As a matter of fact, I’m taking you down there to-day.”

“Oh!” said Jane, because she seemed expected to say something, and for
the life of her she could not think of anything else to say.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to submit to certain restrictions at Luttrell
Marches. You see, Sir William is engaged upon some very important
experiments for the Government, and all the members of his household
have to conform to certain regulations. Their letters must be censored,
and they must not leave the grounds, which are, however, extremely
delightful and extensive. It isn’t much of a hardship, really.”

“Oh no,” said Jane in her best schoolgirl manner.

And there the interview ended.

They made the journey to Luttrell Marches by car, but, after the manner
of Mrs. Gilpin’s post-chaise, it did not pick them up at the door. An
ordinary taxi conveyed them to Victoria Station, and it was in the
station yard that they and their luggage were picked up by the
Rolls-Royce with the Carr-Magnus crest upon the door.

The mist was thinner, and as they came clear of London, the sun came
out. The day warmed into beauty, and the green growth of the countryside
seemed to be expanding before their eyes. So many long hedges running
into a blur, so many miles of road all slipping past. Jane fell fast
asleep, and did not know how long she slept.

It was in the late afternoon that they came into the Marsh country—great
flat stretches of it, set with boggy tussocks and intersected by
straight lanes of water. Purple-brown and green it stretched for miles.
To the right a humped line of upland, but to the left, and as far as the
eye could see in front, nothing but marsh. Then the road rose a little;
the ground was firmer and carried a black pine or two.

They came to a three-cross way and turned sharply to the right. The
ground rose more and more. They climbed a steep hill, zigzagging between
banked-up hedges to make the rise, and came out upon a bare upland.
Ahead of them one saw a high stone wall pierced by iron gates. The car
stopped. Mr. Ember leaned out, and after a pause the gates swung
inwards.

For a mile the drive lay through a flat waste of springing bracken, with
here and there a group of wind-driven trees, then a second gate through
a high fencing topped with wire. An avenue of trees led up to the house,
a huge grey pile set against a sky full of little racing clouds.

Jane felt stiff and bewildered with the long drive. She followed Mr.
Ember up a flight of granite steps and came into the great hall of
Luttrell Marches with its panelled walls and dark old portraits of
half-forgotten Luttrells.

Exactly opposite the entrance rose the stairway which was the pride of
the house. Its beautiful proportions, the grapes and vine leaves of its
famous carvings, were lighted from beneath by the red glow of a huge
open fire, and from above by the last word in electric lighting.

Ember walked straight across the hall and up the stair, and Jane
followed him.

She thought she knew exactly how a puppy must feel when, blinking from
the warmth and straw of his basket, he comes for the first time into the
ordered solemnity of his new master’s house.

And then she looked up and saw The Portrait.

It hung on the panelling at the top of the stair where the long
corridors ran off to right and left, and it took Jane’s breath away—the
portrait of Lady Heritage.

Amory had painted more than a beautiful woman standing on a marble
terrace: he had painted a woman Mercury. The hands held an ivory
rod—diamond wings rose from the cloudy hair. Under the bright wings the
eyes looked out, looked far—dark, splendid, hungry eyes.

“The earth belongs to her, and she despises it,” was Jane’s thought.

She stood staring at the portrait. Nineteen-fifteen, Henry had said—the
year when other women posed with folded linen hiding their hair and the
red cross worn like a blazon. She could think of several famous beauties
who had been painted thus. But this woman wore her diamond wings,
though, even as she wore them, Fate had done its worst to her, for
Anthony Luttrell was a name with other names in a list of missing, and
no man knew his grave.

A sharp clang of metal upon metal startled Jane. She looked quickly to
her right, and saw that a steel gate completely barred the entrance to
the corridor on that side. It had just closed behind a curious
white-draped figure.

“Ah, Jeffrey,” said a voice—a deep, rather husky voice—and the figure
came forward.

Jane saw that it was a woman wearing a long white linen overall, and a
curious linen head-dress, which she was undoing and pushing back as she
walked. She pulled it off as she came up to them, saying, “It’s so hot
in there I can hardly breathe, but too fascinating to leave. You’re
early. Is this Miss Molloy?”

She put out her hand to Jane, and Jane, with her mind full of the
portrait, looked open-eyed at its original.

Afterwards she tried to formulate her sensations, but, at the time, she
received just that emotional shock which most people experienced when
they first met Raymond Heritage.

Beautiful—but there are so many beautiful women. Charming? No, there was
rather something that repelled, antagonised. In her presence Jane felt
untidy, shabby, gauche.

Lady Heritage unbuttoned her overall and slipped it off. She wore a
plain white knitted skirt and jersey. Her fingers were bare even of the
wedding ring which Jane looked for and missed. Her black hair was a
little ruffled, and above the temples, where Amory had painted diamond
wings, there were streaks of grey.

Bewilderment came down on Jane like a thick mist, which clung about her
during the brief interchange of sentences which followed, and went with
her to her room.

It was a queer room with a rounded wall set with three windows and to
right and left irregular of line, with a jutting corner here and a
blunted angle there. It faced west, for the sun shone level in her eyes.

Crossing to the window, as most people do when they come into a strange
room, she looked out and caught her breath with amazement.

The sea—why, it seemed to lie just beneath the windows!

They had driven up from the landward side, and this was her first hint
that the sea was so near.

There was a wide gravel terrace, a stone wall set with formal urns full
of blue hyacinths, the sharp fall of the cliff, and then the sea.

The tide was in, the sun low, and a wide golden path seemed to stretch
almost from Jane’s feet to the far horizon. Overhead the little racing
clouds that told of a wind high up were golden too.

The humped ridge of upland, which Jane had seen as they drove, ran out
to sea on the right hand. It ended in low, broken cliff, and a line of
jagged rocks of which only the points stood clear.

Jane turned from all the beauty outside to the ordered comfort within.
Hot water in a brass can that she could see her face in, a towel of such
fine linen that it was a joy to touch it, this pretty white-panelled
room, the chintzes where bright butterflies hovered over roses and
sweet-peas—she stood and looked at it all, and she heard Renata’s words,
“At Luttrell Marches they will decide whether I am to be eliminated.”

This curious dual sense remained with her during the days that followed.
Life at Luttrell Marches was simple and regular. She wrote letters,
gathered flowers, unpacked the library books, and kept out of Sir
William’s way.

Sir William, she decided, was exactly like his photograph, only a good
deal more so; his eyebrows more tufted, his chin more jutting, and his
eyes harder. For a philanthropist he had a singularly bad temper, and
for so eminent a scientist a very frivolous taste in literature. One of
Jane’s duties was to provide him with novels. She ransacked library
lists and trembled over the results of her labours.

Sir William did not always join the ladies after dinner, but when he did
so he would read a novel at a sitting and ask for more.

Mr. Ember was never absent, and when Lady Heritage talked, it was to him
that her words were addressed. Sometimes she would disappear inside the
steel gate for hours.

Jane soon learnt that the whole of the north wing was given up to Sir
William’s experiments. On each floor a steel gate shut it off from the
rest of the house. All the windows were barred from top to bottom.

She also discovered that the high paling where the avenue began had, on
its inner side, an apron of barbed wire, and it was the upper strand of
this apron which she had seen as they approached from outside.

Sir William’s experiments employed a considerable number of men. These,
she learned, were lodged in the stables, and neither they nor any of the
domestic staff were permitted to pass beyond the inner paling.

On the coast side there was a high wire entanglement—electrified.

There were moments when Jane was cold with fear, and moments when she
told herself that Renata was a little fool who had had nightmare.




                              CHAPTER VII


When Jane stood at her window and looked across the sea, she saw what
might have been a picture of life at Luttrell Marches during those first
few days. Such a smooth stretch of water, pleasant to the eye, where
blue and green, amethyst, grey and silver came and went, and under the
play of colour and the shifting light and shade of day and evening, the
unchanging black of rocks which showed for an instant and then left one
guessing whether anything had really broken the beauty and the peace.

Over the surface all was pleasant enough, but incidents, some of them
almost negligible in themselves, kept recurring to remind Jane that
there were rocks beneath the sea.

The first incident came up suddenly whilst she was writing Lady
Heritage’s letters on the second day.

She had beside her a little pile of correspondence, mostly about
trifles. Upon each letter there was scrawled, “Yes”—“No”—“Tell them I’ll
think it over,” or some such direction.

Presently Jane arrived at a letter in French, upon which Lady Heritage
had written, “Make an English translation and enclose to Mrs. Blunt.”
Mrs. Blunt’s own letter lay immediately underneath. It contained
inquiries about some conditions of factory labour amongst women in
France.

The French letter was an excellent exposition of the said conditions.

Jane sat looking at it, and wondering whether Renata could have
translated a single line of it, and how much ignorance it would behove
her to display.

After a moment’s thought she turned round and said timidly, “May I have
a dictionary, please?”

Lady Heritage looked up from the papers before her. She frowned and
said:

“A dictionary?”

“Yes, for the French letter.”

“You don’t know French, then?”

Jane met the half-sarcastic look with protest.

“Oh yes, I _do_. But, if I might have a dictionary——”

Lady Heritage pointed to the bookcase and went back to her papers.

An imp of mischief entered into Jane.

She took the dictionary and spent the next half-hour in producing a
translation with just the right amount of faults in it. She put it down
in front of her employer with a feeling of triumph.

“Please, will this do?”

Lady Heritage looked, frowned, and tore the paper across.

“I thought you said you knew French?”

Jane fidgeted with her pen:

“Of course I know I’m not _really_ good at it, but I looked out all the
words I didn’t know.”

“There must have been a good many,” was Lady Heritage’s comment, and the
imp made Jane raise innocent eyes and say:

“Oh, there _were_!”

She went back to her table, and Lady Heritage spoke over her shoulder to
Mr. Ember, who appeared to be searching for a book at the far end of the
room. She spoke in French—the low, rapid French of the woman to whom one
language is the same as another.

“What do they teach at English schools, can you tell me, Jeffrey? This
girl says she knows French, and if she can follow one word I am saying
now——” She broke off and shrugged. “Yet I dare say she went to an
expensive school. Now, I had a Bavarian maid, educated in the ordinary
village school, and she spoke English with ease, and French better than
any English schoolgirl I’ve come across. Wait whilst I try her in
something else.”

She turned back to Jane.

“Just send the original to Mrs. Blunt—I haven’t time to bother with
it—and make a note for me. I want it inserted after para three on the
second page of that typewritten article that came back this morning.”

Jane supposed she might be allowed to know what a “para” was. She turned
over the leaves of the typescript and waited for the dictation. The last
sentence read, “Woman through all the ages is at the disposal and under
the autocratic rule of man, but it is not of her own volition.”

She wondered what was to come next, and waited, keenly on the alert.

Lady Heritage began to speak:

“Write it in as neatly as possible, please; it’s only one sentence: ‘It
is Man who has forced “das ewig Weibliche” upon us.’”

Jane wrote, “It is man——” and then stopped. She repeated the words aloud
and looked expectant.

“‘Das ewig Weibliche’”—there was a slight grimness in Lady Heritage’s
tone.

“I’m afraid—” faltered Jane.

“Never heard the quotation?”

“I’m so sorry.”

“You don’t know any German, then?”

“I’m _so_ sorry,” said Jane.

“My dear girl, what did they teach you at that school of yours? By the
way, where was it?”

“At Ilfracombe.”

“English education is a disgrace,” said Lady Heritage, and went back to
her papers.

It was next day that she turned suddenly to Jane:

“By the way, you were at school at Ilfracombe—can you give me the name
of a china shop there? I want some of that blue Devonshire pottery for a
girls’ club I’m interested in.”

Jane had a moment of panic. Renata’s shoes had fitted her too easily.
She had felt secure, and then to have her security shattered by a trifle
like this!

“A china shop?” she said meditatively; then, after a pause, “It’s
awfully stupid of me—I’m afraid I’ve forgotten the name.”

Lady Heritage stared.

“A shop that you must have passed hundreds of times?”

“It’s very stupid of me.”

Lady Heritage smiled with a sudden brilliance. “Well, it is rather,” she
said.

It was on the fourth day that Jane really caught her first glimpse of
the black rocks.

She was writing in the library, dealing with an apparently endless
stream of begging letters, requests for interviews, invitations to speak
at meetings or to join committees.

In four days Jane had discovered that Lady Heritage was up to her eyes
in a dozen movements relating to feminist activities, women’s labour,
and social reform.

Newspapers, pamphlets, and reports littered a table which ran the whole
length of the room. Jane was required to open all these as they came,
and separate those which dealt with social reform and the innumerable
scientific treatises and reviews. These latter arrived in every European
language.

Jane sat writing. The day was clear and lovely, the air sun-warmed and
yet fresh as if it had passed over snow. April has days like this, and
they fill every healthy person with a longing to be out, to stop
working, and take holiday.

The windows of the library looked out upon the gravel terrace above the
sea. The sun was on the blue water.

Jane put down her pen and looked at the hyacinths in the grey stone
urns. They were blue too. A yellow butterfly played round them. She sat
up and went to the window.

Lady Heritage and Mr. Ember were walking up and down the terrace, Lady
Heritage bareheaded, all in white with not even a scarf, and Jeffrey
Ember with a muffler round his neck, and the inevitable fur coat. They
were coming towards her, and Jane stood back so that the curtains made a
screen. She watched Raymond Heritage as she had watched the sea and the
flowers, for sheer joy in her beauty.

Raymond’s face was towards her, and she was speaking.

Not a word reached Jane’s ears, but as she looked at those beautiful
lips, their movements spelt words to her—words and sentences. She would
have drawn back or looked away, but the first sentence that she read
riveted her attention too closely.

“Are you satisfied about her Jeffrey?”

Ember _must_ have spoken, but his head was turned away. Then Raymond
spoke again.

“Nor am I—not entirely. She seems intelligent and unintelligent by
turns, unbelievably stupid in one direction and quick in another.” They
passed level with the window, and so on to the end of the terrace. Jane
went round the table to the other side of the window and waited for them
to come back.

Ember’s face was towards her when they turned, too far away for her to
see anything. But, as they came nearer, she saw that he was speaking.
Not easy to read from, however, with those straight, thin lips that
moved so little. There was only one word she was sure of—“overheard.”

It was too tantalising. If she had to wait until they reached the far
end of the terrace and turned again, what might she not miss?

As the thought passed through her mind Lady Heritage stopped, walked
slowly to the grey stone wall, and sat down on it, motioning to Ember to
do the same.

Jane could see both faces now, and Raymond was saying, “If she overheard
anything, would she have the intelligence to be dangerous?—that is what
I ask myself.”

Ember’s lips just moved, but the movements made no sense.

“Perhaps you’re right,” said Lady Heritage; “despise not thine enemy.”

She changed her position, leaned forward, displaying a statuesque
profile, and appeared to be speaking fast and earnestly. Then Jane saw
her lips again, and they were saying, “Anything but Formula ‘A.’”

Jane gripped the curtain which she held until the gold galon which
bordered it marked her hand with its acorn pattern.

“Formula ‘A’!” everything swam round her while she heard Renata’s
gasping voice:

“He said ‘With Formula “A” you have the key. When Formula “B” is also
complete, you will have the lock for that key to fit; then the treasures
of the world are yours.’”

The mist cleared from her eyes; she looked again.

Raymond Heritage had risen to her feet. Ember and she looked out to sea
for a moment, then crossed the gravel towards the house. They were
talking of the sunshine and the spring air.

“My bulbs have done well,” Lady Heritage said.

They passed out of sight.

Two days later Jane, coming down the corridor to the library, was aware
of voices in conversation. She opened the door and saw Jeffrey Ember
with his back to her. He had pulled a deep leather chair close to the
fire, and was bending forward to warm his hands. Lady Heritage stood a
yard or two away. She had a large bunch of violets in one hand; with the
other she leaned against the black marble mantel.

She and Ember were talking in German. Both glanced round, and Raymond
asked:

“What is it?”

“The letters for the post,” said Jane.

They went on talking whilst she sorted and stamped the letters.

“Which of us is the better judge of character, it comes to that.”
Speaking German, Lady Heritage’s deep voice sounded deeper than ever.

“Do we take different sides then?”

“I don’t know. I thought your verdict was inclined to be ‘Guilty, but
recommended to mercy,’ whereas mine——” She hesitated—stopped rather—for
there was no hesitation in her manner.

Ember made a gesture with the hand that held his cigarette.

“Expound.”

“I doubt the guilt. But if I did not doubt, I should have no mercy at
all.”

Jane went out with the letters, and when she was in the corridor again
she put out her hand and leaned against the wall. It would be horrible
enough, she thought, to be tried in an open court upon some capital
count, but how far less horrible than a secret judgment where whispered
words made unknown charges, where the trial went on beneath the surface
of one’s pleasant daily life, and every word, every look, a turn of the
head, an unguarded sigh, a word too little, or a glance too much might
tip the scale and send the balance swinging down to—what?

Next day Lady Heritage was deep in her correspondence, when she suddenly
flashed into anger. Pushing back her chair, she got up and began to pace
the room. There was a letter in her hand, and as she walked she tore it
across and across, flung the fragments into the fire, and pushed a
blazing log down upon them with her foot.

Jane and Ember watched her—the former with some surprise and a good deal
of admiration, the latter with that odd something which her presence
always called out. She swung round, met his eyes, and burst into speech.

“It’s Alington—to think that I ever called that man my friend! I wonder
if there’s a single man on this earth who would translate professions of
devotion to one woman, into bare decent justice to all women.”

“What has Lord Alington done?” asked Mr. Ember, with a slight drawl.

Jane, with a thrill, identified the President of the Board of Trade.

“Nothing that I might not have expected. It is only women that are
different, Jeffrey. Men are all the same.”

“And still I don’t know what he has done,” said Jeffrey Ember.

“Oh, it’s a long story! I’ve been pressing for women inspectors in
various directions. It seems inconceivable that any one should cavil at
a woman inspector wherever women are employed. You have no idea of what
some of the conditions are. Stewardesses, for instance; I’ve a letter
there from a woman who has been working on one of the largest liners—not
a tramp steamer, mind you, but one of the biggest liners afloat. All the
passengers’ trays, all the cabin meals had to be carried up a
perpendicular iron stair like a fire-escape—not a permanent stair, you
understand, but a ladder that is let up and down. Those wretched women
had to go up and down it all day with heavy trays. They said they
couldn’t do it, and were told they had to. And that’s a little thing
compared to some of the other conditions. I want an inspector for them.”

“And Alington?”

Lady Heritage came to a halt by the long, piled-up table. She struck it
with her open hand. “Lord Alington is just a man,” she said. “He stands
for what men have always stood for, the sacred right of the vested
interest. What man ever wants to alter anything? And why should he when
the existing order gives him all he wants? It doesn’t matter where you
turn, what you do, how hard you try, the vested interest blocks the way;
you are up against the Established Order of what has always been. My
God, how I’d like to smash it all, the whole thing, the whole smug sham
which we call civilisation!”

Jane stared at her open-eyed. She had never dreamed that the statue
could wake into such vivid life as this. The colour burned in Raymond’s
cheeks, the sombre eyes were sombre still, but they held sparks as if
from inward fire.

Ember touched the hand that was clenched at the table’s edge. A sort of
tremor passed over her from head to foot. The colour died, the fire was
gone. With a complete change of manner she said:

“Alington was hardly worth all that, was he?” Then without a change of
key, but in German:

“Thank you, Jeffrey, the child’s eyes were nearly falling out of her
head. It was stupid of me; I forgot. These things carry me away.”

The door opened on her last words, and Sir William came in. He was
frowning, and appeared to be in a great hurry.

“Ridiculous business, ridiculous waste of time. These damned departments
appear to think I’ve nothing to do with my time except to answer their
infernal inquiries, and entertain any interfering jackanapes that they
choose to let loose on me.”

“What is it Father?” said Lady Heritage—“Government inspection?”

“Nonsense,” said Sir William slowly. “Henry March wants to come down for
the night.”

Jane bent forward over her papers. No one was looking at her, no one was
thinking of her, but she had felt her cheeks grow hot, and was glad of
an excuse to hide them.

She did not know whether she was very much afraid or very glad. A
feeling unfamiliar but overwhelming seemed to shake her to the depths.
She was quite unconscious of what was passing behind her.

At Henry’s name, Raymond Heritage uttered a sharp, “Oh no!” She came
quickly forward as she spoke and caught the letter from Sir William’s
hand.

“He can’t come—I can’t have him here—put him off, Father; you can make
some excuse!”

“Nonsense!” said Sir William again. “It’s a nuisance, of course—it’s an
infernal nuisance—but he’ll have to come, confound him!”

Then, as she made a half-articulate protest, he went on with increasing
loss of temper:

“Good heavens! I can’t very well tell the man I won’t have him in what
is practically his own house.”

It was Ember, not her father, who saw how frightfully pale Raymond
became. In a very low voice she said:

“No, I suppose not.”

Sir William was fidgeting. He looked at Jane’s back.

“Of course, he’s coming down on business.”

Then he broke off and stared at Jane again.

Lady Heritage nodded.

“Miss Molloy,” she said. “You can take half an hour off.”




                              CHAPTER VIII


Henry arrived on the following day and was shown straight into Sir
William’s study.

Half an hour later Sir William rang the bell and sent for Lady Heritage.
He hardly gave her time to shake hands before he burst out:

“I said you must be told. I take all responsibility for your being told.
After all, if I am conducting these experiments, something is due to me,
though the Government appear to think otherwise. But I take all
responsibility; I insist on your being told.”

He sat at his littered table, and all the time that he was speaking his
hands were lifting and shuffling the papers on it. At his elbow stood a
tray with tantalus and glasses and a syphon. Only one glass had been
used.

“What is it?” said Raymond.

Her eyes went from her father to Henry.

Sir William’s hand was shaking. Henry wore a look of grave concern.

“What is it?” she repeated.

“It’s Formula ‘A’”—Sir William’s voice was just a deep growl. “He comes
here, and he tells me that Formula ‘A’ has been stolen. I’ve told him to
his face, and I tell him again, that it’s a damned impossibility.”

The shaking hand fell heavily upon the table and made the glasses ring.

“Formula ‘A’?” said Raymond—“stolen? Henry, you can’t mean it?”

“I’m afraid I do,” said Henry, at his quietest. “I’m afraid there’s no
doubt about it. We have the most indisputable evidence that Formula ‘A’
has been offered to—well, to a foreign power.”

The flush upon Sir William’s face deepened alarmingly. Under the
bristling grey brows his eyes were hard with anger. He began to speak,
broke off, swept his papers to one side, and, taking up the tantalus and
the used glass, poured out a third of a glass of whisky. He let a small
quantity of soda into it with a vicious jerk, and then sat with the
glass between his hands, alternately sipping from it and interjecting
sounds of angry protest.

“The information is, I’m afraid, correct.”

Henry’s tone, though studiously moderate, was extremely firm. “There is
undoubtedly a leak, and, in view of Formula ‘B,’ it is vital that the
leak should be found and stopped.”

He addressed himself to Lady Heritage:

“Sir William tells me that all employés correspond with the list in my
possession, that none of them leave the enclosure, and that all letters
are censored. By the way, who censors them?”

“Ember,” growled Sir William.

Lady Heritage elaborated the remark.

“Mr. Ember—Father’s secretary.”

She and Henry were both standing, with the corner of the writing-table
between them. She saw inquiry in Henry’s face. He said:

“Who does leave the premises?”

“Father, once in a blue moon, I when I have any shopping to do, and, of
course, Mr. Ember.”

“And when you go you drive, of course? What I mean is—a chauffeur goes
too?”

Sir William made a sound between a snort and a laugh; Lady Heritage
smiled. Both had the air of being pleased to catch Henry out.

“The chauffeur is Lewis, who was your uncle’s coachman here for
twenty-five years. Are you going to suggest that he has been selling
Formula ‘A’ to a foreign power? I’m afraid you must think again.”

“Who is Mr. Ember?”

Sir William exploded.

“Ember’s my secretary. He’s been my right hand for ten years, and if
you’re going to make insinuations about him, you can leave my house and
make them elsewhere. Why, damn it all, March!—why not accuse Raymond, or
me?”

“I don’t accuse any one, sir.”

There was a pause, whilst the two men looked at one another. It was Sir
William who looked away at last. He drained his glass and got up,
pushing his chair so hard that it overturned.

“You want to see all the men to check ’em by that infernal list of
yours, do you? The sooner the better then; let’s get it over.”

Later, as the men answered to their names in the long, bare room which
had once been the Blue Parlour, Henry was struck with the strangeness of
the scene. Here his aunt had loved to sit doing an interminable
embroidery of fruits and flowers upon canvas. Here he and Anthony had
lain prone before the fire, each with his head in a book and his heels
waving aloft. Memories of Fenimore Cooper and Henty filled the place
when for a moment he closed his eyes. Then, as they opened, there was
the room all bare, the windows barred and uncurtained, the long
stretcher tables with their paraphernalia of glass retorts, queer,
twisted apparatus, powerful electric appliances, and this row of men
answering to their names whilst he checked each from his list.

“James Mallaby.” He called the name and glanced from the man who
answered it to the paper in his hand. A small photograph was followed by
a description: “5 feet 7 inches, grey eyes, mole on chin, fair
complexion, sandy hair.” All correct. He passed to the next.

“Jacob Moss—5 feet 5 inches, dark complexion, black hair and eyes, no
marks....”

“George Patterson—5 feet 10 inches, sallow complexion, brown hair and
beard, grey on temples, grey eyes, scar....”

The man who answered to the name of George Patterson stepped forward. He
had the air of being taller than his scheduled height. His beard and
hair were unkempt, and the scar set down against him was a red seam that
ran from the left temple to the chin, where it lost itself in grizzled
hair. He stooped, and walked with a dragging step.

Henry, who for the moment was speaking to Sir William, looked at him
casually enough. He opened his list, and in turning the page, the papers
slipped from his hand and fell. George Patterson picked them up. Henry
went on to the next name.

Jane had keyed herself up to meeting him at teatime, but neither Henry
nor Sir William appeared.

“Captain March is an extremely conscientious person,” said Lady
Heritage. It was not a trait which appeared to commend itself to her. “I
should think he must have interviewed the very black-beetles by now.
Have you been passed, Jeffrey?”

“I don’t know,” said Mr. Ember, “but it hasn’t taken away my appetite
for tea.”

In fact it had not. It was Raymond who ate nothing.

Jane and Henry did not meet until dinner-time. As she dressed, Jane kept
looking at herself in the glass. She was pale, and she must not look
pale. She took a towel and rubbed her cheeks—that was better. Then a
little later, when she looked again, her eyes were far too bright, her
face unnaturally flushed.

“As if any one was going to look at you at all—idiot!” she said.

After this she kept her back to the mirror.

In all the books that she had ever read the secretary or companion
invariably wore a dinner dress of black silk made, preferably, out of
one which had belonged to a grandmother or some even more remote
relative. In this garb she outshone all the other women and annexed the
affections of at least two of the most eligible men.

Renata did not possess a black silk gown.

“Thank goodness, for I should look perfectly awful in it,” was Jane’s
thought.

With almost equal distaste she viewed the white muslin sacred to
prize-givings and school concerts. Attired in this garment Renata had
played the “Sonata Pathétique” amidst the applause of boarders and
parents. With this pale blue sash about her waist she had recited “How
they brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix.” Jane tied it in a vicious
knot. Her only comfort as she went downstairs was that it was impossible
to look more like a schoolgirl and less like a conspirator.

Sir William and Henry were in the hall—Mr. Ember too, close to the fire
as usual.

Sir William jerked his head in Jane’s direction and grunted, “Miss
Molloy, my daughter’s secretary.” Henry bowed. Jane inclined her head.

Next moment they all turned to watch Raymond Heritage come down the
stair.

She wore black velvet. Her neck and arms were bare. A long rope of
pearls fell to her knee.

Jane wondered whether the world held another woman so beautiful, then
looked quickly at Henry, and the same thought was visible upon Henry’s
face.

Dinner was not a cheerful meal. Lady Heritage hardly opened her lips.
Sir William sat hunched forward over the table; when addressed, the
remark had to be repeated before he answered; he drank a good deal.

Jane considered that a modest silence became her, and the conversation
was sustained with some effect of strain by Captain March and Mr. Ember.
They talked fitfully of politics, musical comedy, the weather, and the
American Exchange.

It was a relief, to Jane at least, when she and Lady Heritage found
their way to the drawing-room.

Henry wondered at their using this large, formal room for so small a
party. His aunt, he remembered, had kept it shut up for the most part.
The sense of space was, however, grateful to Jane. The small circle of
candlelight in the dining-room had seemed to shut them in, forcing an
intimacy for which no one of them was prepared.

The Yellow Drawing-Room was a very stately apartment. The walls were
hung with a Chinese damask which a hundred years had not robbed of its
imperial colour. Beneath their pagoda-patterned blue linen covers Jane
knew that the chairs and sofas wore a stiff yellow satin like a secret
pride. Electric candles in elaborate sconces threw a cold, steady light
upon the scene.

Lady Heritage sat by the fire, the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ in her hand.
Her eyes were on the page and never left it, but she was not reading. In
fifteen minutes her glance had not shifted, and the page remained
unturned.

Then the door opened, and the two younger men came in. Lady Heritage
looked up for a moment, and then went back to her _Revue_. She made no
attempt to entertain Captain March, who, for his part, showed some
desire to be entertained.

“You are using the big rooms, I see. Aunt Mary always said they were too
cold. You remember she always sat in the Blue Parlour, or the little oak
room at the head of the stair.”

Raymond’s lip lifted slightly.

“I’m afraid the Blue Parlour would not be very comfortable now,” she
said without looking up.

Henry possessed a persevering nature. He produced, in rapid succession,
a remark about the weather, an inquiry as to the productiveness of the
kitchen garden, and a comment upon the pleasant warmth of the log fire.
The first and last of these efforts elicited no reply at all. To the
question about the garden produce Lady Heritage answered that she had no
idea.

Mr. Ember’s habitual expression of cynicism became a trifle more marked.

Jane had the feeling that the pressure in the atmosphere was steadily on
the increase.

“Won’t you sing something, Raymond,” said Henry. His pleasant ease of
manner appeared quite impervious to snubs.

Lady Heritage closed the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ and, for the first
time, looked full at Captain March. If he was startled by the furious
resentment of that gaze he did not show it.

“And what do you expect me to sing, Henry?” she said—“the latest out of
the _Jazz Girls_?”

“I don’t mind; whatever you like, but do sing, won’t you?”

Raymond got up with an abrupt movement. Walking to one of the long
windows which opened upon the terrace, she drew the heavy yellow brocade
curtain back with a jerk. Beyond the glass the terrace lay in deepest
shadow, but moonlight touched the sea. She bent, drew the bolt, and
opened half the door.

“The room is stifling,” she said. “Jeffrey, it’s your fault they pile
the fire up so. I wish you’d sometimes look at a calendar and realise
that this is April, not January.”

Then, turning, she crossed to the piano.

“If I sing, it will be to please myself, and I shall probably not please
any one else.”

Ember came forward and opened the piano. He bent as he did so, and said
a few words very low. She answered him.

Henry, left by the fireside with Jane, leaned forward conversationally,
the last _Punch_ in his hand.

“This is a good cartoon,” he said. “Have you seen it, Miss Molloy?”

And as she bent to look at the page, he added in that low, effaced tone
which does not carry a yard:

“Which room have they given you?”

“I like the line,” said Jane in her clear voice, “and that very black
shadow.” Then, in an almost soundless breath—“The end room, south wing.”

“Don’t go to bed,” said Henry. “Wonderful how they keep it up, week
after week. I mean to say, it must put you off your stroke like
anything, knowing you’ve got to come right up to time like that.”

“Your department doesn’t work by the calendar, then? You don’t have to
bother about results?”

Ember strolled back to his favourite place by the fire as he spoke, and
Lady Heritage broke into a resounding chord. She played what Henry
afterwards described as “an infernal pandemonium of a thing.” It
appeared to be in several keys at once, and marched from one riot of
discord to another until it ended with a strident crash which set up a
humming jangle of vibrations.

“Like that, Henry?” said Lady Heritage.

“No,” said Henry, monosyllabic in his turn.

“No one ever likes to hear the truth,” said Raymond. “You all want
something pleasant, something smooth, something like this”—her fingers
slipped into the “Blue Danube” waltz. She played it exquisitely, with a
melting delicacy of touch and a beautiful sense of rhythm. After a dozen
bars or so she stopped suddenly, leaned her elbow on the keyboard, and
through the little clang of the impact said:

“Well?”

“That’s topping,” said Henry. He looked across at her admiringly—the
long sweep of the ebony piano, the white keyboard with the black notes
standing clear, Raymond in her velvet and pearls, and behind her the
imperial yellow of China.

“Soothing syrup,” she said. “You’re not up to date, Henry, I’m afraid.
The moderns show us things as they are, and we don’t like it, but the
soothing syrups lose their power to soothe once you find out that they
are just ... dope.”

“I wish you’d sing,” said Henry.

She looked across him at Ember, and an expression difficult to define
hardened her face.

“This isn’t modern, but will you like it?” she said, and preluded. Then
she began to sing in a deep mezzo:

  “The Worldly Hope Men set their Hearts upon
  Turns Ashes—or it prospers; and anon,
    Like Snow upon the Desert’s dusty Face
  Lighting its little Hour or two—is gone.

  Here in this battered Caravanserai,
  Whose Portals are alternate Night and Day,
    How Sultan after Sultan with his Pomp
  Abode his destined Hour, and went his Way.”

The notes came heavy and tragic. In her voice there seemed to be
gathered all the tragedy, all the emotion of human life. The sound fell
almost to a whisper:

  “The Worldly Hope Men set their Hearts upon
  Turns Ashes—or it prospers; and anon,
    Like Snow upon the Desert’s dusty Face
  Lighting its little Hour or two—is gone.”

Suddenly the voice rose ringing like a trumpet, a great chord crashed
out:

  “Waste not your Hour!”

The deep octaves followed. Then she passed into modulating phrases and
began to sing again.

“Her voice is nearly as beautiful as she is,” thought Jane, “but
somehow—she shakes one.”

  “Ah Love, could you and I with Fate conspire
  To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,
    Would we not shatter it to bits, and then
  Re-mould it nearer to the Heart’s Desire?”

With the last word she rose, turned from the piano and the room, and
went out to the terrace.

Henry got up, strolled casually across the room, and followed her. She
was standing by the low parapet looking over the sea. The night was
still, the scent of hyacinths was heavy on the air, but every now and
then a breath—something not to be called a wind—came up from across the
water and brought with it cold, and a tang of salt.

The moon was still behind the house, but near to clearing it, and though
they stood in the dusk, Henry could see Lady Heritage’s features as
though through a veil.

Her icy mood was broken; the tears were rolling down her cheeks. She
turned on him with a flame of anger.

“Why did you come? Why did you come? Do you know what Father said to me
yesterday? I said I wouldn’t have you here, and he said—he said, ‘Good
heaven! how can I keep the man away from what is practically his own
house?’ Is it yours now?—have you come to see your property?”

Henry looked at her gravely.

“No, it is not mine yet,” he said, “and I came for a very different
reason, as I think you know.”

“And you expected me to welcome you ... as if it wasn’t enough to be
here, to live here—without——” She broke off, gripping the rough stone of
the parapet with both hands. “You ask me why I don’t use the Oak Room—do
you forget how you and I and Tony used to roast chestnuts there, and
tell ghost stories—till we were afraid to go to bed? If there were no
worse ghosts than those.... Do you know, every time you come into the
room I expect to see Anthony behind you, and when you speak I catch
myself listening for his voice?... Do you still wonder why I don’t use
the Oak Room? What are men made of?”

“I don’t know,” said Henry. “Did I hurt you, Raymond? I’m sorry if I
did, but it wasn’t meant.”

She sank down upon the parapet. All the vehemence went out of her.

“You see,” she said in a whispering voice—“you see, I can’t forget. God
knows how hard I’ve tried. Every one else has forgotten, but I can’t
forget. If I could, I should sleep—but I can’t. Henry, have you ever
tried very hard to forget anything?”

“Yes,” said Henry.

“Will you tell me what it was?”

“I’m afraid I can’t.”

“Oh well, it doesn’t matter, and if you really understand, you know that
the more one tries the more vivid it all becomes.”

“It’s Tony?” asked Henry.

“Yes, it’s Tony,” said Raymond, in an odd voice—“but it’s not because
he’s dead—I don’t want you to think that. I could have borne that; I
could have borne anything if I could have seen him once again, or if he
had known that I cared, but he went away in anger and he never knew.”

“I didn’t know,” said Henry—“I’m sorry.”

Lady Heritage looked away across the sea. The moonlight showed where the
jagged line of rocks cut sharp through the sleeping water.

“There’s a verse in the Bible—do you ever read the Bible, Henry? I
don’t, but I remember this verse; one was taught it as a child. ‘Let not
the sun go down upon your wrath.’ I let the moon rise and go down on
mine.” She spoke very, very quietly. “Anthony stood there, just by that
urn. He said, ‘You’ll have all the rest of your life to be sorry in....’
That was the last thing he said to me. He never forgave, and he never
wrote. I didn’t think any man would let me go so easily, so I married
John Heritage to show that I didn’t care. And, whilst we were on our
honeymoon, I saw Anthony’s name in the list of missing. Now, do you
wonder that I hate you for coming here, and for being alive, and taking
Tony’s place? And do you wonder that there are times when I hate
everything so much that I’d like well enough to see this whole sorry
scheme shattered to bits—if it could be done?”

“I’m not so keen on this shattering business, Raymond,” said Henry.
“Don’t you think there’s been about enough of it? There are a lot of
rotten things, and a lot of good things, and they’re all mixed up. If
you start shattering, the odds are you bring down everything together.”

“Well?” said Raymond, just one word, cold and still.

There was a little pause. Then she laughed.

“Is Henry also among the preachers?” she said mockingly. “You should
take Orders; a surplice would be becoming.”

Henry was annoyed to feel that he was flushing.

“Shall I go on preaching?” he said, and as he spoke, Mr. Ember came
through the open glass door with a cloak over his arm.

“I am a relief expedition,” he announced. “You must be frozen. Never
trust a moonlight night.”

He put the wrap about Raymond’s shoulders, but she did not fasten it.

“I’m coming in,” she said.

She and Ember passed into the lighted room. Henry stood still for a
minute, listened acutely; then he followed them.

There was a hedge of stiffly growing veronica bushes at the foot of the
terrace wall. After Henry had gone in, the man called George Patterson
came out from behind the bushes at the far end of the terrace. He walked
slowly with a dragging step, keeping in the shadow of the house, and he
made his way to the far end of the north wing.

Inside the Yellow Drawing-Room Henry was bidding his hostess good-night,
and announcing his intention of taking a moonlight stroll.

Presently he emerged upon the terrace, descended the steps on the right,
and made his way in the direction taken by George Patterson.




                               CHAPTER IX


When Jane reached her own room, she stood a long time in front of the
glass frowning at herself. It might be safe to look so exactly like a
schoolgirl, but it was very, very humiliating. Henry had never glanced
at her once. That, of course, was all in the line of safety too. Also,
why should Henry look at her? Why should she wish him to do so? She was
not in love with him; she had, in fact, refused him—could it be that
there was a little balm in this thought? What did it matter to her how
long he looked at Raymond Heritage?

She took off the white muslin dress and put it away.

The worst part of being Renata was, not the risk, but having to wear
Renata’s clothes. All the things were good, horribly good, and they were
all quite extraordinarily dull. “If your shoes want mending, and your
things are threadbare, every one knows it’s because you’re poor, and not
because you like being down at heel and out at elbows. But Renata’s
things must have cost quite a lot, and, of course, every one thinks they
are my choice.”

By some deflected line of reasoning “every one” meant Henry.

Jane folded up the pale blue sash and shut it sharply into a drawer.
Then she put on Renata’s dressing-gown. It was made of crimson flannel,
very thick and soft, with scalloped edges to the collar and
cuffs—“exactly like one’s grandmother’s petticoat.”

She rumpled the bedclothes and disarranged the pillows. Then she put out
the light, sat down on the window-seat, and waited.

The blind was up; she had slipped behind the chintz curtains. The
terrace lay beneath her, only half in shadow now. There was no sound in
the house, no sound from the sea. The line of shadow moved backwards
inch by inch.

When Jane sat down to wait, she told herself that she would not listen
and strain; she would just sit there quite peacefully, and if anything
was going to happen—well, let it happen. But as she sat there, she
became afraid against her will, aware once more of that sense of
pressure which had come upon her in the drawing-room. It was as if
something was steadily approaching not her alone, but all of them—as if
their thoughts and actions were being, at one and the same time,
dictated by an outside force and scrutinised—watched—spied upon.

With all her might she resisted this sensation and the fear that it
suggested. But, as the night passed to midnight and beyond, a strange
feeling of being one watcher in a slumbering household detached itself
from the general confusion, and she began to long with great intensity
for something—anything—to happen.

Once something moved in the foot-wide strip of shadow against the house.
Jane caught her breath and then saw that it was only a cat, a half-grown
kitten rather, beloved of the cook. It came out into the moonlight and
walked solemnly the entire length of the terrace with delicately taken
steps and a high waving tail. It was as soundless and black as the
shadow out of which it had come, and presently it was gone again, and
second by second, minute by minute, slow, interminable, the night
dropped away. In the hall a clock struck the quarters. The silence,
shattered for a moment, closed again.

When the rapping came, it brought the oddest sense of interruption. Jane
sprang to her feet, stood for a moment catching at her self-control, and
then went noiselessly to the door. She listened before opening it, and
could hear nothing; and, as she listened, the knocking came again, but
from behind her.

Bewildered, she edged the door open and looked out. A shaded light
burned far away to the left. The long, dim corridor was empty. She shut
the door.

Some one was knocking—somewhere—but where?

She turned and stood facing the windows. Up in the far corner a large
cupboard filled the angle and blunted it. Jane had hung her serge dress
there hours and hours ago. The knocking seemed to come from the
cupboard, just where the room was at its darkest because next the
lighted window.

Jane crossed the floor very slowly, put both hands on the cupboard
doors, and flung them wide. For a moment everything was quite black,
then, with a most unpleasant suddenness, a narrow white ray cut the
dark, and Henry’s voice said, “It’s only me.”

Jane’s hand went to her lips, pressing them firmly. She would not have
admitted that this action alone saved her from screaming. After a moment
she gave a little gasp, and located Henry, or rather Henry’s head, which
was almost under her feet.

In the cupboard floor there was a square black hole, and, just above
floor-level, Henry’s face looked up at her, tilted at an odd angle,
whilst his one visible hand manipulated a small electric torch.

“Wait,” said Jane, in a whisper.

She went quickly to the door, locked it, removed the key, and put it in
one of the dressing-table drawers. She did not know quite what made her
do this, only suddenly when her eyes saw Henry, her mind had a vivid
impression of that long corridor with its one faintly glimmering light.

Then she sat down on the cupboard floor, close to Henry’s head, and
breathed out:

“Henry!—how on earth?”

Henry, who appeared to be standing upon a ladder or something equally
vertical, came up a few steps, sat down on the edge of the hole, and
switched off his torch.

“I had to see you,” he said. “This was my room in the old days, and Tony
and I found this passage. It leads down to another cupboard in the
garden room where they keep the tennis and croquet gear. How are
you?—all right?”

“Yes, quite all right.”

“That’s good. Now which of us is going to talk first?”

“I think I had better,” said Jane. “You see, I saw Renata, and she told
me things, and I think, if you don’t mind, Henry, that I had better tell
you everything that she told me.”

“Yes, please.” He hesitated. “One minute, Jane, I just wanted to say,
you don’t mind talking to me like this, do you? I wouldn’t have asked
you to if there had been any other way—what I mean to say is....”

Jane gave a very small laugh, which was instantly repressed. She
reflected that it was pleasanter to suppress a laugh than a scream.

“What you mean to say is, there aren’t any chaperons in this scene. You
needn’t apologise, Henry. Sleuths never have chaperons—it’s simply not
done; and, anyhow, I’m sure you’d make a beautiful one. Shall I go on?”

It may be doubted whether Henry really cared about being described as a
chaperon. His tone was rather dry as he said:

“Go on, please.”

As for Jane, who had prodded him on purpose just to see if anything
would happen, she certainly felt a slight disappointment accompanied by
a sense of increased respect.

“You saw Renata. What did she tell you?”

“She told me what she overheard,” said Jane, speaking slowly. “Henry, if
I tell you what it was, will you promise me not to let any one guess
that you know? If they were certain that I knew, I shouldn’t be alive
to-morrow; and if they thought you knew the secret, you’d never get back
to London alive.”

“Who is ‘they,’ Jane?” said Henry.

“I want to tell you about Renata first. She really did walk in her
sleep, you know. She must have waked when she opened the door. She said
the first thing she knew was the cold feel of the hall linoleum under
her feet. The door was open, and she was standing just on the threshold.
There was a screen in front of her, and beyond the screen a man talking.
She heard every word he said, and I am sure that what she repeated to me
was just exactly what she heard. The first words that she caught were
‘Formula “A.”’”

Henry gave a violent start.

“Good Lord!” he said under his breath. “You’re sure?”

“Quite. Then he went on, and this is what he said: ‘You all have Formula
“A.” You will go to your posts and from your directions you will prepare
what is needful according to that formula, carrying out to the last
detail the cipher instructions which each of you has received. As soon
as the experiments relating to Formula “B” are completed, you will
receive a summons in code. You will then assemble at the rendezvous
given, and Formula “B,” with all instructions for its employment, will
be entrusted to you. With Formula “A” you have the key. When Formula “B”
is also complete you will have the lock for that key to fit; then the
treasures of the world are yours. The annihilation of civilisation and
of the human race is within our grasp. When the key has turned in the
lock we only shall be left, and....’ Just then, Renata said, some one
else cried out, ‘The door! The door!’ They pushed the screen away and
pulled her in. She nearly fainted. When she revived a little, her father
and Mr. Ember were trying to find out what she had heard. Fortunately
for herself, she told me, at first it was all confusion. The only thing
that stood out clearly was that shout at the end, but afterwards, when
she was alone, it all came back. She said it was like a photographic
plate developing, hazy at first, and then everything getting clearer and
sharper until each detail came out. She repeated the whole thing as if
it were a lesson.”

“Wait,” said Henry. “My head’s going round. I want to sort things out.”

Jane waited. She had been prepared for Henry to be impressed or
incredulous. What took her by surprise was the puzzled note in his
voice. “Lord, what a mix-up!” she heard him say.

Then he addressed her again.

“Did you ever play ‘Russian Scandal,’ Jane?” he said.

“Yes, of course. But if you had heard Renata—the sort of queer
mechanical way she spoke, exactly like a gramophone record—why, the
words weren’t words she’d have used, and all that about Formula ‘A’—do
you think that’s the sort of thing that a schoolgirl makes up?”

“No,” said Henry unexpectedly. “I think it is quite possible that she
overheard something about Formula ‘A,’ and I’d give a good deal to know
just what she did hear.”

“I’ve told you what she heard,” said Jane. “Jimmy always said I had a
photographic memory, and I said the whole thing over to myself until I
had it by heart. You see, I didn’t dare to write it down.”

“Can you say it again?” said Henry. “I’d like to get it down in black
and white, and have a look at it. At present it makes me feel giddy.”

“You mustn’t write it down,” said Jane breathlessly. “Oh, you mustn’t,
Henry! It’s not safe.”

Henry turned on his torch, propped it against the wall, and produced a
notebook and a pencil. The cold, narrow beam of light showed his knee,
the white paper, a pencil with a silver ring, and Henry’s large, brown
hand.

“He has a _horribly_ determined hand,” thought Jane.

“Now,” said Henry, “will you start at the beginning and say it all over
again, please?”

Jane did so meekly, but her inward feelings were not meek. Once more she
repeated, word for word, and sentence for sentence, the somewhat
flamboyant speech of Number Four.

Henry’s hand travelled backwards and forwards in the little lane of
light, and, word for word, and sentence by sentence, he wrote it down.
When he had finished, he read over what he had written. If he had not a
photographic memory, he was, at any rate, aware that Jane in her
repetition had not varied so much as a syllable from her first
statement.

He went on looking at what he had written. At last he said:

“Jane, I think I must tell you something in confidence. Sir William, as
you know, is conducting important experiments for the Government. How
important you may perhaps have gathered from the extraordinary
precautions which are taken to prevent any leakage of information. These
experiments have resulted in two valuable discoveries represented, for
purposes of official correspondence, by the terms Formula ‘A’ and
Formula ‘B.’ Within the last week we have had indisputable proof that
Formula ‘A’ has been offered to a foreign power. That is the reason for
my presence here. Now these are facts. Let them sink into your mind,
then read over what I have just taken down, and tell me how you square
those facts with Renata’s statement.”

Jane picked up the notebook, stared at the written words, set Henry’s
facts in the forefront of her mind, and remarked candidly:

“It does make your head go round rather, doesn’t it?”

Henry assented. They both sat silent. Then Jane put down the notebook.

“Never mind about our heads going round,” she said. “Let me go on and
tell you the rest of it. It isn’t only what Renata heard; it’s the
things that keep happening—little things in a way, but oh, Henry,
sometimes I think they are more frightening just because they are little
things. I mean, supposing you know you’re going to be executed, you
brace yourself up, and it’s all in the day’s work, but if you are out at
a dinner-party and you suddenly find poison in the soup, or a bomb in
the middle of the table decorations, it’s ... well, it’s unexpected—and,
and _perfectly beastly_.”

Jane’s voice broke just for an instant.

Henry’s hand came quickly through the torchlight, and rested on both
hers. It was a satisfactorily large and heavy hand.

She told him about her interview with Ember at the flat, and one by one
she marshalled all the small happenings which had startled and alarmed
her.

Henry waited until she had quite finished. Then he said:

“This lip-reading—you know, my dear girl, it’s a chancy sort of thing;
it seems to me that there are unlimited possibilities of mistake.”

“Some people are much easier to read from than others. Lady Heritage is
very easy. I’m sure I was not mistaken; she was saying, ‘If she
overheard anything, would she have the intelligence to be dangerous?
That is what I ask myself,’ and she said, ‘Despise not thine enemy,’ and
‘Anything but Formula “A.”’ Now Mr. Ember is very difficult. I can’t
really make him out at all. His lips don’t move. It’s no use not
believing me, Henry. Look here, I’ll show you.”

She caught up the little torch, and turned the light upon his face.

“Say something,” she commanded.

Henry’s lips formed the words, “Jane, I love you very much indeed”—and
Jane switched off the light.

“Henry, you’re a perfect beast! Play fair,” she said, in a low, furious
whisper.

“Sorry. Wasn’t it all right? Try again.”

Jane allowed the ray to light up Henry’s mouth and chin. The hand that
held the torch was not quite steady. This may have been the result of
anger—or of some other emotion. As a result the light wavered a good
deal.

Henry’s lips moved, and Jane read aloud, “A sleuth should never lose its
temper.”

Henry’s hand caught the little shaking one that held the torch, and gave
it a great squeeze.

“How frightfully clever you are, and—oh, Jane, what a goose!”

“I’m not,” said Jane.

“But don’t you see that, with Renata’s story in your mind, you would be
looking out for things? You couldn’t help it.”

“What do you think, then, of Lady Heritage saying that Mr. Ember’s
verdict was inclined to be ‘Guilty, but recommended to mercy,’ whereas
she said that she herself doubted the guilt, but that if she did not,
she would have no mercy at all? Do you know, that frightened me almost
more than anything. I don’t know why. That wasn’t lip-reading; I heard
the words with my own ears.”

“But—don’t you see——” He paused. “Let’s get back to facts: Formula ‘A’
has been stolen and offered for sale. Renata, undoubtedly, overheard
something relating to Formula ‘A.’ Now, supposing Mr. Molloy or one of
his friends to be the person who is doing the deal, don’t you see that
the possibility of Renata having overheard something compromising would
be sufficient to account for a good deal of alarm?

“If Molloy and his friends had stolen Formula ‘A’ and were trying to
dispose of it, it would naturally be of the highest importance to them
to find out how much Renata knew, and to take steps which would ensure
her silence. They would almost certainly try and frighten her—that’s how
it seems to me.”

“Then where does Mr. Ember come in?” said Jane. “He was there.”

“Are you sure?”

“Renata described him,” said Jane. “She said he was the worst of them
all.”

“She knew him by name?”

“No. But ... but”—a little chill breath of doubt played on Jane’s
certainty—“she called him the man in the fur coat. The others spoke of
him as Number Two.”

“But you don’t know that it was Ember?”

For a moment Jane felt that she was sure of nothing; then, with a swift
revulsion, her old fears, suspicions, certainties, received vigorous
reinforcement.

“Henry,” she said, “listen. You’re on the wrong scent—I know you are. I
can’t tell you how I know it, but I’m quite, quite sure. If you were an
anarchist, and wanted to produce some horrible thing that would smash
civilisation into atoms, how would you set about it?—where would you go?
Don’t you see that the very safest place would be somewhere like this,
somewhere where you could carry on your experiments under the cover of
real experiments? It’s like the caterpillars that pretend to be
sticks—what do you call it?—protective mimicry.”

“Jane!” said Henry.

“I’m sure that’s what they have done. I’m sure that there is something
dreadful going on in this house. And if you can’t square what Renata
heard with what you know of Formula ‘A,’ why, then I believe that there
must be more than one Formula ‘A.’ Don’t you see how cunning it would be
for them to take the name of a real Government invention to cover up
whatever horrible thing it is that they are working at?”

There was a dead silence.

“Another Formula ‘A’?” said Henry slowly. Then, with an abrupt change of
manner:

“Leave it—all of it—and tell me some things I want to know. Sir William,
for instance—he was put out at my coming down, I know—but what is he
like as a rule? He does not always drink as much as he did to-night,
does he?”

“I think he does. Henry, I think he takes too much—I do, really; and
he’s frightfully irritable. But that’s not what strikes me most. The
thing I notice is that he doesn’t seem to do any work. Mr. Ember is
supposed to be his secretary, but he really does all his work with Lady
Heritage. She goes on all the time. She spends hours in the
laboratories. I believe she works there till ever so late, but Sir
William just sticks in his study and broods. I thought how strange it
was from the very first day.”

“And Lady Heritage? Put all this mysterious business on one side and
tell me what you make of her?”

Jane hesitated.

“She’s—she’s disturbing. I think she has too much of everything, and it
seems to upset the balance of everything she touches. She’s too
beautiful for one thing, and she has too much intellect, and too much,
far too much, emotion. I think she is dreadfully unhappy too, with the
sort of unhappiness that makes you want to hurt somebody else. You know
what she sang this evening. I think she really feels like that, and
would like to smash—everything. That’s why....” Jane broke off suddenly;
her voice dropped to the least possible thread, “Oh, what’s that—what’s
that?”

As she spoke, her hand met Henry’s on the switch of the torch. The light
went out. Jane clung to one of the hard, strong fingers as she listened
with all her ears. She heard a footstep, light and unmistakable, and it
stopped upon the threshold.

There were about twenty seconds of really terrifying silence, and then
the handle of the door turned slowly. Jane heard the creak of the hinge,
the minute rattle of the latch. Then the handle was released, but slowly
and with the least possible noise. There was another silence.

Jane pinched Henry as hard as she could, and though this, of course,
relieved the strain she felt dreadfully afraid that she would scream
unless something broke through this dreadful quiet.

Something did break through it next moment, for there came a low
knocking on the door, and with the first sound of that knocking Jane
recovered herself. With an extraordinary quickness and lightness she was
on her feet and out of the cupboard, the cupboard was shut, and Jane,
her shoes noiselessly discarded, was sitting on the side of a rumpled
bed, a fold of the sheet across her mouth, inquiring in sleepy, muffled
accents:

“What is it? Who’s there?”

The knocking had gone on steadily. Now it stopped, and a voice said, “It
is I, Lady Heritage. Open the door.”

Jane threw back the bedclothes so as to cover the chair at the
bed-foot—a chair upon which there should have been a neatly folded pile
of clothes—pulled off her stockings, and took the key out of the
dressing-table drawer.

“Oh, what is it?” she said, and fumbled at the lock.

Next moment the door was open, and she saw Lady Heritage in her white
linen overall and head-dress, the latter pushed back and showing her
hair.

Lady Heritage saw a startled girl in a red flannel dressing-gown.
Between the moonlight and the light from the passage there was a sort of
dusk. Lady Heritage put her hand on the switch, but did not pull it
down. Instead, she said quickly:

“I saw a light under the door. Are you ill?”

Jane rubbed her eyes.

“A light?” she said.

Raymond crossed the room quickly and felt each of the electric bulbs.

“A light?” said Jane again.

Lady Heritage went back to the door and turned all the lights on.

“Do you always lock yourself in?” she said. “And why did you take the
key out of the door?”

“Was it wrong? They say that if you lock your door and put the key away,
even if you walk in your sleep, you don’t go out of the room. I
shouldn’t like to walk in my sleep in a big house like this, and perhaps
wake up in a cellar or out on the terrace.”

Lady Heritage did an odd thing. Something flashed across her face as
Jane was speaking, and she put both hands on the girl’s shoulders and
pulled her round so that she faced the light.

Jane met, for a moment, a most extraordinary look. It did not seem to go
through her as Mr. Ember’s scrutiny had done, but it shook her more. She
looked down and said shakily:

“What is it? Oh, please tell me if I have vexed you—oh, please....”

Lady Heritage took her hands away.

“I had forgotten you walked in your sleep,” she said. “I don’t like
locked doors as a rule, but I suppose you had better keep yours
fastened. I shouldn’t like you to walk into the sea and get drowned, or
break your neck falling off the terrace. Get back to your bed. I’m just
going to mine. I’ve been working late.”

She went out, and it was a long, long time before Jane, who had heard
the soft footfalls die away in the distance, dared open the door and
take a hasty look along the corridor. It was quite empty.

After another pause she went to the cupboard door and opened it. The
flooring stretched unbroken; there was no square hole, and no Henry. She
sat down on the floor, hesitated, and then knocked lightly.

Under her very hand a board rose with a little jerk—a line of light
showed, and Henry’s voice said softly:

“All clear?”

“Yes, be quick, I daren’t wait.”

“Who was it?”

“Lady Heritage.”

“What did she want?”

“I don’t know. She said she saw a light. Henry, she frightens me, she
really does.”

The board rose a little higher.

“A sleuth who gets frightened is no earthly——” said Henry firmly. “Now
look here, Jane, I can get you out of this quite easily if you want to
come. You are the only person in the house whom I haven’t interviewed.
Mr. Ember said that of course I shouldn’t want to see you, as you did
not get here until after the leakage must have taken place. I made no
comment at the time, but it is perfectly open to me to insist on seeing
you, to say that I am not satisfied with the interview, and to take you
back to London for further interrogation.”

Henry had opened the trap door about a foot. His face, lighted from
below, looked very odd with the chin almost resting on a board at Jane’s
feet and the trap held up by one hand and only just clearing his hair.
Jane would have wanted to laugh if his last suggestion had appalled her
less.

“Oh, you mustn’t,” she said. “If you do that, it’s all up. Mr. Ember
would never, never, never, allow you to interview me. He’d be afraid of
what I might say, and he’d find some awful way of keeping me quiet. As
to letting me go off to London with you, well, if we started we’d
certainly never get there. And oh, Henry, please, please go away. I’m
sure they suspect something, and if she comes again, or if he comes—oh,
Henry, do go.”

“All right,” said Henry. “Now, Jane, look here. I’m off before
breakfast, but I can make an excuse to come down at any time if you want
me. If anything is going wrong, or you get frightened, or if you want to
get out of it write for patterns of jumper wool to the Misses Kent,
Hermione Street, South Kensington. It’s a real wool shop and they’ll
send you real patterns, but Miss Kent will ring me up the minute she
gets your letter. I’ll come down straight away, and you look out for me
here.”

“Do you mean you’ll come and stay? Won’t they suspect something?”

“They won’t know,” said Henry. “Don’t ask me why, but send for me if you
want me, and be very sure that I shall come. Got that address all
right?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’ll be off.”

“Yes, please go.”

As a preliminary to going, Henry came up a step higher, set the torch on
the floor, and took Jane by the hand.

“Don’t get frightened, Jane,” he said. “I hate you to be frightened.”

“I’m not, not really.”

Henry came up another step; the trap now rested on his shoulders.

“Oh, Henry, _please_....”

“I’m going,” said Henry. He continued to hold Jane’s hand and appeared
immovable. Jane could of course have taken her hand away and left the
cupboard, but this did not occur to her till afterwards.

Quite suddenly Henry kissed her wrist, and a piece of the red flannel
cuff. The next minute he was really gone. Perhaps it had occurred to him
that he was a chaperon.

Jane lay awake for a long time.




                               CHAPTER X


Henry went away by an early train, and Jane came down to what, as a
child, she had once described as a crumpled kind of day. She remembered
“darling Jimmy” looking at her in a vague way, and saying in his gentle,
cultivated voice:

“Crumpled, my dear Jane? What do you mean by crumpled?”

And Jane, frowning and direct:

“I mean a thing that’s got crumps in it, Jimmy darling,” and when Mr.
Carruthers did not appear to find this a sufficient explanation, she had
burst into emphatic elucidation:

“I was cross, and Nurse was cross, and you were cross. Yes, you were,
and I had only just opened the study door ever so little; and I didn’t
mean to upset the milk or to break the soap-dish; and oh, Jimmy, you
must know what a crump is, and this day has been just chock-full of
them. That’s why I said it was crumpled.”

The day of Henry’s departure was undoubtedly a crumpled day. To start
with, a letter from Mr. Molloy awaited Jane at the breakfast table. It
began, “My dear Renata,” and was signed, “Your affectionate father,
Cornelius R. Molloy.” Mr. Ember remarked at once upon the unusual
circumstance of there being a letter for Miss Molloy, and Jane, acting
on an impulse which she afterwards regretted, replied:

“It’s from my father. Do you want to see what he says?”

“Thank you,” said Jeffrey Ember. He glanced casually at the bald
sentences in which Mr. Molloy hoped that his daughter was well, and
expressed dislike of the climatic conditions which he had encountered on
the voyage. His eyes rested for a moment upon the signature, and quite
suddenly he cast a bombshell at Jane.

“What does the ‘R’ stand for?” he said.

Jane had the worst moment of panic with which her adventure had yet
provided her. She was about to say that she did not know, and take the
consequences, when Mr. Ember saved her.

“Is it Renatus?” he asked. Jane broke into voluble speech.

“Oh no,” she said, “my name has nothing to do with his. I was called
Renata after an aunt, my mother’s twin sister. They were exactly alike
and devoted to each other, and I was called after my Aunt Renata, and
her only daughter was called after my mother.” Here Jane bit the tip of
her tongue and stopped, but she had not stopped in time. Mr. Ember’s
eyes had left Molloy’s signature and were fixed upon her face.

“And your mother’s name?” he said.

“Jane,” faltered Jane.

“And are you and your cousin as much alike as your mothers were?”

Jane stared at her plate. She stared so hard that the gilt rim seemed to
detach itself and float like a nimbus above a half-finished slice of
buttered toast.

“I—I don’t know,” she replied. “I don’t remember my mother, and I never
saw my aunt.” Once again she bit her tongue, and this time very hard
indeed. She had been within an ace of saying, “My Aunt Jane——”

“But you have seen your cousin; by the way, what is her surname?”

“Smith—Jane Smith.”

“You have seen your cousin, Jane Smith? Are you alike?”

“I have only seen her once.” Jane grasped her courage, and looked
straight at Mr. Ember. He either knew something, or this was just idle
teasing. In either case being afraid would not serve her. A spice of
humour might.

“You’re frightfully interested in my aunts and cousins,” she said. “Do
you want to find another secretary just like me for some one? But I’m
afraid my Cousin Jane isn’t available. She’s married to a man in
Bolivia.”

At this point Lady Heritage looked over the edge of _The Times_ with a
frown, and the conversation dropped. Jane finished her buttered toast,
and admired herself because her hand did not shake.

Lady Heritage seemed to be in a frowning mood. This, it appeared, was
not one of the days when she disappeared behind the steel grating with
Ember, leaving Jane to pursue her appointed tasks in the library.
Instead, there was a general sorting of correspondence and checking of
work already done, with the result that Jane found herself being played
upon, as it were, by a jet or spray of hot water. The temperature
varied, but the spray was continuous. A letter to which Lady Heritage
particularly wished to refer was not to be found, a package of papers
wrongly addressed had come back through the Dead Letter Office, and an
unanswered invitation was discovered in the “Answered” file. By three
o’clock that afternoon Jane had been made to feel that it was possible
that the world might contain a person duller, more inept, and less
competent than herself—possible, but not probable.

“I think you had better go for a walk, Miss Molloy,” said Lady Heritage;
“perhaps some fresh air....” She did not finish the sentence, and Jane,
only too thankful to escape, made haste from the presence.

Ember had been right when he said that the grounds were extensive.

Jane skirted the house and made her way through a space of rather
formally kept garden to where a gravel path followed the edge of the
cliff. For a time it was bordered by veronica and fuchsia bushes, but
after a while these ceased and left the bare down with its rather coarse
grass, tiny growing plants, tangled brambles, and bright yellow clumps
of gorse. The path went up and down. Sometimes it almost overhung the
sea. Always a tall hedge of barbed wire straggled across the view and
spoilt it.

The fact that a powerful electric current ran through the wire and made
it dangerous to touch added to the dislike with which she regarded it.

It was a grey afternoon with a whipping wind from the north-west that
beat up little crests of foam on the lead-coloured waves and made Jane
clutch at her hat every now and then. She thought it cold when she
started, but by and by she began to enjoy the sense of motion, the
wind’s buffets, and the wide, clear outlook. At the farthest point of
the headland she stopped, warm and glowing. The path ran out to the edge
of the cliff. On the landward side the rock rose sharply, naked of
grass, and heaped with rough boulders. A small cave or hollow ran
inwards for perhaps four feet. In front of it, in fact almost within it,
stood a stone bench pleasantly sheltered by the overhanging rock and
curving sides of the hollow. Jane felt no need of shelter. Instead of
sitting down, she climbed upon the back of the bench and, steadying
herself against a rock, looked out over the wire and saw how the cliff
fell away, sheer at first, and then in a series of jagged, tumbled steps
until the rocks went down into the sea.

After a time Jane scrambled down and was hesitating as to whether she
would turn or not when a sound attracted her attention.

The path ended by the stone bench, but there seemed to be quite a
practicable grassy track beyond.

The sound which Jane had heard was the sound made by a stone which has
become displaced on a hillside. It must have been a very heavy stone. It
fell with a muffled crash. Then came another sound which she could not
place. She looked all round and could see nothing.

Something frightened her.

All at once she realised that she was a long way from the house and
quite out of sight. Turning quickly, she began to walk back along the
way that she had come, but she had not gone a dozen paces before she
heard scrambling footsteps behind her. Looking over her shoulder, she
saw the man George Patterson standing beside the stone seat which she
had just left. He made some sort of beckoning sign with his hand and
called out, but a puff of wind took away the words, and only a hoarse,
and as she thought, threatening sound reached her ears.

Without waiting to hear or see any more she began to run, and with the
first flying step that she took there came upon her a blind, driving
panic which sent her racing down the path as one races in a nightmare.

George Patterson started in pursuit. He called again twice, and the
sound of his voice was a whip to Jane’s terror. After at the most a
minute he gave up the chase, and Jane flew on, pursued by nothing worse
than her own fear.

Just by the first fuchsia bush she ran, blind and panting, into the very
arms of Mr. Ember. The impact nearly knocked him down, and it may be
considered as certain that he was very much taken aback.

Jane came back to a knowledge of her whereabouts to find herself
gripping Mr. Ember’s arm and stammering out that something had
frightened her.

“What?” inquired Ember.

“I—don’t—know,” said Jane, half sobbing, but already conscious that she
did not desire to confide in Jeffrey Ember.

“But you _must_ know.”

“I don’t.”

With a little gasp Jane let go, and wished ardently that her knees would
stop shaking. Ember looked at her very curiously.

Jane had often wondered what his queer cold eyes reminded her of.
Curiously enough, it was now, in the midst of her fright, that she knew.
They were like pebbles—the greeny-grey ones which lie by the thousand on
the seashore. As a rule they were dull and hard, just as the pebbles are
dull and hard when they are dry. But sometimes when he was angry, when
he cross-questioned you, or when he looked at Lady Heritage the dullness
vanished and they looked as the pebbles look when some sudden wave has
touched them. Jane did not know when she disliked them most.

They brightened slowly now as they fixed themselves upon her, and Ember
said:

“Do you know, I was hoping I might meet you. We haven’t had a real talk
since you came.”

“No,” said Jane.

Her manner conveyed no ardent desire for conversation.

“Shall we walk a little?” pursued her companion; “the wind’s cold for
standing. I really do want to talk to you.”

Jane said nothing at all. If Ember wished to talk, let him talk. She was
still shaky, and not at all in the mood for fencing.

“Well, how do you like being here? How do we strike you?”

Ember spoke quite casually, and Jane thought it was strange that he and
Henry should both have asked her the same question. Her reply, however,
differed.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Don’t you? My dear Miss Renata, what a really extraordinary number of
things you—don’t know! You don’t know what frightened you, and you don’t
know whether you like us or not.”

Jane’s temper carried her away.

“Oh yes, I do,” she said viciously, and looked full at the bright pebble
eyes.

Ember laughed.

“What do you think of Lady Heritage? Wonderful, isn’t she?”

“Oh yes,” said Jane. “She’s the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen.
Too beautiful, don’t you think?”

If she desired to interest Jeffrey Ember, it appeared that she had
succeeded. His attention was certainly arrested.

“Why too beautiful?”

Jane had an impulse towards frankness.

“I think she’s too ... everything. She has so many gifts, it does not
seem as if there could be scope for them all.”

Ember looked at Jane for a moment. Then he looked away. In that moment
Jane saw something—she could not really tell what. The nearest that she
could get to it was “triumph.” Yes, that was it, triumph.

As he looked away he said, very low, “She will have scope enough,” and
there was a little tingling silence.

He broke it in an utterly unforeseen manner. With an abrupt change of
voice he asked:

“Ever learn chemistry?”

“No,” said Jane, and then wondered whether she was telling the truth
about Renata.

“’M—know what a formula is?”

Jane put a dash of ignorant conviction into her voice:

“Oh, I think so—oh yes, of course.”

“Well, what is it?”

She looked puzzled.

“It’s difficult to explain things, isn’t it? Of course I know
‘formulate,’ and er—‘formal.’ But it’s—it’s something learned, isn’t
it?”

Ember’s sarcastic smile showed for a moment. With a horrid inward qualm
Jane wondered whether she had overdone Renata’s ignorance.

“A formula is a prescription,” said Ember slowly. “If you remember that,
I think you’ll find it all quite simple. So that Formula ‘A’ is simply a
prescription for making something up, labelled ‘A’ for convenience’
sake.”

Jane let her eyes become quite round.

“Is it?” she said in the blankest tone at her command. “But ... but what
is Formula ‘A,’ Mr. Ember?”

“That, my dear Miss Renata, is what a good many people would like to
know.”

“Would they? Why?”

“They would. In fact, some of them—person or persons unknown—wanted to
know so much that they have gone to the length of stealing Formula ‘A.’
That, at least, is Captain March’s opinion, and the reason for his visit
here. So I should be careful, very careful indeed, about betraying any
knowledge of Formula ‘A.’”

Jane whisked round, stared blankly, and said in largest capitals:

“ME?”

Then, after a pause, she burst out laughing. “What do you mean?”

“You either know, or you don’t know,” said Jeffrey Ember. “If you don’t
know, I’m not going to tell you. If you do, I have just given you a
warning. A very valuable Government secret has been stolen, and if
Captain March were to suspect that you were in any way involved—well, I
suppose ... I need not tell you that the consequences would be serious
beyond words.”

Jane gazed at him in a breathless delight which she hoped was not
apparent. The day had been singularly lacking in pleasantness, but it
was undoubtedly pleasing to receive a solemn warning of the dreadful
fate that might overtake her if Henry should suspect that she knew
anything about Formula “A.”

“But I haven’t the slightest idea what Formula ‘A’ can be,” she said.
“It sounds frightfully exciting. Do tell me some more. Was it stolen?
And how could anything be stolen here?”

“Who frightened you?” he said suddenly.

Jane caught her breath.

“It was a stone,” she said. “I don’t know why it frightened me so. It
fell over the edge of the cliff and gave me a horrid nightmare-ish sort
of feeling. I started running and then I couldn’t stop. It was
frightfully stupid of me.”

They walked on a few paces. Then Ember said:

“Captain March will probably come down here again. I managed to save you
from an interview with him this time, but if he comes again, and if he
sees you, remember there is only one safe way for you—you know nothing,
you never have known anything, as far as you are concerned there is
nothing to know. You shouldn’t find that difficult. You have quite a
talent for not knowing things. Improve it.” He paused, smiled slightly,
and went on, “You said just now that it was frightfully stupid of you to
be frightened. Sometimes, Miss Renata, it is a great deal more stupid
not to be frightened. Believe me, this is one of those times.”

They walked home in silence.




                               CHAPTER XI


Whilst Jane was running away from fear, down the gravel path of the
cliff’s edge, Captain March was about midway through an interview with
his chief.

Henry’s chief was a large man who strongly resembled a clean and highly
intelligent pig. A very little hair appeared to grow reluctantly on his
head; his face was pink and clean-shaven. He had inherited the
patronymic of Le Mesurier, his parents in his baptism had given him the
romantic name of Julian, and a grateful Government had conferred upon
him the honour of knighthood. It is, perhaps, unnecessary to add that,
from the moment that he emerged from the nursery and set foot within the
precincts of his first preparatory school, he had been known exclusively
as “Piggy.”

There is a story of a débutante who, at a large and formal dinner-party,
was discovered during a sudden silence to be addressing him as Sir
Piggott. The dinner-party waited breathlessly. Piggy smiled his benign
smile and explained that it had not been his good fortune to be called
after his aunt, Miss Piggott.... “I expect you have heard of her? She
left all her money to a home for cats, whereas, if my parents had done
their duty and invited her to be my godmother, I should be paying at
least twice as much income tax as I do now. Never undervalue your
relations, my dear Miss Browne.” The aunt was, of course, apocryphal;
and after dinner each of the older ladies in turn took the débutante
aside, and told her so—as a kindness. To each of them she made the same
reply, which was to the effect that “Piggy” was a darling. She married
him two years later. But all this has nothing to do with Henry’s
interview with his chief.

Sir Julian was speaking:

“It’s very unsatisfactory. You say they have been complying with all the
suggestions in the original Government instructions?”

“Yes, sir.”

Sir Julian frowned.

“It’s very unsatisfactory,” he repeated. “Sir William ... well, it’s six
months since I saw him, and he looked all right then.”

“He looks all right now,” said Henry. “He is all right except on his own
particular subject. He’d discuss politics, unemployment, foreign
affairs, or anything else, and you wouldn’t notice anything, but the
minute he comes to his own subject everything worries and irritates him.
He’s lost grip. As far as I can make out, he leaves everything to his
daughter and the secretary. They are competent enough, but....” Henry
did not finish his sentence.

“Ah yes, the secretary,” said Sir Julian. “What’s his name? Yes, Ember,
Jeffrey Ember....” He turned an indicator under his hand, and spoke
rapidly into the telephone beside him. “As soon as possible,” he
concluded.

“This girl now,” he said, looking at Henry. “I don’t see how this
statement of hers can be squared with any of the facts as we know them.”

As he spoke he picked up the notes which Henry had taken in the dark
cupboard.

“She made a suggestion herself,” said Henry. He paused, and looked with
a good deal of diffidence at Sir Julian.

“Well?”

“It is just within the bounds of possibility that the Government
experiments are being used as a blind. That was her suggestion, sir.”

Sir Julian was busily engaged in drawing on his blotting-paper. He drew
in rapid succession cats with arched backs and bottle-brush tails,
always beginning with the tail and finishing with the whiskers, three on
each side. Henry rightly interpreted this as a sign that he was to
continue.

“The conversation which was overheard at Molloy’s flat referred to a
Formula ‘A,’ which cannot possibly be the Formula ‘A’ which we know.
There may be a Formula ‘A’ of which we know nothing, and it may
constitute a grave danger. Ember”—Henry paused—“Ember is not only in a
position of great responsibility with regard to our—the official Formula
‘A,’ but he also appears to be mixed up with this other unofficial and
possibly dangerous Formula ‘A.’ The question, to my mind, is, ‘What
about Ember?’”

Sir Julian continued to draw cats. Suddenly he looked up, and said:

“How long has Patterson been there?”

“A fortnight,” said Henry. “We recalled Jamieson, you remember, and sent
him down.”

“Then, if there were unofficial experiments, they would be before his
time?”

“Yes,” said Henry.

“Would it be possible—no, I’ll put it another way. Officially Luttrell
Marches is impregnable, but unofficially—come March, the place
practically belongs to you—is there any way in which there might be
coming and going that would defy detection? You see, your hypothesis
demands either wholesale corruption of Government workmen, or the
introduction of other experiments.”

There was a pause. Then Henry said:

“In confidence, sir, there _is_ a way, but, to the best of my knowledge,
it is known only to myself and one other person.”

“It might be discovered.”

“I don’t think so. It never has been.”

“Well, I would suggest your ascertaining, in conjunction with the other
person, whether there is any evidence to show that the secret has been
discovered and the way made use of.”

The telephone bell rang. Sir Julian lifted the receiver and listened.

“Yes,” he said—“yes.” Then he began to take notes. “Spell the name,
please—yes. Nineteen hundred and five? Is that all? Thank you.”

He hung up the receiver, and turned to Henry.

“Ember’s dossier,” he said. “Not much in it at first sight. ‘Born 1880.
Son of Charles Ember, partner in Jarvis & Ember—manufacturing chemists;
firm liquidated in 1896. Education till then at Harrow, and subsequently
at Heidelberg, where he took degrees in medicine and science. From 1905
to 1912 at Chicago, U. S. A., as personal assistant to Eugene K.
Blumfield of Nitrates Ltd. Engaged as secretary by Sir William
Carr-Magnus during his American tour in autumn of 1912. Total exemption
during War on Sir William’s representations.’ ’M—blameless as a
blancmange—at first sight. We wouldn’t have him here at all if we hadn’t
been told to get the record of every one employed at Luttrell Marches.
Well, March?”

Henry looked up with his candid, diffident air.

“Heidelberg—Chicago—nitrates,” he said, with a little pause after each
word. Then—“I wonder if it was in Chicago that he met Molloy. Molloy was
a leading light of the I. W. W. there in 1911.”

Piggy looked up for a moment.

“’M, yes,” he said. “Did you get on to the subject of Molloy at all?”

“I had to be very careful,” said Henry, with a worried air. “I was
introduced to Miss Molloy, so I felt that it would look odd if I asked
no questions. On the other hand, I was afraid of asking too many. You
see, sir, if there’s really some infernal, underground plot going on,
with the general smash-up of civilisation as its object, that girl is in
a most awfully dangerous position. I wish to Heaven she was out of it,
but I’m not at all sure that she isn’t right when she says that the most
dangerous thing of all would be for her to give the show away by
bolting.”

“’M, yes,” said Piggy. “Your concern for the young lady’s safety does
you credit—attractive damsel in distress, eh? Nice, pretty young thing,
and all that?”

Henry blushed furiously, and said with some stiffness, “As I told you,
sir, we are old friends, and I think, it’s natural——”

“Entirely, entirely.” Piggy waved a large, fat hand with a pencil in it.
“But to get back to Ember—what did you ask him?”

“Well, I said I had known one or two Molloys, and asked whether Miss
Molloy was the cricketer’s daughter. Ember was quite forthcoming, rather
too forthcoming, I thought. Said he’d met Molloy in the States, and that
he was a queer card, but good company. Explained how surprised he was
when he ran into him at Victoria Station after not seeing him for years.
Then, quite casually and naturally, gave me to understand that Molloy
had put him up for a couple of nights. He really did it very well. Said
the daughter was a nice little thing just from school, that he thought
she would suit Lady Heritage, and how grateful Molloy was, as he was
just off to the States, and didn’t know what to do with the girl. The
impression I got was that he was taking no chances—not leaving anything
for me to find out afterwards.” Henry hesitated for a moment, and then
said, “The thing that struck me most was this. I didn’t ask to interview
Miss Molloy because I didn’t want to make her position more dangerous
than it already is. That is to say, I assumed that there _was_ danger,
which really means assuming a criminal conspiracy. Now, if there were no
danger and no criminal conspiracy, why on earth did every one make it so
easy for me not to interview Miss Molloy? It seems a little thing, but
it struck me—it struck me awfully, sir. You see, I took a roll-call of
the employés first, and checked them by the official list. Then I went
down to the stables with Sir William, and we went through all the
outdoor servants. And I finished up in Sir William’s study, where I saw
the domestic staff—and Mr. Ember. From first to last, no one suggested
that I should see Miss Molloy. In the end, I thought it would be too
marked not to bring her in at all, so I said to Lady Heritage, ‘What
about your secretary?’ and she said, ‘Why, she’s only just come ... you
don’t need to see her.’ I got nervous and left it at that. I think now
that I ought to have seen her, with Lady Heritage and Ember in the room;
then they couldn’t have suspected her of telling me anything.”

Piggy looked up from his cats, and looked down again. Very carefully he
gave each cat a fourth whisker on the left-hand side. Then he fixed his
small, light eyes on Henry and said:

“_They?_”

                            * * * * * * * *

At 9.30 that evening Sir Julian marked a place in his book with a
massive thumb, glanced across the domestic hearth at his wife, and
observed:

“M’ dear.”

Lady Le Mesurier raised her charming blue eyes from the child’s frock
which she was embroidering.

“I have news to break to you—news concerning the lad Henry. Prepare for
a shock. He is another’s. You have lost him, my poor Isobel.”

“I never had him,” said Isobel placidly.

“His mamma thought you had. She did her very best to warn me. I rather
think she considered that your young affections were also entangled. I
said to her solemnly, ‘My dear Mrs. March—I beg your pardon—my dear Mrs.
_de Luttrelle_ March—of course he is in love with Isobel. I expect young
men to be in love with her. I am in love with her myself.’”

“Piggy, you didn’t!”

“No, m’ dear, but I should have liked to. She is so very large and pink
that the temptation to say it, and to watch the pink turn puce, was
almost more than I could resist. But you have interrupted me. I was
about to break to you a portentous fact. Our Henry is in love.”

“Oh, Piggy!” said Isobel.

“Yes,” continued Henry’s chief—“Henry is undoubtedly for it. Another
lost soul. It’s always these promising lads that are snatched by the
predatory sex.”

“Piggy—we’re not——”

“M’ dear, you _are_. It’s axiomatic, beyond cavil or argument. Like the
python in the natural history books, you fascinate us first, and then
engulf us.”

Isobel allowed a fleeting smile to lift the corners of her very pretty
mouth.

“Oh, Piggy, what a mouthful you would be!” she murmured.

“Henry,” pursued Sir Julian—“Henry is in the fascinated stage. He
blushed one of the most modestly revealing blushes I have ever beheld.
The whole story is of the most thrillingly romantic and intriguing
nature, and I regret to say, m’ dear, that I cannot tell you a single
word of it.”

Lady Le Mesurier took up a blue silk thread.

“Oh, Piggy!” she said reproachfully.

Sir Julian beamed upon her.

“My official duty forbids,” he said, with great enjoyment. “Dismiss the
indecent curiosity which I see stamped upon your every feature. Upon
Henry’s affair my lips are sealed. I am a tomb. I merely wish to have a
small bet with you as to whether Henry’s mamma will queer his pitch or
not.”

“But, Piggy darling, how can I lay odds if I don’t know anything? Tell
me, is she pretty?”

“Isobel, is that the spirit in which to approach this solemn subject? As
an old married woman, you should ask, Is she virtuous? Is she thrifty?
Is she worthy of Henry? And to all these questions I should make the
same reply—I do not know.”

Isobel leaned forward, and still with that faint, delightful smile she
pricked the back of Sir Julian’s hand sharply with the point of her
embroidery needle.

“The serpent’s tooth!” he said, and opened his book. “Isobel, you
interrupt my studies. I merely wish to commend three aspects of the case
to your feminine intuition. First—Henry is in love; second—he has yet to
reckon with his mamma; third—I may at any time ring you up and instruct
you to prepare the guest chamber for Henry’s girl.”

Lady Le Mesurier began to work a blue ribbon bow round the stalks of
some pink and white daisies.

“You’re rather a lamb, Piggy,” she said.




                              CHAPTER XII


It was next morning, whilst Jane was sorting and arranging the papers
for the library table, that she caught sight of Henry’s first message.
She very nearly missed it, for the fold of the paper cut right across
the agony column, and what caught her eye was the one word that passed
as a signature, “Thursday.” It startled her so much that she dropped the
paper, and, in snatching at it, knocked over a pile of magazines.

Lady Heritage looked over her shoulder with a frown, tapped with her
foot, and then went on with her writing in a silence that uttered more
reproof than words could have done.

Jane picked everything up as silently as possible. As she put the papers
on the table, she laid _The Times_ out flat, and, bending over it, read
the message:

“You will receive a letter from me. Trust the bearer. Thursday.”

She put all the papers neatly in their places, and went to her
writing-table with an intense longing to be alone, to be able to think
what this might mean, and to wonder who—who would be the bearer of
Henry’s letter. She hoped ardently that Lady Heritage would have
business in the laboratories, and whilst these thoughts, and hopes, and
wonderings filled her mind, she had to write neat and legible replies to
the apparently inexhaustible number of persons who desired Lady Heritage
to open bazaars, speak at public meetings, subscribe to an indefinite
number of charities, or contribute to the writer’s support.

When, at last, she was alone in her own room, she was tingling with
excitement. At any moment some one, some unknown friend and ally, might
present himself. It was exciting, but, she thought, rather risky.

For instance, supposing Henry’s letter came, by any mischance, into the
wrong hands—and letters were mislaid and stolen sometimes—what a
perfectly dreadful chapter of misfortunes might ensue. She frowned, and
decided that Henry had been rash.

It was with a pleasant feeling of superiority that she put on her hat
and went out into the garden to pick tulips.

The weather had changed in the night, and it was hot and sunny, with the
sudden dazzling heat of mid-April. In the walled garden the south border
was full of violet-scented yellow tulips, each looking at this new hot
sun with a jet-black eye. A sheet of forget-me-nots repeated the sheer
blue of the sky.

Jane picked an armful of tulips and a sheaf of leopard’s bane. Strictly
speaking, she should then have gone in to put the flowers in water for
the adornment of the Yellow Drawing-Room. Instead, she made her way to
the farthest corner of the garden and basked.

At first she looked at the flowers, but after a while her eyelids fell.

Jane has never admitted that she went to sleep, but, if she was thinking
with her eyes shut, her thoughts must have been of an extremely
engrossing nature, for it is certain that she heard neither the opening
nor the shutting of a door in the wall beside her. She did feel a shadow
pass between herself and the sun, and opening her eyes quickly she saw
standing beside her the very man from whom she had fled in terror
yesterday.

The sunlight fell from upon him, showing the shabby clothes, the tall,
stooping figure, the grizzled beard, and that disfiguring scar.

With a great start Jane attempted to rise, only to discover that a
wheelbarrow may make a very comfortable chair, but that it is uncommonly
difficult to get out of in a hurry. To her horror the man, George
Patterson, took her firmly by the wrist and pulled her to her feet. She
shrank intensely from his touch, received an impression of unusual
strength, and then, to her overwhelming surprise, she heard him say in a
low, well-bred voice, “I have a letter for you, Miss Smith.”

“Oh, hush!” said Jane—“oh, please, hush!”

“All right, I won’t do it again. Look here, I want to say a few words to
you, but we had better not be seen together. Here’s your letter. Stay
where you are for five minutes, and then come down to the potting-shed.
Don’t come in; stay by the door and tie your shoe-lace.”

He went off with his dragging step, and left Jane dumb. There was a
folded note in her hand, and in her mind so intense a shock of surprise
as to rob her very thoughts of expression.

After what seemed like a long paralysed month, she opened the note which
bore no address, and read, pencilled in Henry’s clear and very
ornamental hand, “The bearer is trustworthy.—H. L. M.”

When she had looked so long at Henry’s initials that they had blurred
and cleared again, not once but many times, she walked mechanically down
the path until she came to the shed. Beside it was a barrel full of
rain-water. Into this she dipped Henry’s note, made sure that the words
were totally illegible, poked a hole in the border, and covered the
sodden paper with earth. Then at the potting-shed door she knelt and
became occupied with her shoe-lace.

“Henry saw me after he saw you,” said George Patterson’s voice. “He
thought it might be a comfort to you to know there is a friend on the
spot; but I’m afraid I gave you a fright yesterday.”

“You did,” said Jane, “but I don’t know why. I was a perfect fool, and I
ran right into Mr. Ember’s arms.”

“Did you tell him what frightened you?” said Patterson quickly.

“No, I wasn’t quite such a fool as that. Please, who are you?”

“My name here is George Patterson. I’m a friend of Henry’s. If you want
me, I’m here.”

“If I want you,” said Jane, “how am I to get at you?”

Mr. Patterson considered.

“There’s a wide sill inside your window.” (And how on earth do you know
that? thought Jane.) “If you put a big jar of, say, those yellow tulips
there, I’ll know you want to speak to me, and I’ll come here to this
potting-shed as soon as I can. You know they keep us pretty busy with
roll-calls and things of that sort. I only got back yesterday by the
skin of my teeth—I had to bolt.”

“Did you—you didn’t pass me.”

“No, I didn’t pass you.” There was just a trace of amusement in Mr.
Patterson’s voice.

Jane pulled her shoe-lace undone, and began to tie it all over again.

“Hush!” she said very quick and low. “Some one is coming.”

Just where the path ended, not half a dozen yards away, the red-brick
wall was pierced by a door. Two round, Scotch rose-bushes, all tiny
green leaf and sharp brown prickle, grew like large pin-cushions on
either side of the interrupted border. Bright pink nectarine buds shone
against the brick like coral studs. The ash-coloured door, rough and
sun-blistered, was opening slowly, and into the garden came Raymond
Heritage, pushing the door with one hand and holding a basket of bulbs
in the other. She was looking back over her shoulder, at something or
someone beside her.

From inside the potting-shed came Patterson’s voice—just a breath:

“Who?”

“Lady Heritage.”

Jane was up as she spoke and moving away. She reached the door just as
Raymond closed it and, turning, saw her.

“Oh, Miss Molloy—I was really looking for you. Is Garstin anywhere
about?”

“I haven’t seen him,” murmured Jane, as if the absent gardener might be
blooming unnoticed in one of the borders.

“He’s not in the potting-shed? I’ll just look in and see. I want to
stand over him and see that he puts these black irises where I want them
to go. They come from Palestine, and the last lot failed entirely
because he was so obstinate. I’ll get a trowel and mark the place I
think.” She moved forward as she spoke, and Jane, horror-struck,
stammered:

“Let _me_ look. It’s so dusty in there.”

She was back at the door of the shed, but Lady Heritage was beside her.
“I want a trowel, too,” she said, and Jane felt herself gently pushed
over the threshold.

They were both just inside the door. It seemed dark after the strong
light outside. There was a row of windows along one side, and a broad
deal shelf under them. There were piles and piles of pots and boxes.
There were hanks of bass and rows of tools, There were watering-cans.
There was a length of rubber hose. But there was no George Patterson.

Jane put her hand behind her, gripped the jamb of the door, and moved
back a pace so that she could lean against it. The pots, the tools, the
bass and the rubber hose danced before her bewildered eyes.

Lady Heritage put her basket of bulbs down on the wide shelf and said:

“Garstin ought to be here. He’s really very tiresome. That’s the worst
of old servants. When a gardener has been in a place for forty years as
Garstin has, he owns it.”

“Shall I find him?” said Jane.

“No, not now. I really want to talk to you. I’ve just been speaking to
Jeffrey Ember, and he tells me you had a fright yesterday. What
frightened you?”

“Nothing—my own silliness.”

Jane felt as if she must scream. George Patterson had disappeared as if
by a conjuring trick. Where had he gone to? Where was he? It was just
like being in a dream.

Raymond Heritage seemed to tower before her in her white dress. Her
uncovered head almost touched the low beam above the door.

“Jeffrey said you were blind with fright—that you ran right into him. He
said you were as white as a sheet and shaking all over. I want to know
what frightened you?”

“A stone—it fell into the sea——”

“What made it fall? A man? What man?”

Jane leaned against the door-post, her breath coming and going, her eyes
held by those imperious eyes.

“A stone,” she said; “it fell—I ran away.”

“Miss Molloy,” said Lady Heritage, “you walked to the end of the
headland, out of sight of the house. Whilst you were there something
gave you a serious fright. Something—or somebody. This is all nonsense
about a stone. Whom did you see on the headland, for you certainly saw
somebody? No, don’t look away; I want you to look at me, please.”

“I don’t know why I was so frightened,” said Jane. “It just came over
me.”

Lady Heritage looked at her very gravely.

“If you saw any stranger on the headland, it is your absolute duty to
tell me. Where secrets of such value are in question it is necessary to
watch every avenue and to neglect no suspicious circumstance. If you are
trying to screen any one, you are acting very foolishly—very foolishly
indeed. I warn you, and I ask you again. What frightened you?”

“I don’t know,” said Jane in a little whispering voice. “Why, why do you
think there was any one?”

“I don’t think,” said Lady Heritage briefly. “I know. Mr. Ember went up
to the headland after he left you, and there were footmarks in the
gravel. Some man had undoubtedly been there, and you must have seen him.
Mr. Ember made the entire round and saw no one, but some one had been
there. _Now_ will you tell me what you saw?”

“Oh!” said Jane. Rather to her own astonishment she began to cry. “Oh,
that’s why I was frightened then! The stone fell so suddenly, and I
didn’t know why—why——”

The sobs choked her.

Lady Heritage stood looking at her for a moment.

“Are you just an arrant little fool,” she said in a low voice, “or....”

“Oh, I’m not!” sobbed Jane. “Oh, I’ve never been called such a thing
before! I know I’m not clever, but I don’t think you ought to call me a
f—f—fool.”

Lady Heritage pressed her lips together, and walked past Jane and out
into the sunshine. She stood there for a moment tapping with her foot.
Then she called rather impatiently:

“Miss Molloy! Dry your eyes and come here.”

Jane came, squeezing a damp handkerchief into a ball.

“Bring your flowers in; I see you’ve left them over there to die in the
sun. I’m driving into Withstead this afternoon and you can come with me.
I have to see Mrs. Cottingham about some University extension lectures,
and she telephoned just now to say would I bring you. She has a girl
staying with her who thinks she must have been at school with you or one
of your cousins. Her name is Daphne Todhunter.”

Jane stood perfectly still. Daphne Todhunter? Arnold Todhunter’s sister
Daphne! Renata’s friend! But Daphne must know that Arnold was married?
The question was—whom _had_ Arnold married. Had his family welcomed (by
letter) Jane Smith or Renata Molloy to its bosom? If Renata Molloy, how
in the world was a second Renata to be explained to Miss Daphne
Todhunter?

“Miss Molloy, what’s the matter with you?” said Lady Heritage.

Jane could not think quickly enough. Supposing Lady Heritage went to
Mrs. Cottingham’s without her; and supposing Daphne Todhunter were to
say that her brother Arnold had married a girl called Renata Molloy?

It was too much to hope that Arnold had carried discretion to the point
of telling his own family that he had married an unknown Jane Smith.

Jane suddenly threw up her chin and squared her shoulders. The colour
came back into her cheeks.

“Nothing,” she said, with a little caught breath. “I’m sorry I was so
silly, and for crying, and if I was rude to you. It’s most awfully kind
of you to take me into Withstead.”

If there were any music to be faced, Jane was going to face it. At least
the tune should not be called behind her back.




                              CHAPTER XIII


A feeling of exhilaration amounting to recklessness possessed Jane as
she put on the white serge coat and skirt sacred to the Sabbath
crocodile. Attired in it Renata, side by side with Daphne Todhunter,
had, doubtless, walked many a time to church and back. In front of her
two white serge backs, behind her more white serge, and more, and more,
and more. Jane’s head reeled. She detested this garment, but considered
it appropriate to the occasion.

They drove into Withstead across the marshes. The sun blazed, and all
the tiny marsh plants seemed to be growing and stretching themselves.

Mrs. Cottingham lived in a villa on the outskirts of the town, and was
ashamed of it. She had married kind little Dr. Cottingham, but imagined
that she had condescended in doing so. Her reasons for thinking this
were not apparent.

Jane followed Lady Heritage into the dark, rather stuffy drawing-room,
and beheld a middle-aged woman with a rigidly controlled Victorian
figure, a tightly netted grey fringe, and a brown satin dress with a
good many little gold beads upon it. She had a breathless sense of the
extraordinary way in which the room was overcrowded. Every inch of the
walls was covered with photographs, fans, engravings, and china plates.
Almost every inch of floor space was covered with small ornamental
tables crowded with knick-knacks. There was a carved screen, and an
ebonised overmantel with looking-glass panels. There was a Japanese
umbrella in the fireplace.

Jane’s eyes looked hastily into every corner. There were more things
than she had ever seen in one room before, but there was no Daphne
Todhunter. Mrs. Cottingham was shaking hands with her. She had a fat
hand and squeezed you.

“And are you Daphne’s Miss Molloy?” she said. “She was _wildly_ excited
at the prospect of meeting you, and I said at once, ‘I’ll just ring up
Luttrell Marches, and ask Lady Heritage to bring her here this
afternoon.’ I thought I _might_ do that. You see, I only happened to
mention your name this morning, and Daphne was so _excited_, and she
goes away tomorrow, so it was the only chance. So I thought I would just
ring up and ask Lady Heritage to bring you. I said to Daphne at once,
‘Lady Heritage is so kind, I’m sure she will bring Miss Molloy.’”

Jane saw Lady Heritage’s eyebrows rise very slightly. She moved a step,
and instantly Mrs. Cottingham had turned from Jane:

“Why Lady Heritage, you’re standing! Now I always say _this_ is the most
comfortable chair.”

Her voice went flowing on, but Jane suddenly ceased to hear a word she
said, for a door at the far end of the room was flung open. On the
threshold appeared Miss Daphne Todhunter.

In common with most other Daphnes, Cynthias and Ianthes, she was short
and rather heavily built. Her brown hair was untidy. She wore the twin
coat and skirt to that which was adorning Jane.

With an exclamation of rapture, she rushed across the room, dislodging a
book from one little table and an ash-tray from another.

(“Her eyes are exactly like gooseberries which have been boiled until
they are brown,” thought Jane, “and I _know_ she’s going to kiss me.”)

She not only kissed Jane, she hugged her. Two stout arms and a waft of
white rose scent enveloped Jane’s shrinking form.

After a moment in which she wondered how long this embrace would last,
Jane managed to detach herself. Mrs. Cottingham’s voice fell gratefully
upon her ears:

“Daphne, Daphne, my dear, come and speak to Lady Heritage.—She’s wildly
excited, as I told you—the natural enthusiasms of youth, dear Lady
Heritage, so beautiful, so quickly lost; I’m sure you agree with
me.—Daphne, Daphne, my dear.”

Daphne came reluctantly and thrust a large hand at Lady Heritage without
looking at her. Raymond looked at it for a moment, and, after a
perceptible pause, just touched the finger-tips. Mrs. Cottingham never
stopped talking.

“So it _is_ your friend, and you’re just too excited for words. Take her
away and have a good gossip. Lady Heritage and I have a great deal to
talk about.—You were saying....”

“I was saying,” said Lady Heritage wearily, “that you must write at once
if you want Masterson to lecture for you next winter.”

Daphne dragged Jane to the far end of the room.

“Oh, Renata, how perfectly delicious! But how did you come here? And
what are you doing, and where’s Arnold, and why aren’t you with him?”
She made a pounce at Jane’s left hand, and felt the third finger.

“Oh, where’s your ring?” she said.

“Hush!” said Jane.

They reached a sofa and sank upon it. Immediately in front of them was
an octagonal table of light-coloured wood profusely carved. Upon it,
amongst lesser portraits, stood a tall photograph of Mrs. Cottingham in
a train, and feathers, and a tiara. The sofa was low, and Jane felt that
fate had been kinder than she deserved.

“Oh, Renata, aren’t you married?” breathed Daphne.

She breathed very hard, and Jane was reminded of Arnold on the
fire-escape.

“Oh, Renata, tell me! When she ... Mrs. Cottingham said, ‘Miss Renata
Molloy,’ I nearly died. I said, ‘Miss Molloy?’ And she said, ‘Yes, Miss
Renata Molloy,’ and oh, I very nearly let the cat out of the bag.” She
grasped Jane’s hand and pressed it violently. “But I didn’t. Arnold told
me not to, and I didn’t, but, of course, I’m simply _dying_ to know all
about everything. Now, darling, tell me ... tell me everything.”

Never in her life had Jane felt so much aloof from any human creature.
There was something so inexpressibly comic in the idea of pouring out
her heart to Daphne Todhunter that she did not even feel nervous, only
aloof—aloof, and cool. She looked earnestly at Daphne, and said:

“What did Arnold tell you?”

“It was the greatest shock,” said Daphne, “and such a surprise. One
minute there he was, moving about at home, and not knowing when he would
get a job, and perfectly distracted with hopelessness about you; and the
next he rushed down to say good-bye because he was going to Bolivia, and
his heart was broken because you wouldn’t go too....” She stopped for
breath, and squeezed Jane’s hand even harder than before. “And then,”
she continued, “you can imagine what a shock it was to get the
letter-card.”

“Yes,” said Jane, “it must have been. What did it say?”

Daphne opened her eyes and her mouth.

“Didn’t he show it to you? How perfectly extraordinary of him!”

“Well, he didn’t” said Jane. “What did he say?”

“I know it by heart,” said Daphne ardently. “I could repeat every word.”

“Well, for goodness’ sake do!”

“Renata! How odd you are, not a bit like yourself!” Fear stabbed Jane.

“Tell me what he said—tell me what he said,” she repeated.

With an effort she pressed the hand that was squeezing hers.

“What, Arnold, in the letter-card? But I think it was just too weird of
him not to have shown it to you—too extraordinary.”

Jane felt that she was becoming dazed.

“What did he say?”

“I know it all by heart. I could say it in my sleep. He said, ‘Just off;
we sail together. We were married this morning, and I’m the happiest man
in the world. Don’t tell any one at present. If you love me, not a word
to a soul. Will write from Bolivia.—Arnold. P. S.—On no account tell
Aunt Ethel.’ So you see why I nearly died when she said Miss Renata
Molloy, for of course I thought you were in Bolivia with Arnold, and oh,
Renata, where is he and what has happened? Tell me everything?”

She flung her arms about Jane’s neck as she spoke and gave her a long,
clinging kiss. Jane endured it under pressure of that, “You are not a
bit like yourself.” When she had borne it for as long as she could, she
drew back.

“Listen,” she said.

“Tell me—tell me the worst—tell me everything. Where is Arnold?”

“Arnold is in Bolivia,” said Jane.

“And why aren’t you with him?”

Jane produced a pocket-handkerchief. It was a very little one, but it
sufficed. In her own mind Jane described it as local colour.

“We have parted,” she said, and dabbed her eyes.

“Renata! But you’re married to him!”

“No,” said Jane, quite truthfully.

An inward thankfulness that she was not married to Arnold supported her.

Daphne stared at her with bulging eyes.

“You’re not! But he said, ‘We were married this morning.’ I read it with
my own eyes, and I could repeat it in my sleep. I know it by heart....”

Jane checked her with a look that held so much mysterious meaning that
the flood of words was actually stemmed.

“He didn’t marry _me_,” said Jane, in a tense whisper. She looked
straight into the boiled gooseberry eyes, and then covered her own.

“He didn’t marry you?” repeated Daphne, gasping.

“No,” said Jane, from behind the handkerchief.

“But he’s married?”

“Y—yes,” said Jane.

“Oh, Renata!”

Miss Todhunter cast herself upon Jane’s neck and burst into tears. The
impact was considerable and her weight no light one.

“Daphne, please—please—Lady Heritage is looking at us. Do sit up. I
can’t tell you anything if you cry. There’s really nothing to cry
about.”

Daphne sat up again. She also produced a handkerchief, a very large one
with “Daphne” embroidered across the corner in coral pink. A terrific
blast of white rose emerged with the handkerchief.

“But he was so much in love with you,” she wailed. “I don’t understand
it. How _could_ he marry any one else and break your heart!”

“My heart is not broken,” said Jane.

“Then it was your fault, and you’ve broken his, and he’s got married
just to show he doesn’t care, like people do in books. I don’t believe
you love him a bit.”

Jane looked modestly at the carpet, which was of a lively shade of
crimson.

“I’m afraid I don’t,” she said, in a very small voice.

An unbecoming flush mounted to Daphne’s cheeks.

“I don’t know how you’ve got the face,” she said.

Much to Jane’s relief, she withdrew from her to the farthest corner of
the sofa, and then glared.

“Poor Arnold! Aunt Ethel always did say you were sly. She always said
she wouldn’t trust you a yard.” She paused, sniffed, and then added, in
what was meant for a tone of great dignity:

“And please, whom _has_ Arnold married?”

“Her—her name is Jane, I believe,” said Jane, with a tremor.

At this moment she became aware that Lady Heritage had risen to her
feet. Mrs. Cottingham’s voice clamoured for attention.

“Oh, Lady Heritage, not without your tea! It won’t be a moment. Indeed,
I couldn’t dream of letting you go like this. Just a cup of tea, you
know, so refreshing. Indeed, it would distress me to think of your
facing that long drive without your tea.”

Raymond stood perfectly still, her face weary and unresponsive.

“I am afraid my time is not my own,” she said, and crossed the room to
where the two girls were sitting. They both rose, Daphne with a jerk
that dislodged a photograph frame.

“I am afraid I must interrupt your talk,” said Lady Heritage. “Were you
living school triumphs over again? I suppose you swept off all the
prizes between you?”

If there was irony in the indifferent voice, Miss Todhunter was unaware
of it. She laughed rather loudly, and said:

“Renata never won a prize in her life.”

“Oh!” said Raymond, with a lift of the brows. “I am surprised. I
pictured her always at the head of her class, and winning everything.”

Daphne laughed again. She was still angry.

“I’m afraid she’s been putting on side,” she said. “Why, Miss Basing
would have fainted with surprise if she had found Renata anywhere near
the top of anything. Or me either,” she added, with reluctant honesty.

“Miss Molloy,” said Raymond, “ask Mrs. Cottingham if she will let Lewis
know that we are ready;” and as Jane moved away, she continued, “I
should have thought her languages now....”

Daphne’s mouth fell open.

“Oh, my goodness,” she said, “she _must_ have been piling it on. Why,
her languages were rotten, absolutely rotten. Why, Mademoiselle said
that I was enough to break her heart, but when it came to Renata it was
just, ‘Mon dieu!’ the whole time; and then there were rows because Miss
Basing thought it was profane. Only, somehow it seems different in
French—don’t you think?”

Lady Heritage looked at Daphne as though she had some difficulty in
thinking about her at all.

“I see,” she said gravely, and then Mrs. Cottingham bore down upon them.

“Tea should have been ready if I had known,” she said. Her colour had
risen, and her voice shook a little. “If I could persuade you ... I’m
sure it won’t be more than a moment. But, of course, if you must ... but
if I had only known. You see, I thought to myself we would have our talk
first, and then enjoy our tea comfortably, and indeed it is _just_
coming in—but, of course, if you are _obliged_ to go....”

“Thank you very much; I am obliged to go. Good-bye, Mrs. Cottingham.
You’ll write to Masterson and let me know what the answer is? I think I
hear the car.”

Miss Todhunter, who had embraced her friend so warmly half an hour
before, parted from her with a tepid handshake; but if neither Daphne
nor Mrs. Cottingham considered the visit a success, Lady Heritage seemed
to derive some satisfaction from it, and Jane told herself that not only
had a danger been averted, but a distinct advantage had been gained.




                              CHAPTER XIV


Jane ran straight up to her room when they got back, but she was no
sooner there than it came into her mind to wonder whether she had put
away the files which she had been working on just before she went into
the garden. Think as she would, she could not be sure.

She ran down again and went quickly along the corridor to the library.
The door was unlatched. She touched the handle, pushed it a little, and
stood hesitating. Lady Heritage was speaking.

“It’s a satisfaction to know just where one is. Sometimes I’ve been
convinced she was a fool, and then again ... well, I’ve wondered. I
wondered this afternoon in the garden. That man on the headland gives
one to think furiously. Who on earth could it have been?”

“I ... don’t ... know.”

“But I don’t believe she saw him. I don’t believe she saw anything or
knew why she was frightened. She just got a start ... a shock—began to
run without knowing why, and ran herself into a blind panic. She looked
quite idiotic when I was questioning her.”

“Oh,” thought Jane. “It’s horrible to listen at doors, but what am I to
do?”

What she did was to go on listening. She heard Lady Heritage’s rare
laugh.

“Then this afternoon—my dear Jeffrey, it would have convinced you or any
one. The friend—this Daphne Todhunter—well, only a fool could have made
a bosom friend of her, and, as I told you, even she had the lowest
opinion of her adored Renata’s brains.”

“I don’t know,” said Ember again. “You say she’s a fool, I say she’s a
fool, her friend says she’s a fool, but something, some instinct in me
protests.”

“Womanly intuition,” said Lady Heritage, with a mocking note.

There was silence; then:

“These girls—were they alone together?”

“No. They conducted what appeared to be a curiously emotional
conversation at the other end of Mrs. Cottingham’s dreadful
drawing-room, which always reminds me of a parish jumble sale.”

Ember’s voice sounded suddenly much nearer, as if he had crossed the
room.

“Emotional? What do you mean?” he said quickly. Lady Heritage laughed
again.

“Mean?” she said. “Does that sort of thing mean anything?”

“What sort of thing? Please, it’s important.”

“Oh, hand-holding, and a tearful embrace or two. The usual
accompaniments of schoolgirl _schwärmerei_.”

Jane could hear that Ember was moving restlessly. Her own heart was
beating. She knew very well that in Ember’s mind there was just one
thought—“Suppose she has told Daphne Todhunter.”

“Which of them cried?” said Ember sharply.

“I think they both did—Miss Todhunter most.”

“And you couldn’t hear what they were saying?”

“Not a word.”

“I must know. Will you send for her and find out? It’s of the first
importance.”

“You think....”

“She may have told this girl what we’ve been trying to get out of her. I
must know. Look here, I’ll take a book and sit down over there. She
won’t notice me. Send for her and begin about other things, then ask her
why her friend was so distressed....”

Jane heard Ember move again and knew that this time it was towards the
bell. She turned and ran back along the way by which she had come. Five
minutes later she was entering the library to find Lady Heritage at her
table and Ember at the far end of the room buried in a book.

“I want the unanswered-letter file.” Lady Heritage’s voice was very
businesslike.

Jane brought it over and waited whilst Raymond turned over the letters,
frowning.

“I don’t see Lady Manning’s letter.”

“You answered it yesterday.”

“So I did. Miss Molloy—why did your friend cry this afternoon?”

“Daphne?”

“Yes, Daphne. Why did she cry?”

“Oh, she does, you know.”

“But I suppose not entirely without some cause.”

“She was angry with me,” said Jane very low.

“Yes? I noticed that she did not kiss you when you went away.”

“No, she’s angry. You see”—Jane hung her head—“you see, she thinks—I’m
afraid she thinks that I didn’t treat her brother very well.”

“Her brother?”

“Yes. She wanted me to be engaged to him, but he’s married some one
else, so I think it’s rather silly of her to be cross with me, don’t
you?”

“I really don’t know.”

Out of the tail of her eye Jane saw Mr. Ember nod his head just
perceptibly. Lady Heritage must have seen it too, for she pushed the
letter file over to Jane.

“Put this away. No, I don’t want anything more at present.”

Tea came in as she spoke.

Afterwards in her own room Jane sat down on the broad window ledge with
her hands in her lap, looking out over the sea. The lovely day was
drawing slowly to a lovelier close, the sun-drenched air absolutely
still, absolutely clear. The tide was low, the sea one sheet of unbroken
blue, except where the black rocks, more visible than Jane had ever seen
them, pierced the surface.

Jane did not quite know what had happened to her. Her moment of
exhilaration was gone. She was not afraid, but she felt a sense of
horror which she had not known before. She had thought of this adventure
as _her_ adventure, her own risk. Somehow she had never really related
it to other people. For the first time, she began to see Formula “A,”
not as something which threatened her, but as something that menaced the
world. It was ridiculous that it was Mrs. Cottingham and Daphne
Todhunter who had caused this change.

It is one thing to think vaguely of civilisation being swept away, and
_quite_ another to visualise some concrete, humdrum Tom, Dick, or Harry
being swept horribly out of existence. Jane’s imagination suddenly
showed her Formula “A”—The Process, whatever they chose to call the
horrible thing—in operation; showed it annihilating fussy Mrs.
Cottingham, with her overcrowded drawing-room and her overcrowded talk;
showed it doing something horrible to fat, common Daphne Todhunter. The
romance of adventure fell away, the glamour that sometimes surrounds
catastrophe shrivelled and was gone. It was horrible, only horrible.

Jane kept seeing Mrs. Cottingham’s ugly room, and Raymond Heritage
standing there, as she had seen her that afternoon, like a statue that
had nothing to do with its surroundings. All at once she knew what it
was that Lady Heritage reminded her of—not Mercury at all, but Medusa
with the lovely, tortured face, stone and yet suffering.

As she looked out over that calm sea she had before her all the time the
vision of Medusa, and of hundreds and hundreds of quite ordinary,
vulgar, commonplace Mrs. Cottinghams and Daphne Todhunters being turned
to stone. A tremor began to shake her. It kept coming again and again.
Then, all at once, the tears were running down her face. It was then it
came to her that she could not bear to think of Daphne as she had seen
her at the last, with that hurt, angry, puzzled look.

“She’s a fat lump, but Arnold is her brother, and Renata is her friend,
and she thinks they’ve failed each other and been horrid to her. I can’t
bear it.”

At that moment Jane hated herself fiercely because Daphne’s tears had
amused her.

“You’ve got a brick instead of a heart, and, if you get eliminated,
it’ll serve you right.”

She dabbed her eyes very hard, straightened her hair, and ran downstairs
to the library again.

Ember was the sole occupant, and Jane addressed him with diffidence:

“Mr. Ember, do you think I might ... do you think Lady Heritage would
mind ... I mean, may I use the telephone?”

“What for?” said Ember, looking at her over the edge of his paper.

“I thought perhaps I might,” said Jane ... “I mean, I wanted to say
something to my friend, the one who is staying with Mrs. Cottingham.”

“Ah—yes, why not?”

“Then I may?”

“Oh yes, certainly. Do you want me to go?”

Jane presented a picture of modest confusion. It was concern for Daphne
Todhunter that had brought her downstairs, concern and the prickings of
remorse, but at the sight of Ember, she experienced what she would have
described as a brain-wave.

“If you wouldn’t mind,” she said. “I’m so sorry to disturb you, but I
did rather want to talk privately to her.”

“Oh, by all means.” Ember’s tone was most amiable, his departure most
courteously prompt.

Jane would have been prepared to bet the eighteen-pence which
constituted her sole worldly fortune to a brass farthing that upon the
other side of the door his attentive ear would miss no word of her
conversation.

She gave Mrs. Cottingham’s number, and waited in some anxiety.

The voice that said “Hullo!” was unmistakably Miss Todhunter’s, and Jane
began at once:

“Oh, Daphne, is that you? I want to speak to you so badly. Are you
alone? Good! I’m so glad.”

At the other end of the line Daphne was saying grumpily:

“I don’t know what you mean. There are three people in the room. I keep
telling you so.”

“Good!” said Jane, with a little more emphasis. “I want to speak to you
most particularly. I’ve been awfully unhappy since this afternoon; I
really have. And I wanted to say—— I mean to ask you not to be upset
about Arnold. It’s all for the best, really. Please, please, don’t think
badly of him. It’s not his fault, and I know you’ll like his wife very
much indeed. He’ll tell you all about it some day, and you’ll think it
ever so romantic. So you won’t be unhappy about it, will you? I hate
people to be unhappy.”

Without waiting for Miss Todhunter’s reply, Jane hung up the receiver.
After a decent interval she opened the door. Mr. Ember was at the far
end of the passage, waiting patiently.




                               CHAPTER XV


Jane waked that night, and did not know why she waked. After a moment it
came to her that she had been dreaming. In her dream something
unpleasant had happened, and she did not know what it was. She sat up in
the darkness with her hands pressed over her eyes, trying to remember.

The vague feeling of having passed through some horrifying experience
oppressed her far more than definite recollection could have done.

She got up, switched on the light, and began to pace up and down, but
she could not shake off that feeling of having left something, she did
not know what, just behind her, just out of sight. She looked round for
the book she had been reading, but she remembered now that she had left
it downstairs. She looked at her watch. It was three o’clock. The house
would be absolutely still and empty. It would not take her two minutes
to fetch the book from the drawing-room. She slipped on Renata’s
dressing-gown, put out her light, and opened the door.

With a little shock of surprise she saw that the corridor was dark. Some
one must have put out the light which always burned at the far end.
Instead of the usual faintly rosy glow, there was darkness thinning to
dusk, and just at the stairhead a vivid splash of moonlight. After a
moment’s hesitation Jane slipped out of her room, leaving the door ajar.
Somehow she had not reckoned upon having to cross that brightly lighted
space. She came slowly to the head of the stairs and looked down into
the hall. It was like looking into the blackness and silence of a vast
well. She could see nothing—nothing at all. The moon was shining in
through the rose window above the great door. There was a shield in the
window, a shield with the Luttrell arms, and the light came through the
glass in a great beam shot with colour, and struck the portrait of Lady
Heritage and the vine leaves and grapes on the newel just below. The
window and the portrait were on the same level, and the ray seemed to
make a brilliant cleavage between the silvery dusk above and the dense
gloom below.

Jane descended the stairs, walking carefully so as to make no noise. At
the foot she turned sharply to the left and passed the study door, the
fireplace, and the steel gate which shut off the north wing. The door of
the Yellow Drawing-Room was straight in front of her. She opened it
softly and went in.

The book would be on the little table to the right of the fireplace,
because she remembered putting it there when Lady Heritage made an
unexpectedly early move. She stood for a moment visualising the
arrangement of the chairs, and then walked straight to the right place.
The book was where she had left it, put down open, a bad habit for which
Jimmy had often rebuked her. She was back at the door with it, and just
about to pass the threshold when she heard a sound. Instantly she stood
still, listening. The sound came from the other end of the hall, where
the shadows lay deepest round the massive oak door.

“But there can’t be any one at the door at this hour,” said Jane—“there
can’t, there can’t possibly.”

The sound came again, something between a rustle and a creak, but so
faint that no hearing less acute than Jane’s would have caught it.

“It’s on the left of the door, underneath Willoughby Luttrell’s
picture....”

Jane suddenly pressed her hand to her lips and made an involuntary
movement backwards, for there was an unmistakable click, and then, slow
and faint, a footfall. Jane stood rigid, staring into the darkness of
the corner. She thought she heard a sigh, and then the footsteps crossed
the hall, coming nearer. At the stair foot they paused, and then began
to ascend.

Jane gazed into the deeply shadowed space where the footfall sounded,
but nothing—not the slightest glimpse of anything moving—came to her
straining sight.

She looked up and saw the level ray of moonlight overhead. Whoever
climbed the stair must pass up into the light and be visible, but from
where she stood she could only see the side of the stair like a black
wall. But she must see—she must. If some one had come out of the
darkness where there was no door she must know who it was. Her bare feet
made no sound as she moved from the sheltering doorway. Step by step she
kept pace with those slow mounting footsteps. She passed the steel gate,
and, feeling her way along the wall, came to a standstill by the cold
black hearth. Then, with her whole body tense, she turned and looked up.
There was a darker shadow among the shadows, a shadow that moved
upwards, towards the beam of moonlight. Jane watched, breathless, and
from where The Portrait hung, the sombre eyes of Raymond Heritage seemed
to watch too. Out of blackness into dusk a something emerged; one step
more and the moonlight fell on a dark hood. Up into the light came a
cloaked figure, draped from head to foot, shapeless.

On the top step it turned. Jane caught her breath. It was Lady Heritage.
She stood there for a long minute, her left hand just resting on the
newel post with its twining tendrils and massive overhanging grapes. The
light shone full upon her, and her face was sharpened, blanched, and
sorrowful. Her eyes seemed to look into unfathomable depths of gloom.
The amber, the rose, and the violet of the stained glass fell in a hazy
iridescence upon the black of her cloak.

In front the cloak fell away and showed the straight white linen of an
overall, and cloak and overall were deeply stained with dull wet smears.
A piece of the stuff hung jagged from a tear.

Jane looked, and could not take her eyes away.

“Oh, she’s so unhappy,” she said to herself.

With a quick movement Raymond Heritage pushed the hood back from her
hair. Then she turned, faced her own portrait for a moment, and passed
slowly out of sight. Jane heard a door close very softly.

She stood quite still and waited, gathering her courage. She would have
to mount the stair and pass through that light before she could reach
the safely shadowed corridor. Just for a moment it seemed as if she
could not do it. Her feet seemed to cleave to the ground. Five minutes
passed, and another five.

Jane felt herself becoming rigid, and with a tremendous effort, she took
one step forward, but only one, for as her foot touched a new cold patch
of floor, some one moved overhead.

For an instant a little pencil of electric light jabbed into the
darkness and went out again. The next moment Mr. Ember stepped into the
moonlight. He too wore a linen overall, and in his left hand he carried
the mask-like head-dress which was in use in the laboratories. His right
hand held a torch.

He came down the stairs, walking with astonishing lightness. Half-way
down the torch came into play again. He sent the little ray in a sort of
dazzle-dance about the hall. With every leaping flash Jane’s heart gave
a jump, and she only stopped her teeth from chattering by biting hard
upon the cuff of Renata’s dressing-gown. She had covered her face
instinctively, and peered, terror-stricken, between her fingers.

The light skimmed right across her once, and but for the crimson
flannel, she would certainly have screamed aloud. If Mr. Ember had been
looking, he could have seen a semicircle of white forehead, two
clutching hands, and a quivering chin. But his eyes were elsewhere, and
the dancing flash passed on.

Ember crossed the hall to the far corner out of which Lady Heritage had
come. Suddenly the light went out.

Jane heard again the very, very small creaking noise which she had heard
before. It was followed by a faint click, and then unmitigated silence.
The seconds added themselves together and became minutes, and there was
no further sound. The minutes passed, and the beam of moonlight slipped
slowly downwards. Now The Portrait was in darkness, now the newels were
just two black shadows. It was a long, long time before Jane moved. She
climbed the staircase with terror in her heart. At the edge of the
moonlight she waited so long that it moved to meet her. When the edge of
it touched her bare, hesitating foot she gave a violent start, and ran
the rest of the way.

The dark corridor felt like a haven of refuge.

She came panting to her own door, and suddenly there was no haven of
refuge anywhere. The door was shut. She had left it ajar. It was shut.

Jane stood with her outstretched hand flat on the panel of the door. She
kept saying over and over to herself:

“I left it open, but it’s shut. I left it open, but it’s shut.”

Once she pushed the door as if it could not really be shut at all, but
it did not yield; the latch had caught. It was shut. At last she turned
the handle slowly and went in. A gust of wind met her full. Perhaps it
was the wind that had shut the door. She left it ajar, moved to the
middle of the room, and waited. For a moment there was a lull. Somewhere
in the house a clock struck four. The sound came just over the edge of
hearing, with its four tiny distant strokes. Then the wind rushed in
again through the open window, and the door fell to with a click.




                              CHAPTER XVI


By next morning the wind had brought rain with it. A south-west gale
drove against the dripping window-panes, and covered the sea with crests
of foam.

Jane, rather pale, wrote a neat letter to the Misses Kent, Hermione
Street, South Kensington, mentioning that she would be much obliged if
they would send her patterns of jumper wool by return. She hesitated,
and then underlined the last two words.

“I always think big shops do you better,” was Lady Heritage’s comment,
and Mr. Ember added, “Do you knit, Miss Renata? I thought you were the
only girl in England who didn’t”—to which Jane replied, “I want to
learn.”

It was after the letter had been posted that she found Henry’s second
message, “Hope to see you to-day, Friday.” She could have cried for pure
joy.

At intervals during the day, the thought occurred to her that Henry was
a solid comfort. She wasn’t in love with him, of course, but undoubtedly
he was a comfort. She had plenty of time to think, for she spent the
entire day by herself. Sir William had gone to town for three or four
days. Lady Heritage disappeared into the north wing at eleven o’clock,
and very shortly after, Mr. Ember followed her. Neither of them appeared
again until dinner-time. Jane went to sleep over a book and awoke
refreshed, and with a strong desire for exploration.

If only last night’s mysterious happenings had taken place anywhere but
in the hall. The dark corner from which Raymond had emerged and into
which Mr. Ember had vanished drew her like a magnet, but not until every
one was in bed and asleep would she dare to search for the hidden door.

“If I were just sitting here and reading,” she thought to herself,
“probably no one would come into the hall for hours; but if I were to
look for a secret passage, all the servants would begin to drift in and
out, and the entire neighbourhood would come and call.”

When the lights had been turned on, she wandered round, looking at the
Luttrell portraits. This, she thought, was safe enough, and if not the
rose, it was at least near it. Willoughby Luttrell’s picture hung
perhaps five feet from the ground and about half-way between the hall
door and the corner. Jane had always noticed it particularly because
Henry undoubtedly resembled this eighteenth century uncle.

Mr. Willoughby Luttrell had been painted in a Court suit of silver-grey
satin. He wore Mechlin ruffles and diamond shoe-buckles. He had the air
of being convinced that the Court of St. James could boast no brighter
ornament, but his face was the face of Henry March, and Henry’s grey
eyes looked down at Jane from beneath a Ramillies wig.

After an interval Jane stopped looking at Mr. Luttrell’s eyes, and
reflected that the click which she had heard the night before came from
a point nearer the corner. She did not dare go near enough to feel the
wall, and no amount of staring at the panelling disclosed any clue to
the secret.

Jane went back to her book.

By sunset the rain had ceased to fall, or, rather to be driven against
the land. The wind, lightened of its burden of moisture, kept coming
inland in great gusts, fresh and soft with the freshness and softness of
the spring. The entire sky was thickly covered with clouds which moved
continually across its face, swept on by the currents of the upper air,
but these clouds were very high up. Any one coming out of an enclosed
place into the windy night would have received an impression of
extraordinary freedom, movement, and space.

Henry March received such an impression as he turned a pivoting stone
block and came out of the small sheltering cave behind the seat on the
headland above Luttrell Marches. At the first buffet of the gale he took
off his cap, and stuffed it down into the pocket of the light ulster
which he wore, and stood bareheaded, looking out to sea. His eyes showed
him blackness and confused motion, and his ears were filled with the
strange singing sound of the wind and the endless crash and recoil of
the waves against a shingly beach.

He stood quite still for a time and then turned his wrist and glanced at
the luminous dial of the watch upon it, after which he passed again
behind the stone seat and was about to re-enter the blacker shadows when
a tall figure emerged.

“Have you been here long?” said a voice.

“No, I’ve only just come. How are you, Tony?”

“All right. I didn’t think you’d be down here again so soon. It was
touch and go whether I could get here.”

“Piggy’s orders,” said Henry. “Look here, Tony, don’t let’s go inside.
It’s a topping night, and that passage I’ve just come along smells like
a triple extract of vaults—perfectly beastly. I don’t suppose our friend
Ember is addicted to being out late. He doesn’t strike me as that sort
of bird somehow.”

“All right,” said Anthony Luttrell. He sat down on the stone seat as he
spoke, and Henry followed his example.

“Piggy sent you down, did he? What for?”

Henry was silent. It seemed like quite a long time before he said:

“Tony, who knows about the passages beside you and me?”

“No one,” said Anthony shortly.

“Uncle James told me when he thought the Boche had done you in. He said
then that no one knew except he and I. He drew out a plan of all the
passages and made me learn it by heart. When I could draw it with my
eyes shut, we burnt every scrap of paper I had touched. I’ve been into
the passages exactly three times—once that same week to test my
knowledge, again the other day, and to-night. I’ll swear no one saw me
go in or come out, and I’ll swear I’ve never breathed a word to a soul.”

“Are you rehearsing your autobiography?” inquired Anthony Luttrell, with
more than a hint of sarcasm.

“No, I’m not. I want to know who else knows about the passages.”

“And I have told you.”

“Tony, it is no good. I had my suspicions the other night, but to-night
I’ve got proof. The passages have been made use of. Unfortunately
there’s no doubt about it at all. I want to know whether you have any
idea—hang it all, Tony, you must see what I’m driving at! Wait a minute;
don’t go through the roof until you’ve heard what I’ve got to say. You
see, I know that Uncle James gave you the plan when you were only
sixteen, because he thought he was dying then, and I’ve come down here
to ask you whether any one might have seen you coming and going as a
boy, or whether ... Tony, _did_ you ever tell any one?”

“I thought you said that it was Piggy’s orders that brought you down
here.”

“Yes, it was,” said Henry.

“Am I to gather then that Piggy has suggested these damned impertinent
questions?” Mr. Luttrell’s tone was easy to a degree.

Henry, on the verge of losing his temper, rose abruptly to his feet,
walked half a dozen paces with his hands shoved well down in his
pockets, and then walked back again.

“Tony, what on earth’s the good of quarrelling?”

Anthony Luttrell was leaning back, his head against the back of the
stone seat, his long legs stretched out in front of him. He appeared to
be watching the race of clouds between the horizon and the zenith. He
said something, and the wind took his words away.

Henry sat down again.

“Look here, Tony,” he said, “you’ve not answered my question. Did you
ever tell any one? Damn it all, Tony, I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t have
to!... Did you ever tell Raymond?”

A great gust swept the headland, another and more violent one followed
it, battered against the cliff, and then dropped suddenly into what,
after the tumult, seemed like a silence.

“Piggy speaking, or you?” said Anthony Luttrell quite lightly.

“Both,” said Henry.

“You sound heated, Henry. Now I should have thought that that would have
been my rôle. Instead, I merely repeat to you, and you in your turn, of
course, repeat to Piggy that I have told no one about the passages, and,
after you have admired my moderation, perhaps we might change the
subject.”

“I’m afraid it can’t be done,” said Henry. “Tony, do you mind sitting up
and looking at this?”

As he spoke he placed “this” on the seat between them and turned a light
upon it, holding the torch close down on to the seat so that the beam
did not travel beyond its edge. Mr. Luttrell turned lazily and saw a
small handkerchief of very fine linen with an embroidered “R” in the
corner. He continued to look at it, and Henry continued to hold the
torch so that the light fell upon the initial. Then quite suddenly
Anthony Luttrell reached sideways and switched off the light. His hand
dropped to the handkerchief and covered it.

“No, I don’t want it,” said Henry, “but I thought you ought to know that
I found it in the passage behind us, just where one stoops to shift the
stone.”

“It’s one I found and dropped,” said Anthony, putting it into his
pocket.

Henry said nothing at all.

A somewhat prolonged silence was broken by Luttrell. “I’m chucking my
job here,” he said. “I’ve written to Sir Julian. Here’s the letter for
you to give him.” He pushed it along the seat as he spoke, and Henry
picked it up reluctantly. “I’ve asked to be replaced with as little
delay as possible. You might urge that point on him, if you don’t mind.
I want it made perfectly clear that under no circumstances will I stay
on more than three days. I will, in fact, see the whole department
damned first.”

He spoke without the slightest heat, in the rather cold, drawling manner
which Henry had known as a danger-signal from the days when he was a
small boy, and Anthony a big one and his idol.

“Are you giving any reason?”

“No, there’s no reason to give.”

“Piggy,” said Henry thoughtfully, “will want one. It’s all very well for
you, Tony, to write him a letter and say you’re going to chuck your job
without giving a reason. I’ve got to stand up at the other side of his
table and stick out a cross-examination on the probable nature of the
reasons which you haven’t given. You’re putting me in an impossible
position.”

“It’s that damned conscience of yours, I suppose! I cannot tell a lie,
and all that sort of thing.”

“Not to Piggy about this.”

“All right,” said Anthony, getting to his feet, “tell him the truth. Why
should I care? I suppose, in common with everybody else, he is perfectly
well aware that I once made a fool of myself about Lady Heritage. Well,
I thought I could stick being down here and seeing her, but I can’t. It
just comes to that. I can’t stick it.”

“Does she know you’re here?”

“No, she doesn’t. She sees me in an overall and a mask. She has been
pleased to commend my skill. This afternoon she leaned over my shoulder
to watch what I was doing. Well, I came away and wrote to Piggy. I can’t
stand it, and you can tell him so with the utmost circumstance.”

Henry was leaning forward, chin in hand. He looked past Anthony at the
black moving water.

“Why don’t you see Raymond?” he said. “No, Tony, you’ve just got to
listen to me. What you’ve been saying is true as far as it goes, but it
doesn’t go very far. You wouldn’t chuck your job just for that. You
know, and I know that you’re chucking it because you are afraid that
Raymond is involved. If you know it, and I know it, don’t you think
Piggy will know it too? That’s why I say, see Raymond. If she’s let
herself get mixed up with this show, it’s because she’s had a rotten
time and wants to hit back. She said as much to me—oh, not à propos of
this, of course; we were just talking.”

“I heard her,” said Anthony Luttrell. He paused, and added with a
distinct sneer, “You displayed an admirable discretion.”

“Thank you, Tony. Now what’s the good of you clearing out? If you do,
Piggy will send some one else down here, and if Raymond has got mixed up
with any of Ember’s devilry, she’ll get caught out. For the Lord’s sake,
Tony, see her, let her know you’re alive! I believe she’d chuck the
whole thing and go to the ends of the earth with you. Nobody would press
the matter. We should catch Ember out, and you and Raymond could go
abroad for a bit. I don’t see any other way out of it.”

“You seem to me to be assuming a good deal, Henry,” said Anthony
Luttrell.

“I’m not assuming anything”—Henry’s tone was very blunt. “I know three
things.”

“Yes?”

“One”—Henry ticked his facts off on the fingers of his left hand: “the
passages are being used. Two: they’ve been wired for electric light.
Three: Raymond has been through them, and quite lately. Those three
facts, taken in conjunction with a deposition stating that something of
a highly dangerous and anti-social nature is being manufactured on these
premises, and under cover of the Government experiments—well, Tony, I
don’t suppose you want me to dot the ‘i’s’ and cross the ‘t’s.’”

“It never occurred to you that my father might have had the place wired,
I suppose?”

“He didn’t,” said Henry. “It’s no good, Tony. You can’t bluff me, and I
hate your trying to. There’s only one way out of this. You’ve got to see
Raymond.”

Anthony made an impatient movement.

“You assume too much,” he said, “but I’ll put that on one side. From the
cold, official standpoint, where does my interview with Lady Heritage
come in? Wouldn’t it rather complicate matters? You appear to assume
that there is a conspiracy, and then to suggest that I should warn one
of the conspirators.”

“No, I do not. I ask you to let Raymond know that you are alive, nothing
more. In my view nothing more is necessary. She’ll naturally think you
are here to see her, and you can let her think so. As to the cold,
official standpoint, the last thing that the department would want is a
scandal about a woman in Raymond’s position. Piggy would say what I
say—for the Lord’s sake get her out of it and let us have a free hand.
She’s an appalling complication.”

“Women always are,” said Anthony Luttrell in his bitter drawl.

He moved a pace or two away, and then turned back again. “You’re not a
bad sort in spite of the conscience, Henry,” he said. “From your
standpoint, what you’ve just said is sense—good, plain common sense—in
fact, exactly the thing which one has no use for in certain moods.”

“Scrap the moods, Tony,” said Henry, in an expressionless voice.

Anthony laughed, rather harshly.

“My good Henry,” he said—there was affection as well as mockery in his
tone—“does one ask for one’s temperament? Look here, I haven’t seen
Raymond because I haven’t dared—I don’t know what I might do or say if I
did see her. Now that is the plain, unvarnished truth. When I was in
Petrograd I once hid for three days in a cellar with a temperamental
Russian lady. There was nothing to do except to talk, and we talked
endlessly. She told me a lot of home truths—said my nature was like a
glacier, cold and slow, and that once I had got going I had to go on,
even if I ground all my own dearest hopes to powder in doing so.”

“In other words, if you’ve got a grouch, you’re a devil to keep it,”
said Henry. “It’s quite true; you always were. But, look here, Tony, why
all this to my address? Why not get it off your chest to Raymond, and if
you _will_ deal in geological parallels, well—she’s rather in the
volcano line, or used to be, and I don’t mind betting she’ll blow your
glacier to smithereens?” Henry looked at his watch.

“I must go,” he said. “Think it over, Tony, and same place, to-morrow,
same time.”

He turned, without waiting for an answer, and walked into the darkness
of the cave.




                              CHAPTER XVII


Jane went to her room that night, but she did not undress. Two entirely
opposite lines of reasoning had ended in inducing one and the same
decision. On the one hand, it might be argued that Lady Heritage and Mr.
Ember, having passed the greater part of last night abroad upon their
mysterious business, would be most unlikely to spend a second sleepless
night so soon, and Jane might, therefore, count on finding the coast
clear for a little exploring on her own account. On the other hand, an
equally logical train of thought suggested that these midnight comings
and goings might be part of a routine, and that Jane, if on the watch,
might acquire some very valuable information.

She therefore locked her door and proceeded to consider the question of
what she should wear with as much attention as if she had been going to
a ball. Neither barefoot nor with only stockings would she go into any
passage which had left those unpleasant dark stains upon Lady Heritage’s
overall. A really heartfelt shudder passed over her at the very idea.
No, Renata possessed slippers of maroon felt. Misguided talent had
stenciled upon the toe of one a Dutch boy in full trousers, and upon the
toe of the other a Dutch girl in full petticoats. Jane had a fierce
loathing for the slippers, but they had cork soles and would at once
keep out the damp and be very silent. She therefore placed them in
readiness.

Prolonged hesitation between the claims of the crimson flannel
dressing-gown and an aged blue serge dress resulted in a final selection
of the latter. She decided that it would flap less, and that if it got
stained and damp the housemaids would be less likely to notice it.

“Of course, on the other hand,” said Jane to herself, “if I’m caught, it
absolutely does in any excuse about walking in my sleep, but I don’t
think that’s an earthly, anyhow. If I’m caught, they’ll jolly well know
what I was doing. The thing is not to be caught.”

At half-past eleven precisely she made her way down to the hall.

To-night there was no patch of moonlight to pass through, only a vague
greyness which showed that the moon had risen and that the clouds
outside were thin enough to let some of the light filter through.

Jane felt her way downstairs and across the hall to Sir William’s study.
The study door afforded the nearest point from which she could watch
what she called Willoughby Luttrell’s corner without exposing herself to
detection.

She made up her mind that she would wait until she heard twelve strike,
and then explore the corner. She had so thoroughly planned a period of
waiting that it was with a feeling of shocked surprise that she became
aware, even as she reached and crossed the threshold of the study, that
some one was coming down the stairs behind her.

If she had been one moment later, if she had stayed, as she very nearly
did stay, to look out of the window and see whether the night was fair,
they would have walked into one another at the top of the stairs. As it
was, she had escaped by the very narrowest margin.

The door opened inwards, and she had just time to get behind it and
close all but a crack, when through that crack she saw Raymond Heritage
pass, wrapped in the same black cloak which she had worn the night
before, only this time she wore beneath it, not her linen overall, but
the dress she had worn for dinner. She held an electric lamp in her left
hand.

As soon as she had passed the door, Jane opened it a little wider and
came forward a step.

Lady Heritage went straight to the corner of the hall. She put the torch
down upon a chair which stood immediately under Willoughby Luttrell’s
portrait. Then she went quite close to the wall and reached up, with her
arms stretched out widely. Her right hand touched the bottom left-hand
corner of the portrait and her left rested in the angle of the corner.

Jane heard the same click which she had heard the night before.

Lady Heritage stepped back, took up her light, and, going to the corner,
pushed hard against the wall.

Jane watched with all her eyes, and saw a section of the panelling turn
on some unseen pivot, leaving a narrow door through which Raymond
passed. For a moment she stared at the lighter oblong in the wall; then
there was a second click and the unbroken shadow once again.

Tingling with excitement, Jane stepped from her doorway and came to the
corner. She must, oh she must, find the spring, and find it in time to
follow. Raymond stood here and reached up, but she was tall, much taller
than Jane. She stood on her tiptoes and could not reach the lowest edge
of the portrait.

With the very greatest of care she moved the chair that was under the
picture a yard or two to the left. It weighed as though it were made of
lead instead of oak, and she was gasping as she set it down, but she had
made no noise. Renata’s cork soles slipped as she climbed on to the
polished seat, but she gripped the solid back and did not fall.

Raymond had pressed something in the wall with both hands at once. Jane
began to feel carefully along the lower edge of the portrait until she
came to the massively foliated corner with its fat gilt acanthus leaves.
A cross-piece of the panelling came just on the same level. She felt
along it with light, sensitive finger-tips. There was a knot in the
wood, but nothing else. “If there is another knot in the corner, I’ll
try pressing on them,” she thought to herself, and on the instant her
left hand found the second knot. She pressed with all her might, and for
the third time that evening she heard the little scarcely audible click.
This time it spelt victory.

In a curiously methodical manner Jane got down, put the chair carefully
back into its place, and pushed against the wall as she had seen Lady
Heritage do. The panelling yielded to her hand and swung inwards.

There was a black gap in the corner. Jane passed through it without any
hesitation, and pulled the panelling to. She meant to leave it just
ajar, but her hand must have shaken, or else there was some controlling
spring, for as she stood in the black dark she heard the click again.
She drew a long breath and stood motionless for a moment, but only for a
moment. She had come there to follow Raymond Heritage, and follow her
she would.

She put out a cautious foot and it went down, so far down that for a
sickening instant she thought that she must overbalance and fall
headlong; then, just in time, it touched a step, the first of ten which
went down very steeply. At the bottom she felt her way round a corner,
and then with intensest thankfulness she saw, a good way ahead, a moving
figure with a light.

The passage that stretched before her was about six feet high and four
feet wide. The air felt very damp and heavy. At intervals there were
openings on the left-hand side where other passages seemed to branch
off. Jane began to have a growing horror of these other passages. If she
lost Lady Heritage, how would she ever find her way back, and—yet more
horrid thought—who, or what, might at any moment come out of one of
those dark tunnels behind her? It was at this point that she began to
run, only to check herself severely. “She’ll hear you, you fool. Jane, I
absolutely forbid you to be such a fool; and Renata’s slippers will come
off if you run, nasty sloppy things, and then you’ll tread in green
slime, and get it between all your toes. _It will squelch._” The horror
of the black passages was eclipsed; Jane stopped running obediently, but
she took longer steps and diminished the distance between herself and
her unconscious guide.

The passage had begun to run uphill. Jane wondered where they were
going. At any moment Lady Heritage might turn. If she did so, Jane must
infallibly be caught unless she were near enough to one of the side
tunnels. She went on with her heart in her mouth.

A line from one of Christina Rossetti’s poems came into her head:

  “Does the road wind uphill all the way?
  Yes, to the very end.”

“The sort of cheery thing one _would_ remember,” thought Jane to
herself; and she continued to climb the endless slope, her eyes fixed on
the dark, moving silhouette of Lady Heritage.

At last there was a pause. The light ceased to move. Jane crept closer,
but dared not come too near. Next moment she saw what looked like a slab
of stone in the passage wall swing round on a pivot as the panelling had
done. Lady Heritage passed out of sight through the opening, and at the
same moment a great breath of wind from the sea drove into the passage,
clear, fresh, exquisite.

Jane hurried to the opening and looked out. She saw first the dark,
curving walls of a small cave, and, immediately in front of her, the
black outline of a bench, beyond that a stretch of uneven ground, a
tangle of wire, and the black movement of the sea. The moon behind the
clouds made a vague, dusky twilight, and the wind blew. Lady Heritage
was standing just on the other side of the stone seat. It startled Jane
to find that she was so near. She stood quite still looking at the
shadowed water and the cloudy sky.

Then, without any warning, a tall, dark figure came into sight. To Jane
it seemed as if it rose out of the ground. Afterwards she thought that,
if any one had been sitting on the grass and then had risen, it would,
of course, have looked like that. At the time she leaned against the
rock for support and had much ado not to scream.

It was Lady Heritage who called out, with an inarticulate cry that
mingled with the wind and was carried away.

The dark figure stood still just where it had so suddenly appeared, and
in an instant Raymond had turned her light upon it. In the circle of
light Jane saw a man—a tall man, bareheaded. He had thrown up his arm as
if to screen his face, but it only hid the mouth and chin. Over it his
eyes looked straight at Raymond Heritage.

And Raymond gave a great cry of “Anthony!” The light dropped from her
hand, fell with a crash on the stones, rolled over, and went out.
Anthony Luttrell did not stir, but Raymond began to move towards him
after a strange rigid fashion, and as she moved, she kept saying his
name over and over:

“Tony—Tony—Tony—Tony.”

Her voice fell lower and lower. As she reached him it was nearly gone.

Jane turned from the stone wall where she was leaning, and stumbled back
along the dark passage with the tears running down her face.

At that last whisper of his name, Anthony spoke:

“I’m not a ghost, Raymond. Did you think I was?”

They were so close together that if she had stretched out those groping
hands another inch they would have touched him. Something in his tone
set a barrier between them and Raymond’s hands fell empty. The world was
whirling round her. Life and death, love and hate, their parting and
this meeting were merged in a confusion that robbed her of thought and
almost of consciousness. It seemed to her as if they had been standing
there for a long, long time, or, rather, as if time had nothing to do
with them, and they had been cast into a strange eternity. Out of the
turmoil of her thought arose the remembrance of the last time she and
Anthony had trysted in this place—a sky almost unbearably blue and the
sea brilliant under the noonday sun. Now there was no light anywhere.

Anthony was alive. That should have been joy unbelievable. All through
the years since she had read his name in the list of missing with what
an overwhelming surge of joy would her heart have lifted to the words,
“Anthony is alive.” Now she said them to herself and felt only a deeper,
more terrible sense of separation than any that had touched her yet.
They stood together, and between them there was a gulf unpassable—and no
light anywhere.

Raymond moved very slowly back along the way that she had come. She came
to the stone seat, caught at the back of it with a hand that suddenly
began to shake, and sat down. A few slow moments passed. Then she bent
and began to grope for the torch which she had dropped.

Anthony came towards her.

“What is it?” he said, and she answered him in a low, fluttering voice:

“My light—I dropped—it’s so dark—I want the light.”

The strong, capable hand groping without aim stirred something in
Anthony. He said, almost roughly:

“I’ll find it.”

Then a moment later he had picked it up, found it intact save for a
crack in the glass, and, switching it on, put it down on the seat beside
her.

He was not prepared for her immediately flashing the light on to his
face. An exclamation broke from him, and to cover it he said:

“I am changed out of knowledge.”

“Changed—yes—Tony, that scar.”

Her voice trembled away into silence. Her hand fell. The dusk was
between them.

“Ugly, isn’t it? But I haven’t the monopoly of change, have I? You, I
think, have changed also.”

“Yes.”

With an impulse she hardly understood, she raised the light and turned
it until her face and her bare throat were brilliantly illuminated. The
dark cloak fell away a little. The dark eyes looked at him with defiance
and appeal. Her beauty, seen like that, had something that startled; it
was so devoid of life and colour, and yet so great! After a long,
breathless minute Anthony said in his slow voice:

“You have changed more than I have, Lady Heritage, for you have changed
your name.”

He saw the last vestige of colour leave her face. She put the lamp down,
and her silence startled him.

“No one would have known me,” he said after a pause that was all strain.

“I knew you,” said Raymond very low.

“Only because the lower part of my face was hidden. You’d have passed me
in daylight. You have passed me.”

She winced at that, turned the light full on to him again, and said:

“You are working in the laboratory—that’s—that’s why....” She broke off
for a minute and went on with a sort of violence, “You say that I didn’t
know you, but I did—I did. All this week I’ve been tormented with your
presence. All this week I’ve felt you just at hand, just out of reach. I
kept saying to myself, ‘Tony’s dead,’ and expecting to meet you round
every corner. It was driving me mad.”

“It sounds most uncomfortable,” said Anthony dryly.

Raymond saw a mocking look pass over his face. She turned the light away
and set it down. If she had not felt physically incapable of rising to
her feet, she would have left him then. This was not Anthony at all,
only the anger, the bitterness, the cold resentment which she had hated
in him. These, not Anthony, had come back from the grave.

He was speaking again:

“Perhaps I shouldn’t ask, but ... are you expecting to meet any one
here? Am I in the way?”

She answered him with a sort of heartbroken simplicity quite beyond
pride:

“I don’t know what I expected. You were haunting me so. I came here
because ... oh, Tony, don’t you remember at all?”

“I remember something that you appear to have forgotten, Raymond. When
like a fool, and a dishonourable fool at that, I gave you the secret of
these passages, I remember very well the rather enthusiastic terms in
which you asserted your conviction that the secret was a sacred trust,
and one that you would keep absolutely inviolate. As, however, I broke
my own trust in giving you the secret, I can, I suppose, hardly complain
because you have imitated my lack of discretion.”

Raymond did rise then.

“Tony, what do you mean?” she cried.

“My dear Raymond, you know very well what I mean.”

“I do not.” Her voice had risen; this was more the Raymond of their old
quarrels, a creature quick to passionate anger, vehement and reckless.

“I say you know very well.”

“And I say that I do not. That I haven’t the shadow of an idea—and that
you must explain, Tony; explain.”

“Oh, I’ll explain all right!”

The last word was almost lost in a battering gust of wind. He waited for
it to die away, and then:

“How soon did you give away the secret to Ember?” he said, and heard her
gasp.

“To Jeffrey—you think I told Jeffrey?”

Anthony laughed. It needed only her use of Ember’s name.

“I know that you told Ember,” he said in a voice like ice.

Raymond put her hands to her head. She pressed her throbbing temples and
stared at this shadow of Anthony. It was beyond any nightmare that they
should meet like this. She made a very great effort, and came up to him,
touching his wrist, trying to take his hand.

“Tony, I don’t know what you’re thinking of. I don’t know how you can
speak to me like this. I don’t know what you mean—I don’t indeed. Since
you went I have only been into the passages twice, last night and
to-night. I went there because—oh, why do people go and weep upon a
grave? I had no grave to go to, but I thought that, if I came here where
we used to meet, perhaps the you that was haunting me would take shape
so that I could see it, or else leave me. I felt driven, and I didn’t
know what was driving me.”

In the breathless silence that followed she heard him say:

“I _know_ that you told Ember”—and quite suddenly all the strength went
out of her.




                             CHAPTER XVIII


When Jane turned, and ran back down the dark passage, she had just the
one thought—to get away out of earshot. That she, or any one but Anthony
Luttrell, should have heard that breaking tone in Raymond’s voice
shocked her profoundly. She felt guilty of having intruded upon the
innermost sacred places of another woman’s life. It shocked and moved
her very deeply. Tears blinded her, and she ran into the dark without a
thought for herself. It was only when, looking back, she could not see
even a glimmer of outside twilight that she halted and began to think
what she must do.

The practical was never very long in abeyance with Jane. She began to
plan rapidly, even whilst she dried her eyes. She would feel her way to
the foot of the stairs. If she kept touching the left-hand wall, there
would be very little risk of losing her way. Only one passage had led
off in that direction and that one diverged at right angles, so that she
would not run the risk of going down it unawares. When she came to the
foot of the stairs, she would turn back again and wait in the first
cross-passage until Raymond passed. Then she would follow her up the
steps and watch to see how the door opened on this side.

Jane was very much pleased with her plan when she had made it. It made
her feel very intelligent and efficient. She began to put it into
practice at once, walking quite quickly with her right hand feeling in
front of her and the left just brushing the wall. Of course the stone
was horrid to touch—cold, damp, slimy. She was sure the slime was green.
Once she jabbed her finger on a rock splinter, and once she touched
something soft which squirmed. The dark seemed to get darker and darker,
and the silence was like a weight that she could hardly carry.

Her little glow of self-satisfaction died down and left her coldly
afraid. Then, quite suddenly, she came to the cross-passage. Her fingers
slid from the stone into black air, groped, stretched out, and
touched—something—warm, alive.

Jane’s gasping scream went echoing down the dark. A hand came up and
caught her wrist, another fell upon her right shoulder.

“Jane, for the Lord’s sake, hush!” said Henry’s voice.

Jane caught her breath as if she were going to scream again.

“Henry, you utter, utter, _utter_ beast!” she said, and incontinently
burst into tears.

Henry put his arms round her, and Jane wept as she had never wept in her
life, her face tightly pressed against the rough tweed of his coat
sleeve, her whole figure shaking with tumultuous sobs.

Presently, when she was mopping her eyes and feeling quite desperately
ashamed, she exclaimed:

“I had just touched a slug, and you were worse. I didn’t think anything
could be worse than a slug, but you were.”

Henry had kissed the back of her neck twice while she was crying. Now he
managed to kiss a little bit of damp cheek.

“You’re not to,” said Jane, in a muffled whisper.

“Why not?” said Henry, with the utmost simplicity. “You don’t mind it,
you know you don’t.” He did it again. “Jane, if you had minded, you
wouldn’t have clung to me like that. Jane darling, you do like me a
little bit, don’t you?”

“Oh, I don’t! And I didn’t cling, I didn’t.”

“You did. Take it from me, you did.”

Jane made a very slight effort to detach herself. It was unsuccessful
because Henry was a good deal stronger than she was and he held her
firmly.

“Henry, I really hate you,” she said. “Any one might cling, if they
thought it was a slug or Mr. Ember and then found it wasn’t.” Then,
after a pause, “Henry, when a person says they hate you, it’s usual to
let go of them.”

“My book of etiquette,” said Henry firmly, “says—page 163, para. ii.—‘A
profession of hatred is more compromising than a confession of love; a
woman who expresses hatred in words has love in her heart.’ And I really
did see that in a book yesterday, so it’s bound to be true, isn’t
it?—isn’t it, darling?”

“Henry, I told you to stop,” said Jane; “I simply _won’t_ be kissed by a
man I’m not engaged to.”

“Oh, but we are,” said Henry. “I mean you will, won’t you?”

Jane came a very little nearer.

“We should quarrel,” she said, “quite dreadfully. You know there are
some people you feel you’d never quarrel with, not if you lived with
them a hundred years; and there are others, well, you know from the very
first minute that you’d quarrel with them and keep on doing it.”

“Like we’re doing now?” said Henry hopefully. Jane nodded. Of course
Henry could not see the nod, but he felt it because it bumped his chin.

“All really happily married people quarrel,” he said. “The really
hopeless marriages are the polite ones. And you know you’ll like
quarrelling with me, Jane. We’ll make up in between whiles, and there
won’t be a dull moment. Will you?”

“I don’t mind promising to quarrel,” said Jane. “No, Henry, you’re
positively not to kiss me any more. I’m here on business, if you’re not.
How did you get here? And why were you lurking here, pretending to be a
slug?”

“Suppose you tell me first,” said Henry. “How did _you_ get here?”

“I followed Lady Heritage. I’ve got an immense amount to tell you.”

She leaned against Henry’s arm in the darkness, and spoke in a soft,
eager voice:

“It really began yesterday. I woke up and couldn’t go to sleep again, so
I came down for a book, and just as I was at the drawing-room door, I
saw Lady Heritage come out of the corner by Willoughby Luttrell’s
picture. Did you know there was a door there, Henry?”

“Yes. Go on.”

“She went upstairs, and I was trying to screw up my courage to cross the
hall when Mr. Ember came down the stairs and disappeared into the same
corner. Of course then I _knew_ there must be a door there, so I made up
my mind to come down to-night and look for it.”

“Jane, wait,” said Henry. “You say Ember came down the stairs and went
through the door. Do you think Lady Heritage left it open? Or do you
think he watched her come out, and then found the way for himself?”

“No,” said Jane; “neither. I mean I’m quite sure it wasn’t like that at
all. She shut the door, for I heard it, and it certainly wasn’t the
first time Mr. Ember had been that way. Why, he even put his light out
before he came to the wall, and any one would have to know the way very
well to find it in the dark.”

“Yes. Then what happened?”

“I went back to bed. Henry, you simply haven’t any idea how much I hated
going up those stairs. There was a perfectly fiendish patch of
moonlight, and I felt as if I couldn’t go through it and perhaps be
pounced on by some one just round the corner. If it hadn’t been for the
housemaids finding me in the morning, I believe I should just have stuck
where I was.”

Henry’s arm tightened a little.

“Well, to-night I hid in the study quite early, but I had hardly got
there when Lady Heritage came down. I watched to see what she did, and
as soon as she had gone through the door and shut it, I hauled that
great heavy chair along and climbed on to it, and found the spring. Your
old secret door was made for much taller people than me, and I was just
dreadfully frightened that some one would come and find me standing on
the chair in the corner, and looking like a perfect fool. Oh, I _was_
thankful when I really got into the passage and found that Lady Heritage
was still in sight.”

“I think it was frightfully clever of you,” said Henry, “frightfully
clever and frightfully brave; but you’re not to do it again. You might
have run into Ember or any one.”

“Then you do believe there’s something dreadful going on,” said Jane
quickly.

“I don’t know about what I believe, but I know that the passages are
being used, and that they’ve been wired for electric light. I haven’t
explored them yet, but people don’t do that sort of thing for nothing.
Now go on. I may say that I saw Raymond pass, and you after her. What
happened next?”

Jane hesitated.

“I’ll tell you,” she said. “She opened another door, and went out—why,
it’s been puzzling me, but of course I know now, the passage leads to
the headland. And the other day, when I was so frightened, Mr. Patterson
must have come out of it; and he was there to-night.”

“Yes, go on. Did they meet?”

“Yes,” said Jane, in a queer, shy voice. “I couldn’t help hearing. I ran
away at once, but I couldn’t help hearing her call him Tony. It’s your
cousin, Anthony Luttrell, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it’s Tony,” said Henry. “Thank the Lord they’ve met. I’d just left
him there after jawing him about seeing Raymond.”

“Oh, I hope they’ve made it up,” said Jane. “She looked so dreadfully
unhappy last night that I felt I simply couldn’t bear it. It’s so
dreadful to see people hurt like that, and not be able to do anything.
Do you think they’ll make it up?”

“I hope so,” said Henry not very hopefully. “Tony’s a queer sort of
fellow, you know—frightfully hard to move, and a perfect devil for
hugging a grievance. He’s had a rotten time of it too. What with Raymond
marrying some one else, and then getting knocked out himself, and coming
round to find himself a prisoner—well, there wasn’t much to take his
mind off it. He escaped three times before he actually got away, and
then he went to Russia and had the worst time of the lot. So that he’s
got a good deal of excuse for sticking to his grouch.”

Jane suddenly pinched Henry very hard, put her lips quite close to his
ear, and breathed:

“Some one’s coming.”

As she spoke Henry drew her noiselessly back a yard or two. The faint
glow which Jane had seen brightened until it seemed dazzling. The arched
entrance to the tunnel in which they stood became sharply defined. The
light struck the opposite wall, showing it rough and black, with patches
of dull green slime.

Instantly Jane felt that her finger-tips would never be clean again. As
the thought shuddered through her mind the light went by. That’s what it
looked like, the passing of a light. Raymond’s dark figure hardly showed
behind it. The lighted archway faded. The darkness spread an even
surface over everything again.

Jane laid her face against Henry’s sleeve, pressed quite close to him,
and said in a little voice that trembled:

“Oh, they haven’t made it up—they haven’t. He’d have come with her if
they had.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Of _course_ he’d have come with her. You wouldn’t have let me go by
myself, you know you wouldn’t. No, they haven’t made it up, they can’t
have, and—oh, Henry, why do people quarrel like that? You won’t with me,
will you—ever? I mean that dreadful world-without-end sort. I couldn’t
bear it. You won’t, will you?”

Jane was shaking all over. Henry put his arms round her very tight, laid
his cheek against hers, and said:

“Not much! It’s a mug’s game.”

After a little while Jane said:

“I must go. You know she came to my room before, and last night when I
got back I found the door shut. I had left it open so as not to make any
noise, but it was shut when I got back. That frightened me more than
anything, but now I think it must have been the wind that shut it. I
think so, only I’m not sure. It might have been the wind, or it might
have been ... somebody. It’s much more frightening not to be sure. So
I’d better go, hadn’t I?”

“Yes, you must go,” said Henry. “I’ll come with you and show you how to
get out. And you must promise me, Jane, that you won’t come down here by
yourself?”

“How can I promise? I might have to.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know why,” said Jane, “but I might have to. Supposing they were
murdering some one, and I heard the screams? Or suppose I knew that they
were just going to blow the house up?”

“Well,” said Henry, with strong common sense, “I don’t see what good
you’d do by getting murdered and blown up too, which is what it would
come to. You really must promise me.”

“I really won’t.”

Henry gave her an exasperated shake.

“Look here, Jane,” he said, “the whole thing’s most infernally
complicated. Tony’s chucking his job here, says he can’t stand it, and I
must go back to town and see Piggy about that.”

“Who on earth is Piggy?” said Jane.

“Sir Julian Le Mesurier, my chief. Every one calls him Piggy. I must see
him about Tony, and I also want to report what I told you about the
passages being wired and in use. I’ll try and see Tony again before I
go. You see the thing is, I don’t know how far Raymond is involved, and
I want to get her out of the way. Tony’s the only man who can get her
out of the way. I suppose I ought to go through all the passages
to-night, but I’m not going to. I shall tell Piggy why. As a matter of
fact, he’ll be just as keen as I am on getting Raymond out of it. Once
she’s clear, we can come down on Ember like a cartload of bricks and
smash up any devilry he may have been contriving. Now do you see why you
must keep clear? I can’t possibly do my job if I’m torn in bits about
your running into danger. And next time you went feeling along these
passages you might really run into your friend Ember, you know.”

“I won’t unless I’ve got to,” said Jane. “You don’t imagine I like green
slime, and slugs, and the pitch dark, do you? But I won’t promise. Now
I’m going. Good-bye, Henry.”

“You’re an obstinate little devil, Jane,” said Henry.

Jane gave a little gurgling laugh.

“We haven’t made an assignation yet,” she said. “When are you coming
back?”

“Well, I’ve made an appointment with Tony for to-morrow night, but I’ll
try and catch him now and put that off for twenty-four hours. If for any
reason I have to come down sooner, I will come and tap on your cupboard
door. If I’m not there by midnight to-morrow, don’t expect me. But I’ll
be there for certain the following night—let me see, that’s Sunday.”

“But if you don’t come?”

“I will.”

“Well, just supposing something prevented you?”

“It won’t,” said Henry cheerfully.




                              CHAPTER XIX


Henry found Anthony Luttrell sitting on the stone bench and so oblivious
of his surroundings that it needed a hand on his shoulder to rouse him.
Then he said vaguely:

“Oh, you’re back.”

“Rouse up a bit, Tony. It might have been Mr. Jeffrey Ember, you know.
He was in the passages last night, and, for all I know, he may be there
every night. I came back to say that I shan’t be down to-morrow. Make
our appointment Sunday night instead.”

“I want to be out of this by then,” said Anthony. “I’ll go sick if
there’s no other way. Stay here another forty-eight hours I cannot, and
will not. I tell you I can’t answer for myself.”

Henry gave an inward groan. Jane had evidently been entirely right. They
had not made it up.

“You’ve seen Raymond. I saw her pass.”

“I’ve seen ... Lady Heritage. Henry, will you tell me what the devil
women are made of? She seemed to expect to take things up exactly as if
the last seven years had never been at all, exactly as if there had been
no breach, no war, no John Heritage, and no Jeffrey Ember. Oh, damn
Jeffrey Ember!...”

“And I suppose you stood there and fired off sarcastic remarks at the
poor girl, instead of thanking heaven for your luck. What’s the good of
brooding over the past, Tony, and letting it spoil everything for you
now? Raymond cares a heap more for you than you deserve, and if she’s
got into a mess, it’s up to you to get her out of it. After all, you
don’t want a scandal, do you?”

“I’ve got to get away. It’s no good, Henry.”

“I’ll give Piggy your letter,” Henry went on, “and tell him how you
feel. He’ll recall you all right. But I know he’s very strong on your
coming to life again. You ought to have done it ages ago; when you came
back from Russia, in fact. Look here, Tony, be a reasonable being. Shave
off your beard, and take the artistic colour off that scar. Turn up in
London as yourself, and wire Raymond to come up and meet you. I want her
got away from here.”

“Then get Piggy to wire to her, or her father. There are a dozen ways in
which it can be done. I refuse quite definitely to have anything to do
with it. If Piggy hasn’t recalled me by Monday, I shall simply go. You
can tell him that, if you like; and you can tell him that I shall
probably kill some one if I stay here.”

Without another word he got up, walked round the seat, and disappeared
into the passage.

A little later Henry emerged from a cave upon the seashore. There were a
number of these caves, some large, some small, under the far side of the
headland.

The boundary of Luttrell Marches lay a quarter of a mile behind.

Henry walked briskly along the shore, keeping close to the cliff so that
he might walk on rock instead of shingle. Presently he left the beach
and climbed a steep zigzagging path. Twenty minutes’ walk brought him to
a small inn where he picked up his car and drove away.

Next day in Sir Julian’s room he unburdened himself and delivered
Anthony’s letter.

“’M, yes; I’ll recall him,” said Piggy frowning. “He’s no good where he
is, if that’s his frame of mind. But it’s a pity—a pity. It bears out
exactly what I’ve always said. He has extraordinary abilities; I suppose
he might have made a brilliant success in almost any profession, but
he’s _impayable_.... I don’t think we’ve got a word for it in English
...; he lacks the vein of mediocrity which I maintain is
indispensable—the faculty of being ordinary which, for instance, you
possess.”

Henry blushed a little, and Sir Julian laughed.

“I think I’ll send him abroad again. Of course it’s high time he came to
life, as you say, if it’s only for the sake of getting you out of what
must be an extremely awkward position. My wife tells me that
match-making mammas of her acquaintance regard you with romantic
interest as the owner of Luttrell Marches. Well, I’ll see him when he
comes up. Meanwhile, I’ve had Simpson’s report. He says that, according
to reliable information, two men were concerned in the sale of Formula
‘A.’ One is a man called Belcovitch, the other, who seems to have kept
in the background, is described as a big good-looking man—florid
complexion, blue eyes, either English or American, though he passed
under the name of Bernier and professed to be Swiss. Does that fit your
friend Ember by any chance?”

“No,” said Henry, “but it sounds very much like Molloy.”

“Molloy was supposed to have gone to the States, wasn’t he?”

Piggy had been drawing a neat brick wall at the foot of a sheet of
foolscap. He now sketched in rapidly two fighting cats. It was a
spirited performance. Each cat had wildly up-ended fur and a waving
tail.

“Well, he and Ember told Miss Smith that he was going to the States. I
don’t know that that goes for very much.”

“’M, no,” said Piggy. “Well, Bernier passed through Paris yesterday, and
is in London to-day. Belcovitch has gone to Vienna. Now, if Bernier is
Molloy, he’ll probably communicate with Ember. I was having him
shadowed, of course, but the fool who was on the job has managed to let
him slip. I’m hoping to pick him up again, but meanwhile....”

Piggy was putting in the cats’ claws as he spoke, his enormous hand
absolutely steady over the delicate curves and sharp points.

“There’s nothing more about Ember?” said Henry.

Sir Julian shook his head, and went on drawing. “He wore the white
flower of a blameless life in Chicago, and was absolutely unknown to the
police,” he said. “There’s a three-volume novel about Molloy, though.
You’d better have it to read. Now you go off and have some sleep, and
... er, by the way, if Miss Smith ... what’s her other name?”

“Jane,” said Henry.

“Well, if she wants to get away at any time, my wife will be very
pleased to put her up.”

“Thank you awfully, sir,” said Henry.

When he had gone, Sir Julian asked the Exchange for his private number.
He sat holding the receiver to his ear and touching up his cats until
Isobel’s voice said:

“Yes, who is it?”

Then he said:

“M’ dear, in the matter of Henry.”

“Yes? Has anything happened?”

“In the matter of Henry,” said Piggy firmly, “I should say, from his
conscious expression, that he had brought it off. Her name is Jane
Smith.”

“And I mayn’t ask any questions?”

“Not one. I just thought you’d better know her name in case she suddenly
arrived to stay with you. That’s all. I shall be late.”

He rang off.




                               CHAPTER XX


It was not till next day that Jane missed her handkerchief. When she
reached her room after saying good-bye to Henry she had rolled the serge
dress, the wet felt slippers and the damp stockings into a bundle, and
pushed them right to the back of her cupboard. She was so sleepy that
she hardly knew how she undressed.

The instant her head touched the pillow, she slept, a pleasant,
dreamless sleep, and only woke with the housemaid’s knock.

It was when she was drinking a very welcome cup of tea that she began to
wonder whether she was engaged to Henry or not. On the one hand, Henry
undoubtedly appeared to think that she was; on the other, Jane felt
perfectly satisfied that she had pledged herself to nothing more
formidable than a promise to quarrel. A small but very becoming dimple
appeared in Jane’s cheek as she came to the conclusion that Henry was
possibly engaged to her, but that she was certainly not engaged to
Henry. It seemed to her to be a very pleasant state of affairs. It was,
in fact, with great reluctance that she transferred her thoughts to more
practical matters.

Having dressed, she extracted the bundle of clothes from the cupboard,
and decided that the serge dress might be hung up. There were one or two
damp patches and several green smears, but the former would dry and the
latter when dry would brush off.

“But the slippers are awful,” she said.

They were; the cork soles sopping wet, the felt drenched and slimy. She
made a brown paper parcel of them, and put it at the extreme back of the
cupboard. The stockings she consigned to the clothes basket.

“I can wash them out later on,” she thought.

It was at this point that she missed her handkerchief. She had had a
handkerchief the night before. She was sure of that, because she
remembered drying her eyes with it after she had cried.

A little colour came into her face at the recollection of how vehemently
she had wept on Henry’s shoulder with Henry’s arm round her, but it died
again at the insistently recurring thought:

“I had a handkerchief. I dried my eyes with it. Where is it?”

Not only had she dried her eyes with it, but after that she remembered
scrubbing the finger-tips that had touched the slug. The handkerchief
must be horribly smeared and wet. It was one of Renata’s, of course,
white with a blue check border, and “R. Molloy, 12” in marking-ink
across one corner. Imagine buying twelve horrors like that! Mercifully
Renata must have lost most of them, for Jane had only inherited four.

She brought her thoughts back with a jerk. Where was it? If she had
dropped it in the house it would have been either in the hall, on the
stairs, or in the corridor, and one of the housemaids would have brought
it to her by now. It must have fallen in the cross-passage where she had
stood with Henry, and if it were found....

Jane moved a step or two backwards, and sat down on the edge of the bed.

“Of all the first-class prize _idiots_!” she said, and there words
failed her.

If she had dropped it in the cross-passage, it might lie there until
Sunday night when she could get Henry to retrieve it, or it might not.
Ember—Lady Heritage—Anthony Luttrell, any one of these three people
might have business in that cross-passage, in which case a handkerchief,
even if stained, was just the most unlikely thing in the world to pass
unnoticed. Even if no one went up that passage, it might be seen from
the main tunnel. Of course, if it were Anthony Luttrell who found it, it
would not matter. But it was so very much more likely to be one of the
others.

At intervals during the morning, Jane continued to argue the question,
or rather two questions. First, the probabilities for and against the
handkerchief being discovered; and second, should she, or should she
not, go and look for it herself in defiance of Henry’s prohibition? She
had spoken the truth, but not the whole truth, when she told Henry that
she hated the idea of going into the passages alone. She hated going,
but she wanted to go. Most ardently she desired to find things out
before Henry found them out. It would be nice and safe to sit with her
hands in her lap whilst Henry explored secret subterranean caverns, and
unravelled dangerous conspiracies—safe but hideously dull. When Henry
had finished exploring and unravelling, he would come along frightfully
pleased with himself and want her to be engaged to him, and he would
always, always feel superior and convinced that he had done the whole
thing himself. It was a most intolerable thought, more intolerable than
green slime and being alone in the dark. It was at this point that Jane
made up her mind that she would go and look for her handkerchief herself
without waiting for Henry.

Having made her decision, she found an unlooked-for opportunity for
carrying it out, for at lunch Lady Heritage announced her intention of
putting in several hours of laboratory work, whilst it transpired that
Ember was going out in the two-seater car which he drove himself, and
that he was quite uncertain when he would be back. Jane at once made up
her mind that, as soon as the coast was quite clear, she would slip down
into the passages. She would wait until lunch had been cleared and the
servants were safely out of the way. No one was likely to come into the
hall, and the whole thing would be so much less terrifying than another
midnight expedition.

Ember excused himself before lunch was over, and she heard him drive
away a few minutes later; but Lady Heritage sat on, her untasted coffee
beside her. She sat with her chin in her hand, looking out of the
window, and it was obvious enough that her thoughts were far away. She
was probably unconscious of Jane’s presence, certainly undesirous of it,
and yet, for the life of her, Jane could not have risen or asked if she
might go. Once or twice she looked from under her lashes at Raymond’s
still white face. There was a new look upon it since yesterday. She was
sadder and yet softer. She looked as if she had not slept at all.

After a very long half-hour she turned her eyes on Jane. There was a
flash of surprise and then a frown.

“You needn’t have waited,” she said in a cold voice, and then got up and
went out without another word.

Jane took a book into the hall and sat there.

Presently she caught a glimpse of Raymond’s white overall in the upper
corridor, and heard the clang with which the steel gate closed behind
her. She sat quite still and went on reading until all sounds from the
direction of the dining-room had ceased. Silence settled upon the house,
and she told herself that this was her opportunity.

She ran up to her room, changed into the serge dress, and put on a pair
of outdoor shoes. She did not possess an electric torch, and the
question of a light had exercised her a good deal. The best she could do
was to pocket a box of matches and one of the bedroom candles which was
half burnt down. She then went downstairs, and, after listening
anxiously for some moments, she once more moved the heavy chair and,
climbing on it, began to feel for the knots on the panelling. As her
fingers found and pressed them, she heard, simultaneously with the click
of the released spring, a faint thudding noise. With a spasm of horror
she knew that some one had passed through the baize door that shut off
the servants’ wing. The sound she had heard was the sound of the door
falling back into place, and at any other moment it would have gone
unnoticed.

Fortunately for herself Jane was accustomed to a rapid transition from
thought to action. She was off the chair, across the hall, and sitting
with a book on her lap when the butler made his usual rather slow
entrance.

She had recognised at once that it would be impossible for her to
replace the chair and escape discovery. It stood in the shadow, and she
hoped for the best.

Blotson crossed the hall and disappeared into Sir William’s study.

Jane gazed at a printed page upon which the letters of the alphabet were
playing “General post.” After some interminable minutes Blotson
reappeared. He shut the study door, approached Jane, and in a low and
confidential voice inquired would she have tea in the hall, the
drawing-room, or the library.

“Oh, the library,” said Jane, “the library, Blotson.” And with a
majestic, “Very good, miss,” Blotson withdrew.

Blotson’s “Very good” always reminded Jane of the Royal Assent to an Act
of Parliament. It was doubtless a form, but how stately, how dignified a
form.

When the chill superinduced by the presence of Blotson had yielded to a
more natural temperature, Jane went on tiptoe across the hall and
replaced the chair. It was a comfort to reflect that it had escaped
Blotson’s all-embracing eye. With a hasty glance she swung the panel
inwards, slipped through, and closed it again.

She descended all the steps before she ventured to light her candle, and
she was careful to put the spent match into her pocket. Renata’s dress
really did have a pocket, which, of course, made the dropping of the
handkerchief quite inexcusable.

The passage was much less terrifying when one had a light of one’s own
instead of the distant glimmer of somebody else’s and the horrid
possibility of being left at any moment in total darkness, with no idea
of one’s whereabouts or of how to get out.

Jane’s spirits rose brightly. To dread a thing and then to find it easy
provides one with a pleasant sense of difficulty overcome. In great
cheerfulness of spirit Jane walked along until she came to the
cross-passage on her right. She turned up it, walked a few steps holding
her candle high, and there, a couple of yards from the entrance, lay the
handkerchief rolled into a wet and very dirty ball. She picked it up
gingerly, and put it into her convenient pocket.

“And I suppose I ought to go back at once; but what a waste, when every
one is safely out of the way, and I’ve got through the really horrid
part, which is opening that abominable spring.”

Jane hesitated, weighing the duty of a swift return against the pleasure
of exploring and perhaps getting ahead of Henry. The recollection that
Henry had forbidden her to explore turned the scale—towards pleasure.

She had four inches of candle and a whole box of matches. She had at
least two hours of liberty, and, most important of all, she felt herself
to be in a frame of mind which invited success. The question was where
to begin.

On the right-hand side there was only this single passage. Jane did not
feel attracted by it. She was almost sure that it must lead to the
potting-shed, and to descend from conspiracies to garden lumber would
indeed be an anti-climax.

On the left there were four passages. Jane walked back along the way she
had come. The first passage left the main tunnel at an acute angle which
obviously carried it back under the main block of the house. Jane
decided to explore it. She held her candle high in one hand and her
skirts close with the other. The passage was low, and she had to bend a
little. After half a dozen yards she came to a flight of steps. They
were wet, slippery, and very steep. Jane stood on the top step and
looked down.

The walls oozed moisture, the candlelight showed her a pale slug about
five inches long—Jane said six to start with, but, under pressure from
Henry, retreated as far as five and would not yield another half-inch;
she also said that the slug waved its horns at her and was crawling in
her direction. Right there, as the Americans say, she made up her mind
that this would be a good passage to explore with Henry, later on. She
caught a glimpse of another slug on a level with the fifth step, whisked
round, and ran.

“The _one_ point about slugs is that they can’t run,” she said as she
came back into the main corridor.

Without giving herself time to think, she plunged into the next opening
on the left. It ran at right angles to the central passage, and was
comparatively dry. It kept on the same level too, and Jane, trying to
make a mental plan, thought that it must run under the house, cutting
across the north wing. It occurred to her that there might be vaults of
some kind under the terrace, and that this passage would perhaps lead to
them. If this were so, it must soon either curve gradually to the left
or take a sudden sharp turn. She wished she had thought of counting her
steps, but it was difficult to pace regularly on a slippery floor and in
such a poor light.

Just as she had begun to think that the passage must run out to sea, she
came to the sharp turn which she had expected. A wall of black rock
faced her, to her right a tunnel ran in at a sharp angle, and to her
left there was a dark stone arch, a few feet of a new sort of tunnel
built of brick, and then a steel gate exactly like the gates which shut
off the laboratories in the house above.

Jane stared at the gate as if she expected it to dissolve into the
surrounding darkness. The candle-light danced on the steel. It was
rusty, but not so very rusty, and therefore it could not have been for
very long in its present position. She came closer and touched it. It
was real.

Her amazing good fortune almost overcame her. What a thing to tell
Henry! What a justification for flouting his orders!! _What a score!!!_

Jane transferred the candle to her left hand, put out a right hand which
trembled with excitement, and tried the gate. It was open. For a moment
she drew back. Like the child who sits looking at a birthday parcel, the
mere sight of which provides it with so many thrills that it cannot
bring itself to cut the string and unwrap the paper, Jane stood and
looked at her gate, her discovery—hers, not Henry’s.

As she looked, her eyes were caught by a small knob on the right-hand
wall. It was about four feet above the floor and quite close to the
steel bars. It was made of some dull metal and looked exactly like an
electric-light switch. By going quite close to the gate and looking
through she could see that a cased wire ran along the bricks on the same
level, and she remembered that Henry had said the passages were wired.

Had Henry been first on the field after all? She turned, held her light
high, and looked back. The wire went up to the roof and ran along until
she lost it in the darkness. She reflected hopefully that Henry might
have seen the wire much farther along, and turned back again.

Her fingers were on the switch when a really dreadful thought pricked
her. Suppose the switch controlled some horrible explosive! It might
turn on a light, most likely it did; but, on the other hand, it might
let loose a raging demon of destruction that would blow the whole place
to smithereens. It was an unreasonable thought, the sort of thought that
one dismisses instantly in the daylight, but which by candlelight in an
underground tunnel assumes a certain degree of credibility.

“The question is, am I going on or not?”

The silence having failed to supply her with an answer, she said
viciously, “You’re a worse rabbit than Renata,” shut her eyes, held her
breath, and jerked the switch down.

Through her closed lids came a red flash. She clung to the switch and
waited. A drop of boiling wax guttered down upon her left forefinger.
She opened her eyes and saw the steel gate like a black tracery against
a lighted space beyond. With a quickly drawn breath of relief she pushed
the steel gate, took one step forward, and then stood rigid, listening
to the muffled yet insistent whir of an alarm bell. After one horrified
moment she pulled the door towards her again. The sound ceased. Jane
considered.

As a result of her consideration she turned out the electric light,
opened the gate, slipped through, and closed it again so quickly that
the bell was hardly heard. She did not allow it to latch, and, stooping,
set a piece of broken brick to hold it ajar. The candlelight seemed very
inadequate, but she decided that she must make it do, and holding it
well up in front of her, she came through a brick arch into a long
chamber with walls of stone.

Jane looked about her with ignorant, widely opened eyes. She had never
been in a laboratory, but she knew that this must be one. The printed
page does not exist for nothing. The vague yellow light flickered on
strange cylindrical shapes and was flung back by glass jars and odd
twisted retorts. A great many appliances, for which she could find no
name, emerged from dense shadow into the uncertain dusk.

“It’s like a mediæval torture chamber—only worse, colder—more
calculating! It’s a sort of torture chamber. I _hate_ it. It gives me
the grues,” said Jane.

She moved slowly down the room. It was quite dry in here. There was no
slime, and there were no slugs.

“I hate it a thousand times more than the passages,” she said.

Her feet moved slowly and unwillingly. In the far corner there were two
more arches. She thought she would just see what lay beyond them and
then return. She took the one on the right hand first. It ran along a
little way and then terminated in a small round chamber which was full
of packing-cases. She returned and went down the second passage. She was
just inside it when with startling suddenness she found herself looking
at her own shadow. It lay clear and black on the brick floor in front of
her. Some one had turned on the electric light.

Jane’s candle tilted and the wax dropped. Her horrified eyes looked
about wildly for a place of refuge. The light showed her one. Within a
yard of the entrance there was an arched hollow. With a sort of gasp she
blew her candle out and bolted for the shelter. The whir of the electric
bell sounded as she gained it, sounded and then ceased. She heard Ember
say, “Quite a good run, wasn’t it?” and a voice which she did not expect
answer, “Well enough.” The voice puzzled her. It was a pleasant voice,
deep and rich. It had something of a brogue and something of a twang.

A most unpleasant light broke upon Jane. It was the voice of the
Anarchist Uncle. It was the voice of Mr. Molloy.

Jane got as far back into her hollow as she could. It was not very far.
There had evidently been a tunnel here, but the roof had fallen in, and
the floor was rough and uneven with the débris.

She heard the two men moving in the room beyond, and she experienced a
most sincere repentance for not having attended to the counsels of
Henry.

“And now we can talk,” said Ember. “You’ve got the cash?”

“Not with me,” said Mr. Molloy.

“Why not?”

“Oh, just in case....”—a not unmelodious whistle completed the sentence.

“They paid the higher figure?”

“They did,” said Mr. Molloy. “Belcovitch was for taking their second
bid, but I told him ‘No.’ Belcovitch has his points, but he’s not the
bold bargainer. I told him ‘No.’ I told him ‘It’s this way—if they want
it they’ll pay our price.’ And pay it they did. I don’t know that I ever
handled that much money before, and all for a sheet or two of paper.
Well, well——”

“You should have brought the money with you. Why didn’t you?”

In the now brightly lighted laboratory Molloy sat negligently on the end
of a bench and lifted his eyebrows a little.

“Well, I didn’t,” he said.

“Where is it?”

“In a place of safety.”

Ember shrugged his shoulders.

“Well, we’ve pulled it off,” he said. “By the way, the fact of the sale
is known. We’ve had an interfering young jack-in-office down here making
inquiries, and Sir William has gone up to town in a very considerable
state of nerves.”

“The Anarchist Uncle,” said Jane to herself, “has been selling the
Government Formula ‘A.’ He doesn’t trust Mr. Ember enough to hand the
money over. Pleasant relations I’ve got!”

Molloy whistled again, a long-drawn note with a hint of dismay in it.

“I wonder who let the cat out of the bag,” he said.

“These things always leak out. It doesn’t really signify. With this
money at our command we can complete our arrangements at once, and be
ready to strike within the next few weeks. You and Belcovitch had better
keep out of the way until the time comes. He should be here in four
days’ time, travelling by the route we settled; then you’ll have
company. You must both lie close here.”

“That’s the devil of a plan now, Ember,” said Molloy. “We’ll be no
better than rats in a drain.”

“Well, it’s for your safety,” said Ember. “They’re out for blood over
this business of Formula ‘A,’ I can tell you, and there’s nowhere you’d
be half so safe.”

Jane was listening with all her ears. She decided that Mr. Ember’s
solicitude was not all on Molloy’s account. “He thinks that if Molloy
and Belcovitch are arrested, they’ll give him away over the big thing in
order to save themselves. I expect they’d be able to make a pretty good
bargain for themselves, really.” She heard Molloy give a sulky assent.
Then Ember was speaking again:

“I want to check the lists with you. Not the continental ones—I’ll keep
those for Belcovitch—but those for the States and here. I’ve got them
complete now, but I’m not very sure about all the names. Hennessey now,
he’s down for Chicago, but I don’t know that I altogether trust
Hennessey.”

“It’s late in the day to say that,” said Molloy.

“Well, what about Hayling Taylor?”

Jane listened, and heard name follow name. Ember appeared to be reading
from a list. He would name a large town and follow it with a list of
persons who apparently acted as agents there. Sometimes these names were
passed with an assenting grunt by Molloy, sometimes there was a
discussion.

There are a great many large towns in the United States of America. Jane
became stiffer and stiffer. At last she could bear her constrained
half-crouching position no longer. Very gingerly, moving half an inch at
a time, she let herself down until she was sitting on the pile of broken
bricks which blocked the tunnel. The names went on. It was dull and
monotonous to a degree, but behind the dullness and the monotony there
was a sense of lurking horror.

“It’s like being in a fog,” said Jane—“the sort you can’t see through at
all, and knowing that there’s a tiger loose somewhere.”

One thing became clearer and clearer to her. Those lists that sounded
like geography lessons must be got hold of somehow. Henry must have
them.

After what seemed like a long time Ember folded up one paper and
produced another. If Jane had been able to watch Mr. Molloy’s face, she
would have noticed that, every now and then, it was crossed by a look of
hesitation. He seemed constantly about to speak and yet held his peace.

“I’d like you to check the names for Ireland too,” said Ember. “Grogan
sent me the completed list two days ago. You’d better look at it.”

Molloy took the paper and ran his finger down the names, mumbling them
only half audibly. His finger travelled more and more slowly. All at
once he stopped, and threw the paper from him along the bench.

“What is it?” said Ember, in his cool tones.

Molloy frowned, got up, walked to the end of the room, and came back
again. He appeared to have something to say, and to experience extreme
difficulty in saying it. His words, when he did speak, seemed
irrelevant:

“That’s a big sum they paid us for Formula ‘A,’” he said. “Did you ever
handle as much money as that, Ember?”

“No,” said Jeffrey Ember, short and sharp.

“Nor I. It’s a queer thing the feeling it gives you. I tell you I came
across with fear upon me, not knowing for sure whether I’d get away with
it; but there was a lot besides fear in it. There was power, Ember, I
tell you—power. Whilst I’d be sitting in the train, or walking down the
street, or lying in my bed at an hotel, I’d be thinking to myself, I’ve
got as much as would buy you up, and then there would be leavings.”

“What are you driving at, Molloy?” said Ember.

Molloy’s florid colour deepened. He narrowed his lids and looked through
them at Ember.

“Maybe I was thinking,” he said, “that there’s a proverb we might take
note of.”

“Well?”

“It’s just a proverb,” said Mr. Molloy. “It’s been in my mind since I
had the handling of the money—‘A bird in the hand is worth two in the
bush.’”

Ember’s eyes lost their dull film. They brightened until Mr. Molloy was
unable to sustain their glance. He shifted his gaze, and Ember said very
quietly:

“Are you thinking of selling us?”

Molloy broke into an oath. “And that’s a thing no one shall say of me,”
he said, with a violence that sent his voice echoing along through the
open arches.

“Then may I ask you what you meant?”

“Why, just this.” Molloy dropped to an ingratiating tone. “There’s the
money safe—certain—in our hands now. What’s the need of all this?”

He came forward with two or three great strides, picked up the list from
where he had thrown it, and beat with it upon his open hand.

“All this,” he repeated—“this and what it stands for. You may say
there’s no risk, but there’s a big risk. It’s a gamble, and what’s the
need to be gambling when we’ve got the money safe?”

“In plain English, you want to back out at the last moment?”

“I do not, and I defy you to say that I do.”

“Then what’s come to you?”

“Here’s the thing that’s come to me. It came to me when I ran me eye
down this list. See there, and that’ll tell ye what has come to me.”

He thrust the list in front of Ember.

“It’s Galway you’ve got set down there.”

“Well, and what of it?” said Ember.

“What of it?” said Mr. Molloy. “I was born in Galway, and the only
sister I ever had is married there. Four sons she has, decent young men
by all the accounts I’ve had of them. If I haven’t been in Galway for
thirty years, that’s not to say that I’ve no feeling for my own flesh
and blood. Why, the first girl I ever courted lived out Barna way.
Many’s the time I’ve met her in the dusk on the seashore, and she half
crying for fear of what her father would do. Katie Blake her name was.
They married her to old Timmy Dolan before I’d been six months out of
the country. A fistful of gold he had, and a hard fist it was. I heard
tell he beat her, poor Katie. But ye see now, Ember, it’s the same way
with your native place and your first love, ye can’t get quit of them.
Now I hadn’t been a month in Chicago before I was courting another girl,
but to save my neck I couldn’t tell ye what her name was, and ye may
blow Chicago to hell to-morrow and I’ll not say a word.”

“But not Galway?” Mr. Ember’s tone was very dry indeed.

“You’ve said it. Not Galway. I’ll not stand for it.”

Ember laughed. It was a laugh without merriment, cool, sarcastic.

“Molloy, the man of sentiment!” he said. “Now doesn’t it strike you that
it’s just a little late in the day for this display of feeling? May I
ask why you never raised the interesting subject of your birthplace
before?”

“Is it sentiment that you’re sarcastic about?” said Molloy. “If it is,
I’d have you remember that I’ve never let it interfere with business
yet, and I wouldn’t now. Many’s the time I’ve put my feelings on one
side when I was up against a business proposition. But I tell you right
here that when I see my way to good money and to keeping what I call my
sentiment too it looks pretty good to me, and I say to myself what I say
to you, ‘What’s the sense of going looking for trouble?’”

Ember laughed again.

“I will translate,” he said. “From the sale of the Government formula
you see your way to deriving a competency. You become, in a mild way, a
capitalist. Luxuries before undreamed of are within your grasp—romantic
sentiment, childhood’s memories, the finer feelings in fact. As a poor
man you could not dream of affording them, though I dare say you’d have
enjoyed them well enough. Is it a correct translation?”

“It is,” said Molloy.

“Molloy the capitalist!” Ember’s voice dropped just a little lower.
“Molloy the man of sentiment! Molloy the traitor! No you don’t, Molloy,
I’ve got you covered. Why, you fool, you don’t suppose I meet a man
twice my own size in a place that no one knows of without taking the
obvious precautions?”

Molloy had first started violently, and next made a sort of plunge in
Ember’s direction. At the sight of the small automatic pistol he checked
himself, backed a pace or two, and said:

“You’ll take that word back. It’s a damned lie.”

He breathed hard and stared at the pistol in Ember’s hand.

“Is it?” said Ember coolly. “I hope it is, for your sake. I’d remind
you, Molloy, that no one would move heaven and earth to find you if you
disappeared, and that it would be hard to find a handier place for the
disposal of a superfluous corpse. Now listen to me.”

He set his left hand open on the lists.

“This is going through. It’s going through in every detail. It’s going
through just as we planned it.” He spoke in level, expressionless tones.
He looked at Molloy with a level, expressionless gaze. A little of the
colour went out of the big Irishman’s face. He drew a long breath, and
came to heel like a dog whose master calls him.

“Have it your own way,” he said. “It was just talk, and to see what you
thought of it. If you’re set on the plan, why the plan it is.”

“We’re all committed to the plan,” said Ember. “You were talking a while
ago as if you and I could do a deal and leave the rest of the Council
out. Setting Belcovitch on one side, weren’t you forgetting to reckon
with Number One?”

“Maybe I was,” said Molloy. “And come to that, Ember, when are we to
have the full Council meeting you’ve been talking of for months past?
Belcovitch and I had a word about it, and he agrees with me. We want a
full meeting and Number One in the chair instead of getting all our
instructions through you. It’s reasonable.”

“Yes, it’s reasonable.” Ember paused, and then added, “You shall have
the full Council when Belcovitch comes.”

Jane on her pile of débris leaned forward to catch the words. Ember’s
voice had dropped very low. She was shaking with excitement. Her
movement was not quite a steady one. A small piece of rubble slid under
the pressure she placed on it. Something slipped and rolled.

“What’s that?” said Ember sharply.

“Some more of the passage falling in,” said Molloy, “by the sound of
it.”

“Just take a light and see.”

“It might have been a rat,” said Molloy carelessly.

There was a pause. Jane remained absolutely motionless. If they thought
it was a rat perhaps they would not come and look. She stiffened
herself, wondering how long she could keep this cramped position. Then,
with a spasm of terror, she heard Molloy say, “I’ll have a look round.
We don’t want rats in here,” heard his heavy footfall, and saw a
brilliant beam of light stream past the entrance of her hiding-place.

Before she had time to do more than experience a stab of fear, Molloy
walked straight past. She heard him go up the passage, heard him call
out, “There’s nothing here.” Then he turned. He was coming back. Would
he pass her again? It was just possible. She tried to think he would,
and then she knew that he would not. The light flashed into the broken
tunnel mouth. It flashed on the sagging roof, the damp walls and the
broken rubble. It flashed on to Jane.

Jane saw only a white glare. She knew exactly what a beetle must feel
like when it is pinned out as a specimen. The light went through and
through her. It seemed to deprive her of thought, volition, power to
move. She just stared at it.

Mr. Molloy using his flashlight cheerfully, and much relieved at a break
in his conversation with Ember, received one of the severest shocks of
his not unadventurous life. One is not a Terrorist for thirty years
without learning a little elementary self-control in moments of
emergency. He did not therefore exclaim. He merely stared. He saw a
sagging roof and damp walls. He saw a muddled heap of broken bricks
unnaturally clear cut and distinct. He saw the shadows which they cast,
unnaturally black and hard. He saw Jane, whom he took to be his daughter
Renata. His brain boggled at it. He passed his hand across his eyes, and
looked again. His daughter Renata was still there. She was half sitting,
half crouching on the pile of rubble. Her body was bent forward, her
elbows resting on her knees, her hands one on either side of her
colourless cheeks. Her face was tilted a little looking up at him. Her
mouth was a little open. Her eyes stared into the light.

Jane stared, and Mr. Molloy stared. Then, with a sudden turn he swung
round and passed back into the laboratory. As he went he whistled the
air of “The Cruiskeen Lawn.”

Jane remained rigid. The beetle was unpinned. The light was gone. But
the darkness was full of rockets and Catherine-wheels. Her ears were
buzzing. From a long way off she heard Ember speak and Molloy answer.
The rockets and the Catherine-wheels died away. She put her head down on
her knees, and the darkness came back restfully.




                              CHAPTER XXI


The clang of the steel gate was the next really distinct impression
which Jane received. In a moment she was herself. It was just as if she
had been asleep, and then, to the jar of a striking clock, had come
broad awake. She listened intently.

That clang meant that the gate had been shut. One of the men had gone,
probably Ember. One of them certainly remained, for she could see that
the lights in the laboratory were still on. If it were Molloy, he would
come and find her. But it was just possible that it was Jeffrey Ember
who had remained behind, so she must keep absolutely still, she knew.

At this moment Jane felt that she had really had as much adventure as
she wanted for one day. She thought meekly of Henry, and soulfully of
her tea. Blotson would be laying it in the library. There would be
muffins. She was dreadfully thirsty. Jane could have found it in her
heart to weep. The thought of the slowly congealing muffins unnerved
her. She would almost have admitted that woman’s place is in the home.
There is no saying what depths she might not have arrived at, had the
return of the Anarchist Uncle not distracted her thoughts. The heavy
tread convinced her that it was not Mr. Ember, but she did not stir
until he came round the corner and flashed the light upon her face. Jane
blinked.

“Holy Niagara!” said Mr. Molloy. “It was the fright of my life you gave
me.”

Jane scrambled to her feet. She was not quite sure what the situation
demanded of her in the way of filial behaviour. Did one embrace one’s
Anarchist Parent? Or did one just lean against the wall and look dazed?
She thought the latter.

Molloy turned the light away, and then flashed it back again with great
suddenness. Jane shut her eyes. Mr. Molloy pursed his lips and emitted a
whistle which travelled rapidly up the chromatic scale and achieved a
top note of piercing intensity. Without a word he took Jane by the arm
and brought her out of her hiding-place into the lighted laboratory. He
then pushed her a little away, took a good look at her, and repeated his
former odd expletive:

“Holy Niagara!” he said in low but heartfelt tones.

Jane felt a little giddy, and she sat down on the bench. Her right hand
went out, feeling for support, and touched a sheaf of papers. Through
all the confusion of her thought she recognised that these must be the
lists from which Ember had been reading.

“What is it?” she said faintly.

Molloy put down his electric torch, came quite close to her, bent down
with a hand on either knee until his face was on a level with hers, and
said in what he doubtless intended for a whisper:

“And _where_ is me daughter Renata?”

Jane leaned back so as to get as far away from the flushed face as
possible. She opened her mouth without knowing what she was going to
say, and quite suddenly she began to laugh. She leaned her head against
the brick wall behind her, and the laughter shook her from head to foot.

“Glory be to God, is it a laughing matter?” said Mr. Molloy; “whisht, I
tell you, whisht, or you’ll be having Ember back.”

He straightened himself, and made a gesture in the direction of the
roof.

“It’s crazy she is,” he said.

Jane put her hand to her throat, gasped for breath, and stopped
laughing.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “It was—you were—I mean, what did you say?”

“I said, where is me daughter Renata?” said Molloy in his deepest tones.

Jane gulped down a gurgle of laughter.

“Your daughter Renata?” she said.

“Me daughter Renata,” repeated Mr. Molloy sternly. “Where is she?”

Jane felt herself steadying.

“Why do you think—what makes you think——?”

“That you’re not my daughter? They say it’s a wise child that knows its
own father, but it’s a damn fool father that wouldn’t know his own
daughter.”

“_How_ do you know?” said Jane.

Molloy laughed.

“That’s telling,” he said; “but I don’t mind telling you. You’re my
niece Jane Smith and not my daughter Renata Molloy; and, even if I
wasn’t her father, I’d always know you from Renata, the way I could
always tell your two mothers apart when no one else could. Your mother
had a little mole on her left eyelid, just in the corner where it
wouldn’t show unless she shut her eyes. My wife hadn’t got it, and
that’s the way I could always tell her from her sister. And my daughter
Renata hasn’t got it, but you have; and when you blinked, in yonder, I
got a glimpse of it; and when I flashed the light on to you again and
you shut your eyes, I made sure. And now, perhaps you’ll tell me where
in all the world is Renata?”

Jane’s gaze rested intelligently upon Mr. Molloy. The corners of her
mouth lifted a little. The dimple showed in her left cheek.

“Renata,” she said in a very demure voice, “is in a safe place, like the
money you went abroad for.”

Molloy looked at her uncertainly; in the end he laughed.

“Meaning you won’t tell me,” he said.

“Meaning that I’m not sure whether I’ll tell you or not.”

“Maybe it would be better if I didn’t know. That’s what you’re
thinking?”

“Yes, that was what I was thinking.”

“Well, well,” said Mr. Molloy. Then he laughed again. “I’ve the joke on
Ember anyhow,” he said. “He thinks he’s got a patent for most of the
brains in the country, and here he’s been led by the nose by a slip of a
girl just out of school. And what’s more, he was taken in and I wasn’t.
He’ll find that hard to swallow, will Mr. Jeffrey Ember. You’d not have
taken me in, you know, even if I’d not had the mole to go by. And one of
these fine days I shall twit Ember with that.”

“Are you so sure you’d have known me?” said Jane. “Why?”

“My dear girl,” said Mr. Molloy, “if you knew your cousin Renata, you’d
not be asking me that. If I find a girl in an underground passage all in
the dark, well, that girl is not my daughter Renata. And if, by any
queer sort of chance, Renata had been in that hole where I found you,
she’d have screamed blue murder when I turned the light on her. Then, at
an easy guess, I should say you had Renata beat to a frazzle in the
matter of brains. I’m not saying, mind you, that I’m an admirer of
brains in a woman. It’s all a matter of opinion, and there’s all sorts
in the world. But you’ve got brains, and Renata hasn’t, and Ember’s had
you under his nose all this time without ever knowing the difference.”

Jane laughed.

“Perhaps I didn’t exactly obtrude my superior intelligence on Mr.
Ember,” she said. Her eyes danced. “You’ve no idea how stupid I can be
when I try, and I’ve been trying very hard indeed.”

“The devil you have?” said Mr. Molloy. “Well, you had Ember deceived and
that’s a grand feather in your cap, I can tell you. He’s a hard one to
deceive is Ember.”

Jane gurgled suddenly.

“As a matter of fact,” she said, “I deceived you, too. Yes, I did, I
really did. You know the morning you went off to America, or rather the
morning you went off _not_ to America? At the flat? You said good-bye to
me, not to Renata.”

“And where was Renata then?”

Jane twinkled.

“In the safe place,” she said.

“I’ll swear it was Renata the night before,” said Molloy.

“Yes, that’s clever of you. It was.”

Molloy was thinking hard.

“And which of you was it in the night when we thought the roof had
fallen in, and came into Renata’s room to look out of the window? I’d my
heart in my mouth, for I thought it was a bomb. Was it you or Renata
sitting up in bed like a ghost?”

“That was me,” said Jane. “You couldn’t have been nearly so frightened
as I was.”

“Then you changed places between eight and eleven that night?”

“We changed places,” said Jane, “just as you and Mr. Ember came home. I
shut Renata’s door just as you opened the door of the flat. I was in the
hall when the lift stopped.”

“Then I think I know how you did it,” said Molloy. He seemed interested.
“But I’d like to know who put you up to it; and I’d like to know who
gave the back entrance away; and I’d like to know how Renata, who hasn’t
the nerve of a mouse, got down that blamed fire-escape alone.”

Jane dimpled again.

“You do want to know a lot, don’t you?” she said.

There was a pause. Then Jane said:

“And now, what happens next, please?”

“That,” said Molloy, “is just what I’m wondering.”

“I ought to be getting back, I think,” said Jane.

“Ah, ought you now?” said Mr. Molloy thoughtfully.

There was another pause. Jane thought she would leave Mr. Molloy to
break it this time. She sat considering him. Her eyes dwelt upon him
with a calm scrutiny which he found extremely embarrassing. The longer
it continued, the more embarrassing he found it. In the end he said:

“You want me to let you go?”

Jane nodded.

“And not tell Ember?”

Jane gave another nod, cool and brief.

“Oh, the devil’s in it,” said Molloy, with sudden violence.

“You don’t need the devil; you’ve got Mr. Ember,” said Jane.

“And that’s true enough, for it’s the very devil and all he is, and, if
I let you go, I’ll have him to reckon with—some day. I’d rather face the
Day of Judgment myself.”

“I tell you what I think,” said Jane. “I think Mr. Ember is mad. That is
to say, I think he is the sort of fanatic who sees what he wants and
sets out to get it, without knowing half the difficulties and obstacles
that block the way. When he does begin to know them he doesn’t care, he
just goes along blind. Where a reasonable man would alter his plan to
suit the circumstances, this sort of fanatic just goes on because he’s
made his plan and will stick to it whatever happens. He isn’t governed
by reason at all. He doesn’t care what risks he runs, or what risks he
makes other people run. He goes right on, whatever happens. If the next
step is over a precipice he’ll take it. He must go on. Mr. Ember is like
that. I think he is mad.”

Mr. Molloy stared hard at Jane, then he nodded slowly three times.

“Now you’re not like that,” said Jane. “You’re reasonable. You don’t
want to run appalling risks when there’s absolutely nothing to be gained
by it. Of course, every one’s willing to run risks if it’s worth while.
I’m sure you are. I’m sure you’ve done awfully dangerous things.”

“I have,” said Mr. Molloy, with simple pride. “There’s no one that’s
done more for The Cause, or run greater risks. I could tell you
things—but there, maybe I’d better not.”

Jane clasped her hands round her knees. She leaned back against the wall
and regarded Mr. Molloy with what he took to be admiration.

“Now do tell me,” she said—“when you speak of The Cause, what do you
mean?”

In her heart of hearts Jane had a pretty firm conviction that, to Mr.
Molloy, The Cause stood for whatever promoted the wealth, welfare, and
advancement of himself, the said Molloy.

“Ah,” said Mr. Molloy reverentially. He spread out his hands with a fine
gesture. “That’s a big question.”

“Well, what I mean,” said Jane, “is this. What do you really call
yourself? You know, I always used to call you ‘The Anarchist Uncle,’ but
the other day some one said that there were no Anarchists any more, so I
wondered what you really were. Are you a Socialist, or a Communist, or a
Bolshevist, or what?”

A doubtful expression crossed Mr. Molloy’s handsome face.

“Well, now,” he said, “it would depend on the company I was in.”

Jane had a struggle with the dimple and subdued it.

“You mean,” she ventured, “that if you were with Socialists, you would
be a Socialist; and if you were with Bolshevists, you would be a
Bolshevist?”

“Well, it would be something like that,” admitted Mr. Molloy.

“I see,” said Jane. “And, of course, whatever you were, you’d naturally
want to be sure that it was going to be worth your while. I mean you’d
want to get something out of it?” She waited a moment, and then went on,
with a complete change of voice and manner, “What are you going to get
out of this?” She spoke with the utmost gravity. “If you don’t know, I
can tell you. Disaster—at best a long term of imprisonment, at the worst
death, the sort of death one doesn’t care about having in one’s family.
The question is, is it worth it? You’re not in the least mad. You’re not
a fanatic either. You are a perfectly sane and reasonable person, and
you know that what I’m saying is the sane and reasonable truth. Isn’t
it?”

“Faith, and wasn’t I saying so to Ember myself,” said Molloy in gloomy
agreement. “We’ve got money enough, and we can live on it retired, so to
speak. The life’s all very well when you’re young, but a man of my age
isn’t just so keen on taking chances as he was, and that’s the truth.
Then there’s the old times come over him, and he thinks of the place
where he was born, and he thinks, maybe, he’d like to see it again. Why,
with the money I’ve got,” said Mr. Molloy, “it’s a fine house I could
have in Galway, and a car, and a horse or two. That’s what I’d like.”

Jane saw his face light up.

“It’s a fine town Galway,” he said, “and there are people I’d like to
see there, and places too. The people would be changed, I’m thinking,
but not the places. I’d like well enough to go up the river past
Menlough again. It’s the grand woods there are there, and then there’s a
place where you’d see nothing but reeds, and no way at all for a boat.
But let you push through the reeds and a way there is, and you come out
to the grey open water and the country round it just as bare as if you’d
taken sand-paper to it. They used to say that the water went down to
hell, but I’m not saying that I believe it; but deep it is, for no one’s
ever touched the bottom. Many’s the stone I’ve dropped in there, and
wakened in the night to wonder if it was still sinking; and many’s the
time I’ve played truant, and gone there fishing for the great pike that
they said was in it. Hundreds of years old he is by the tales, and once
I could swear I saw him, only maybe it was only a cloud that was passing
overhead. What I saw was just a grey shadow, and all at once it come
over me that I should be getting back to my work. I was black
frightened, that’s the truth, but I couldn’t tell you why.”

Jane looked at Mr. Molloy, and experienced some very strange sensations.
He might sell her to Ember next moment, but for this moment he was
utterly sincere and as simple as a child. His sentiments were not
hypocrisy. They represented real feeling and emotion; but feeling,
emotion, and sentiment had been trained to take the wall obediently at
the bidding of what Mr. Molloy would call business. For all her youth,
Jane felt a rush of pity for anything so played upon from without, so
ungoverned from within as this big handsome man who stood there talking
earnestly of his boyhood’s home.

“Why don’t you go back and see it all again?” she said.

“Well, I’d like to,” said Mr. Molloy, “but what good’ll my house in
Galway do me if I waken up some fine night with a knife in me heart or a
bomb gone off under me bed?”

It seemed a difficult question to answer.

Molloy began to pace the room.

“I must think,” he said.

All the time that Jane had been talking, part of her mind had been
continually occupied with the question of the lists, those lists of
towns and the agents in each who were to be entrusted with the work of
destruction. It might not be so difficult to get hold of them, but to
get hold of them without their being missed by Ember ... that was the
difficulty. She had only to drop her right hand to the bench on which
she sat and it touched the flimsy sheets.

Whilst Molloy was discoursing of his birthplace, she considered more
than one plan. She must not precipitate Ember’s suspicions until she
could place this evidence in Henry’s hands. If she took the lists and
Ember missed them, he would suspect and accuse Molloy, and Molloy would
most certainly exonerate himself at her expense. On the other hand, if
she let the lists slip when they were under her hand, who was to say
whether the opportunity would recur. Ember would return. He already
distrusted Molloy, and what would be more likely than that he would
remove such incriminating papers from Molloy’s care?

Then, quite suddenly, Jane knew what she must do. She didn’t want to do
it, but she knew she must. She must get the papers now, she must copy
them, and she must put them back before daybreak whilst the Anarchist
Uncle was asleep. Jane had never contemplated anything which frightened
her half so much as the idea of putting those papers back in that
discouraging hour before the dawn, but she knew that it must be done.

As Mr. Molloy walked up and down frowning intently, there were moments
when his back was turned towards Jane. The first time this happened
Jane’s hand took hold of the thin papers and doubled them in half. The
next time that it happened she doubled them again. She went on doubling
them until the large thin sheaf had become a small fat wad. Then whilst
Molloy’s back was turned she lifted her skirt and pushed the wad down
inside her stocking top. When Molloy faced her again her hands were
folded on her lap.

“I really must be going,” she said.

He threw her an odd, sidelong glance. It made Jane feel a little cold.

“Since you heard so much just now, I don’t doubt you heard Ember tell me
just how convenient this place would be for putting some one that wasn’t
wanted out of the way?”

“Yes, I heard what he said,” said Jane, “but I’m afraid Mr. Ember
doesn’t know everything. As far as I remember, he described these
passages as a place no one knew anything about.”

“He did,” said Molloy, staring.

Jane gave a little laugh, and felt pleased with herself because it
sounded steady.

“Well, to my certain knowledge, three other people know the way in
here,” she said.

Molloy showed signs of uneasiness.

“Meaning you and me and ... since you heard the rest, I’m supposing you
heard me name Number One.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean you and me at all,” said Jane. “I was thinking of two
quite different people, and as to Number One, I could answer that better
if I were sure who Number One was. The third person I’m thinking of may
be Number One, or may not. I’m not sure.”

“I’m thinking,” said Molloy—“I’m thinking you know too much. I’m
thinking you know a deal too much.”

Jane met his eyes full. Her own were steady, his were not.

“Are you going to tell Mr. Ember, and let him ‘eliminate’ me?”

Molloy gave a violent start.

“Where did you hear that?” he said.

“It wasn’t I who heard that, it was Renata. It was one of the things
that made her so anxious to change places with me.”

“And what made you willing to change with her?” Molloy’s voice was harsh
with suspicion.

“I hadn’t a job, or any relations to go to. I had exactly
one-and-sixpence in the world. I didn’t know where I was going to sleep
that night—that’s pretty awful for a girl, you know; and then ... Renata
was so frightened.”

“She would be,” was Molloy’s comment. “And weren’t you frightened now?”

“I suppose I was,” said Jane.

“You had need to be.” The something that had made Jane feel cold before
was in Molloy’s look and voice. “You had need to be more afraid than
you’ve ever been in your life. Renata would have stayed quiet, but
nothing would serve you but you must push, and poke, and pry. What were
you doing here at all now, will you tell me that? Who showed you how to
get down here? You say there are others who know the secret—who are
they? Tell me that, will you ... who are they?” Molloy’s sudden passion
took Jane by surprise. Her heart began to beat, and she had difficulty
in controlling her voice.

“Which question am I to answer first?” she said. “Shall I begin at the
beginning? I found the passages by accident....” Molloy gave an
impatient snort. “Yes, I did really, on my word of honour. I couldn’t
sleep and came down to get a book. I was standing in the shadow and I
saw some one come out of the panelling. Next night I thought I’d try and
find the place. The same person came downstairs and went through the
door in the wall. I followed.”

“Was it Ember?”

“No, it wasn’t Mr. Ember.”

“Who was it?”

“I believe you know,” said Jane, speaking slowly.

“Was it a woman?” said Molloy. He dropped his voice to a whisper and
looked over his shoulder.

Jane nodded.

“Glory be to God!” said Molloy. “Did you see her face?” Jane nodded
again. Molloy came quite close, bent down, and whispered:

“Was it the old man’s daughter? Was it”—his voice dropped to the very
edge of inaudibility—“was it Lady Heritage?”

Jane nodded for the third time.

Molloy spun round, went straight to the steel door, and, opening it,
looked up the passage. After a moment he came back.

“You saw her face? Will you swear that you saw her face?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Then you’ve seen more than I have. Do you know, I’ve never been sure.
I’ve never really been sure. Ember’s talk, and—it was her face you saw,
not that mask thing they wear in the laboratory, for that’s all I’ve
seen? You saw her face?”

“Yes, I saw her face quite plainly,” said Jane. In her own mind
something seemed to say with cold finality, “Then Lady Heritage is
Number One.”

“Well.... Well.... Well.... Well....” said Mr. Molloy.

There was a long pause. He seemed lost in thought, but suddenly he
turned on Jane with the question which she hoped he had forgotten:

“You were saying that there were two others who knew the secret—you saw
them down here?—down here in the passages?”

“Yes,” said Jane, without hesitation, “I did. They were men. One of them
had a beard. I couldn’t tell you their names or describe them any more
than that.”

Molloy looked desperately puzzled.

“Ember may know,” he muttered.

“He may,” said Jane. “I should ask him.”

Molloy gave a grunt and began to walk up and down again. The simile of
the rat in the drain which he had made use of in conversing with Ember
came back upon him with unpleasant force. His thoughts were confused by
an access of unreasoning fear. Every time the question of what to do
with Jane presented itself, he shied away from it. Jane knew too much.
There was no doubt about that. She knew too much.

In the circles frequented by Mr. Molloy self-preservation dictated a
certain course with regard to the person who knew too much. After thirty
years Molloy still disliked the contemplation of that course of action.
He was of those who pass by upon the other side. He had a
well-cultivated faculty for looking the other way. It occurred to him
that, after all, Jane was Ember’s affair. Let her go back to the house,
she was Ember’s affair, not his. He became instantly very anxious to see
the last of Jane.

Just as she was wondering how long this rather horrid silence was going
to last, he walked up to her in a purposeful manner, put his hand on her
arm, and pulled her to her feet.

“You’d best be getting back,” he said shortly.

Jane felt as if some one had lifted a heavy weight off the top of her
head. The weight must have been fear, and yet she did not know that she
had been afraid.

At the gate Molloy turned to her.

“Can you get into the hall?” he said. “Without being seen, I mean.”

“I’m not sure, it’s awfully risky. But I could walk home from the
headland, that would be much safer, and if I’ve been missed, it would
account for my absence.”

Molloy bent a sulky look on her.

“The headland—you know that too?” he said. Then, with an impatient jerk
he switched off the light, turned on his torch, and walked ahead of Jane
in silence.




                              CHAPTER XXII


Never in all her life had Jane seen anything so beautiful as the clear
rain-washed sky, the grey rain-stilled sea. The little thud of the stone
closing between her and Mr. Molloy was one of the most delightful sounds
that she had ever heard. She felt as if she had never really appreciated
the daylight before. There were nice woolly clouds on the horizon. The
damp air was fresh, not like the air in those abominable passages. There
was a gorse bush with about two and a half yellow flowers on it, rather
sodden with the rain. Jane regarded them with intense affection.

She walked down the gravel path, drawing long breaths and ready to sing
with pure relief—“Ease after toyle, port after stormie seas.” She
frowned, remembering the next line. After all, they were not out of the
wood yet. An unpleasant proverb succeeded Spenser’s line—“He laughs
longest who laughs last.”

“Rubbish,” said Jane out loud, and she began to run.

She came in with such a glowing colour that Mr. Ember, who met her in
the hall, was moved to remark upon it.

“You seem to have enjoyed your walk. Where have you been?”

“Round by the headland,” said Jane.

The roll of typed paper pricked her knee beneath her stocking top. In
her arms she carried a sheaf of yellow tulips. She made haste to her
room and set the flowers in a jar on the broad window ledge where they
could be plainly seen from the terrace. With all her heart she prayed
that George Patterson, who was Anthony Luttrell, would see them. She did
not know that George Patterson had ceased to exist, and that Anthony
Luttrell, having taken the law into his own impatient hands, was on his
way to London.

There had been an encounter with Raymond in the laboratory—her hand for
a moment on his arm, his muscles rigid under her touch; not a word
spoken on either side, not a word needed. The scene carried Anthony to
his breaking-point. At the next roll-call George Patterson was missing.
Meanwhile Raymond was behind a locked door, and Jane set yellow tulips
on her window-sill.

Having made her signal, Jane turned her mind to the lists. She was
afraid to keep them on her, and she was afraid to hide them anywhere
else. If Molloy missed them, and had any means of communicating with
Ember, she would be searched, and her room would be searched. Whatever
happened to her, they must not recover the lists until she had copied
them.

She remembered the trap-door in the cupboard, but it was just possible
that Ember knew about it, not likely but possible. After five minutes’
profound thought, she went to a drawer into which she had emptied a
quantity of odds and ends.

Renata, it appeared, had a mild taste for drawing. There were pencils,
indiarubber, a roll of cartridge paper, and some drawing-pins. Jane took
out the cartridge paper and the drawing-pins. She extracted the lists
from her stocking top and smoothed them out flat. Then she opened the
cupboard door, mounted on a chair drawn as close to the cupboard as
possible, and pinned the lists on to the cupboard ceiling with a sheet
of cartridge paper covering them. They just fitted in between two rows
of hooks. Jane got down with a sigh of relief and unlocked her bedroom
door.

The evening passed like a dream. Lady Heritage did not appear at all,
and Jane found a strange unreality in the situation which kept her
talking to Mr. Ember in set schoolgirl phrases whilst he condescended to
her with more than a hint of sarcasm. She was glad when she could take a
book and read.

It was eleven o’clock before she dared begin her night’s work, but she
came up to her room with her plan all ready. First she took off her
dress and put on a dressing-gown, just in case any one should come to
the door. Then, having turned the key and switched off the light, she
took a candle into the cupboard, set it on a shoe box, and took down the
lists. She put a cushion on the floor, fetched Renata’s fountain pen and
some sheets of foolscap which she had taken from the library, and began
her work of copying. With the cupboard door shut there was no chance
that any one would see her candle.

She wrote steadily, town after town, name after name. More towns, more
names. As she finished each sheet, she checked it very carefully by its
original. It was weary, monotonous work; but the weariness and the
monotony were like a grey curtain which hung between her and something
which she dreaded inexpressibly.

The idea of descending into the passage again, of creeping up to the
laboratory in order to put back the lists before they were missed,
filled her with shuddering repugnance. To allow her mind to dwell upon
this idea was to become incapable of carrying it out. She therefore held
her attention firmly to the endless names, and drove an industrious pen.
She had to get up twice for more ink. Each time, as she stretched
herself and walked the few paces to the table and back, the thought came
to her like a cold breath, “It’s coming nearer.”

At last, in the dead stillness of the sleeping hours, the lists were
finished. She pinned the copies on to the cupboard ceiling in the same
way that she had pinned the originals, carefully covered with a piece of
cartridge paper. Then she took the originals in her hand and faced the
necessity for action. Her feet and hands were very cold. She felt as if
it were days since she had had anything to eat. She wanted most
dreadfully to go to bed and sleep. She wanted to have a good cry. What
she had to do was to go down into slug- and possibly rat-haunted
passages and risk waking an Anarchist Uncle out of his beauty sleep.
Jane gave herself a mental shake.

“Don’t be a rabbit, Jane Smith,” she said. “It’s got to be done. You
know that just as well as I do. If it’s got to be done, you can do it.
Get going at once.”

She got going. First she put the lists back in her stocking top. Then
she put on the old serge dress. Her fancy played hopefully with the
thought that some day she would give herself the pleasure of burning
that abominable garment. She extracted the maroon felt slippers from the
paper parcel to which she had consigned them. They were still sopping.
She put them on. They felt limp, damp, and discouraging, but they had
the merit of making no noise. Then she took a good length of candle and
a box of matches and opened her door.

“Well, here goes,” said Jane, and stepped into pitch darkness. This time
she shut the door behind her. As she took her hand off the handle she
felt as if she were letting go of her last hold on safety, an idiotic
thought, as she instantly told herself. She knew by now just how many
paces took one to the place where the light should have been burning,
and just how many more to the stairhead. The rose window showed like a
pattern painted on the dark. It gave no light, but it marked the
position of the door.

Jane felt the soles of her feet stick and cling to the damp slippers as
she crawled down the stairs. They just didn’t squelch and that was all;
they only felt like it.

She hated moving the big chair in the dark, but it had to be done.
Suppose she dropped it with a crash, suppose she pulled Willoughby
Luttrell’s picture down when she was feeling for the catch; suppose a
mouse ran over her foot—there is no end to the cheerful suppositions
which will throng one’s brain in circumstances like these.

Jane did not drop the chair with a crash, neither did Willoughby
Luttrell’s picture fall down, nor did a mouse run over her foot. She
passed through the panelled door, shut it behind her, groped her way to
the foot of the steps, and lighted the candle. It was then that the
cheering thought that she might perhaps encounter Henry came to her,
only to fade as she remembered how long past midnight it now was.
However, if she had not Henry she had at least a light. It is much
harder to be brave in the pitch dark even when, as in the present case,
the darkness is really a protection.

Jane walked quite blithely up the second passage on the left until she
came to the point where she knew that she must put the light out again.
Molloy might be awake. She blew out her candle and began to feel her way
forward. She came to the corner, and passed it. Moving very slowly and
cautiously, she crept up to the steel gate and stood with her fingertips
on it, listening, and thinking hard. She could feel that the door was
ajar. That struck her as strange, very strange. If there ever was a man
badly scared, Molloy was that man when she had said that the secret of
the passages was not confined to himself and Ember. Yet he had gone to
sleep leaving the gate ajar. Had he? Jane’s mind gave her a clear and
definite answer. He hadn’t, he wouldn’t. She had been so sure that the
gate would be shut, so ready with her plan. She was going to unfold the
papers, push them between the bars, and jerk them as far across the room
as possible. Molloy might think they had fallen from the bench, or, if
he had his doubts, might well wish to avoid letting Ember know that Jane
had been in the laboratory. All this she had so present in her thought,
that to feel the gate give to her hand staggered her and set her
shaking. She quieted herself and listened intently. Not a sound.

She did not somehow fancy that Molloy would be a quiet sleeper. She had
anticipated snores of a certain rich bass quality. Here was silence in
which one might have heard an infant draw its breath, a silence
undisturbed, inviolate.

It was not only the silence which spoke to Jane. That odd, dim, only
half-understood sense which some people possess, clamoured to her that
the place was empty. As she stood there, and the seconds dragged into
minutes, this sense became so insistent that she found herself resolving
to act in obedience to its dictates.

She pushed the gate and heard the alarm ring. With all her ears she
listened for the sound of a man stirring, waking, and starting up. At
the first movement she would have been away, and Molloy, new roused from
sleep, would never have caught sight of her. There was no movement. The
bell went on ringing, a little continuous trickle of metallic sound, not
loud but as confusing as the buzzing of a mosquito.

Jane switched on the light, slipped round the gate, and closed it. The
bell stopped ringing. The jarred silence settled slowly, as dust settles
when it has been stirred. There was no one there. The unshaded light
showed every corner of the chamber. Molloy’s bag was gone. Like a flick
in the face came certainty. “He’s gone. Molloy’s gone too.”

Slowly, almost mechanically, Jane extracted the rolled-up lists from her
stocking. She was still holding the unlighted candle in her left hand.
The lists bothered her. She moved towards the bench to put them down,
but first she laid the candle carefully on its side so as not to stub
the wick, and, sitting down, began to smooth the papers out upon her
knee. It was whilst she was doing this that she saw the note.

It lay on the end of the bench propped up against a book. It was
addressed to Jeffrey Ember, Esquire. The capital E’s were magnificent
flourishes; an underlining like an ornamental scroll supported the
superscription. Jane, like other well-brought-up people, was not in the
habit of opening letters not addressed to herself. It may be said,
however, that no solitary scruple so much as raised its head on this
occasion. She tore open the tough linen envelope, and unfolded a lordly
sheet. Molloy wrote a good, bold hand and legible withal. Every word
stood clear.

  “My dear Ember,—I’m off. The place is getting altogether too crowded.
  I’ve seen Renata, and she tells me that there are two men use the
  passages. One has a beard, but she couldn’t tell me their names or
  describe them further. She knows all about the passages herself. She
  confessed to having found them through following Number One. She has
  also seen you come in and go out. I don’t think this place is very
  healthy, so I’m making my get-away whilst I can. Drop the whole thing
  and get out quick is what I advise. I’m staunch, as you’ll find. Why
  did you take the lists after saying you’d leave them for me to look
  through? I’ll not work with a man that doesn’t trust me. You can write
  me at the old place.”

The letter was signed with a large Roman three. It appeared that Mr.
Molloy was more careful over his own identity than over that of Mr.
Jeffrey Ember.

Jane sat looking at the letter. It made her feel rather sick. If she had
not come down, if she had shirked putting the papers back, if the letter
addressed to Jeffrey Ember, Esquire, had reached Jeffrey Ember’s
hands—well, it was a good enough death-warrant, and Molloy must have
known that very well when he wrote it.

“It’s exactly like a Moral Tract,” said Jane. “I hated coming back, and
I did it from a Sense of Duty, and this is the Reward of Virtue.”

She put the Reward of Virtue down rather gingerly on the bench beside
her. She felt about touching it rather as she had felt when she touched
the slug. She wanted to wash her hands. An odd creature Molloy. He had
given her away exactly and completely, yet he had left her any small
shred of protection which she might be supposed to derive from passing
as his daughter.

Jane turned her thoughts from Molloy to the more pressing consideration
of her own immediate course of action. Ember would come in the morning,
and would find Molloy gone, and no word to say where he had gone, or
why. The idea of following in Molloy’s footsteps presented itself
vividly before Jane’s imagination. Why should she stay any longer at
Luttrell Marches? The idea of getting away set her heart dancing. And
what was there to stay for? She had all the evidence necessary to
procure Ember’s arrest and the smashing of the conspiracy. The sooner
she was out of Luttrell Marches and with her precious papers in a place
of security the better. For a moment she contemplated taking the
originals of the lists; Ember would naturally conclude that it was
Molloy who had gone off with them. But on second thoughts she decided
that it would be in the highest degree unwise to put Ember on his guard.
His distrust of Molloy might be so great as to induce flight. She
decided to leave the originals and to take the copies—but she had left
the copies in her room pinned to the cupboard ceiling. Go back for them
she could not. Even if she could have forced herself to the effort, the
risk was too great. They must stay where they were, whilst she found
Henry. The sooner she got off the better. She had no watch, but the
night must be very far spent, and if Ember were to take it into his head
to come back——

The bare idea brought Jane to her feet. She picked up her candle, lit
it, and with feelings of extreme satisfaction set fire to Molloy’s
letter, making a little pent roof of it like the beginning of a card
house on the stone floor. She had often admired the way in which masses
of compromising documents are consumed in an instant by the hero or
heroine of the adventure novel. She used four matches before she
considered that this particular letter was really harmless. The envelope
took two more. Then she collected the ash very carefully, crumbled it up
well, and scattered it amongst the rubble in the broken-down passage
where Molloy had found her. Then, having taken a good look round to make
sure that nothing compromising remained, she picked up her candle and
passed through the gate, leaving the laboratory in darkness behind her.
When she came to the turn she hesitated, and finally went straight on,
following the passage which she had not yet explored, down which Molloy
and Ember had come the day before. She was almost sure that it would
lead back into the main corridor just short of the headland exit; but
she had not gone more than a yard or two along it when she heard
something that brought her heart into her mouth.

Almost as the sound reached her she had blown her candle out and was
pinching the glow from the wick. For a moment the darkness was full of
phantom tongue-shaped flames; then she stopped seeing them and saw
instead a faint glow coming from the direction in which she herself had
come on her way to the laboratory. Somebody was coming along the
passage. If she had gone back by the same way that she had come, she
would have met this somebody. As it was, she might escape notice. If the
person were going to the laboratory, he would have to take a sharp turn
to the left, a right-angled turn. The passage in which she was ran off
at an acute angle, and the person approaching would have his back to her
as he passed.

The glow became a beam. Next moment Ember passed without turning his
head. Jane saw the back of his shoulder dark against the light from his
torch, and caught a fleeting glimpse of his profile, just enough for
recognition and no more. Indeed, it was the fur coat that she recognised
as much as the man. She stood quite still whilst he switched on the
electric light and passed into the laboratory, then she turned and
walked away as quickly as she dared, feeling her way by the wall till a
turn in the passage gave her enough courage to light her candle. She put
the spent match in her pocket, looked ahead, and drew a sharp, almost
agonised, breath.

About two feet from where she stood, and exactly in her path, was the
black mouth of an uncovered well. Jane looked at it, and quite suddenly,
she had no idea how, found herself sitting on the floor with hot wax
running down her hand from the guttering candle. It seemed to be quite a
little time before she could make sure of walking steadily enough to
skirt the well. She went by it at last with averted head and fingers
that, regardless of slime, clung to the wall.

As she had expected, the passage ran suddenly into the main corridor.
She passed the headland exit, and once more was on unknown ground. The
passage swung round to the right and began to slope downhill. Jane held
her candle high and looked at every step; but there were no more traps.
She quickened her pace almost to a run as the dreadful thought came to
her that Ember might follow Molloy. The passage sloped more and more.
Finally there were steps, smooth, worn, and damp, that went down, and
down, and down. At the bottom of the steps a yard or two of peculiarly
slimy passage, and then a blank stone wall. Obviously Jane had arrived.

She looked at the stone wall, and the stone wall presented a front of
uncompromising blankness. She looked up and she looked down, she looked
to the left and she looked to the right, she gazed at the ceiling and
she gazed at the floor. Nowhere was there any sign of a catch, a knob, a
spring, or a lever. There must be one, but where was it? She tapped the
wall and stamped on the floor, but with no result. The door in the
panelling opened from inside with an ordinary handle. She had not been
close enough to Lady Heritage to see what she did to pivot the stone
behind the bench on the headland. In any case, this exit might have been
quite differently planned.

A most dreadful sense of discouragement came over her. To have got so
far, to have been, as it were, halfway to safety and Henry, and to have
to turn back again! Then for the first time it occurred to her that,
even if she had got out and got away, she had no money and no hat. She
looked down at the maroon slippers, and pictured herself descending
ticketless upon a London platform in bedroom slippers whose original
colour was almost obscured by green slime.

Jane wanted to laugh, and she wanted to cry. She did not know which she
wanted most, but presently she found that the tears were running down
her face. She kept winking them away, because it is not at all easy to
climb slippery stone steps by the light of a guttering candle if your
eyes keep filling with tears. The tears magnified the candle flame, and
sometimes made it look like two or three little flames, which was
dreadfully confusing. Jane stood still, wiped her eyes with determined
energy, and then climbed up more steps and back along the way that she
had come.

At the headland exit she stood still, taking breath and thought. Nothing
would induce her to pass that well again. She would keep to the main
passage, and, horrid thought, she would have to put out her light in
case Ember should suddenly emerge from the side passage.

“Thinking about things makes them worse, not better,” said Jane to
herself. “It’s perfectly beastly; but then it’s all perfectly beastly.”

She blew out the candle and moved slowly forward.

It seemed ages before she came past the opening where she had run into
Henry to the foot of the steps. She went up three steps, raised her foot
to take the fourth, and felt a hardly perceptible check. Instantly she
drew back a shade, set her foot down beside the other, and put out a
tentative, groping hand. There was a thread of cotton stretched from
wall to wall at the level of her waist. If her movements had been less
gentle she would have brushed through it without noticing. Then, as she
stood there thinking, the thread between her fingers, something else
came to her. The last yard of passage just at the stair foot had felt
different—dry, gritty.

Jane descended the three steps backwards, and, crouching on the bottom
one, put down her hand and felt the floor of the passage. There was sand
on it, dry sand which had not been there when she came down, and in the
dry sand her footprints would be clearly marked. Obviously Mr. Ember had
his suspicions and his methods of verifying them: “Though what on earth
he’d make of cork soles I don’t know,” said Jane. She decided not to
worry him with this problem.

It was horribly dangerous, but she must have a light. She set her candle
end on the step above her and struck a match. It made a noise like a
squib and went out. She struck another and got the candle lighted.

The sand was yellow sand off the beach, but nice and dry. Two and a half
of her footprints showed plainly on its smooth surface. Jane leaned
forward and smoothed them out. Then she blew out her candle and felt
safer. Feeling for the thread of cotton, she crawled beneath it, then
very, very slowly up the rest of the steps, her hand before her all the
way till she came to the door in the panelling. She opened it and
slipped through into the hall.

The grey, uncertain light was filtering into it. Everything looked
strange and cold. Jane closed the door, and never knew that a loose
strand of cotton had fallen as she passed. Neither did she know that at
that very moment Jeffrey Ember was standing by the open well mouth, the
ray from his powerful electric torch focused upon a little patch of
candle grease.




                             CHAPTER XXIII


Anthony Luttrell caught a slow local train at Withstead—the sort of
train that serves little country places all over England. It dawdled
slowly from station to station, sometimes taking what appeared to be an
unnecessary rest at a signal box as well. It finally reached Maxton ten
minutes late, thereby missing the London express and leaving Anthony
Luttrell with a two hours’ wait.

Waiting just at present was about as congenial an occupation as being
racked. He walked up and down with a dragging, restless step, and tried
unsuccessfully to shut off his torturing thoughts behind a safety
curtain. The time dragged intolerably. Presently he left the platform
and went up on to the bridge which ran from one side of the station to
the other. Here he began his pacing again, stopping every now and then
to watch a train come in or a train go out. From the bridge one could
see all the platforms.

When an express rushed through, the whole structure shook and clouds of
white steam blotted out everything. It was when the steam was clearing
away, and the roar of the receding train was dying down, that Anthony
noticed another local running in to the Withstead platform. He bent over
the rail and watched the passengers get out—just a handful. There was a
young woman with two children, two farmers, three or four nondescript
women, and a big man with a suit-case. Anthony looked at the big man and
went on looking at him. Something about him seemed vaguely familiar. The
man came along the platform and began to mount the steps that led up to
the bridge. Half-way up he put down his suit-case, took off his hat for
a moment as if to cool himself, and stood there looking up. Then he
replaced his hat, shifted the suit-case to the other hand, and came up
the rest of the steps. He seemed hot.

He passed Anthony and went down the steps on to the London platform.
Anthony followed him.

When the big man stood still and looked up, eight years were suddenly
wiped out. Memory is a queer thing, and plays queer tricks. What
Anthony’s memory did was to set him down in the year 1912, in the
gallery of a hall in Chicago. There was a packed and rather vociferous
audience. There was a big man on the platform, a big man who seemed hot.
His speech was, in fact, of a sufficiently inflammatory nature to make
any one feel hot. It breathed fire and fury. Its rolling eloquence must
have involved a good deal of physical exertion. Suddenly, after a
period, the speaker stopped and looked up at the gallery for applause.
It came like a veritable cyclone. The meeting was subsequently broken up
by the police.

Anthony remembered that the speaker’s name was Molloy. If Mr. Molloy had
come from Withstead, it occurred to Anthony that his destination would
probably be of interest.

The London train was due in ten minutes. When it came in, Molloy got
into a third-class carriage, and Anthony followed his example.

It was at seven-thirty on Sunday morning that Mrs. March’s cook, who was
sweeping the hall, was given what she afterwards described as a turn by
the arrival of an odd-looking man who would give no name and insisted on
seeing her master.

“Awful he looked with that ’orrid scar and his ’air that wild, and not
giving me a chance to shut the door in his face, for he pushes in the
moment I got it open—that’s what give me the worst turn of all—and walks
into the dining-room as bold as brass, and says, ‘I want to see Captain
March—and be quick, please.’”

When Henry came into the dining-room he shut the door behind him very
quickly and looked as if he also had had a turn.

“Good Lord, Tony, what’s happened?” he said.

“Nothing,” said Anthony, with nonchalance.

“Then in Heaven’s name, why are you here?”

“I’m through, that’s all. You can’t say I didn’t give notice.”

“It’s not a question of what I say, it’s what Piggy’ll say.”

“Oh, I’ve got a sop for Piggy. I’ve been doing the faithful sleuth. I’ve
trailed a man from Withstead to a highly genteel boarding-house in South
Kensington; and as I last saw the gentleman addressing an I. W. W.
meeting in Chicago, I imagine Piggy might be interested.”

“Who was it?” said Henry quickly.

“Molloy.”

“You’re sure?”

“Absolutely.”

“Good man. You’re in luck. Molloy, under the interesting _alias_ of
Bernier, has just been selling the Government Formula ‘A.’ He was
trailed over here with the swag and then lost sight of. For a dead cert
he’s been to Luttrell Marches by the back way and seen Ember.”

Anthony turned away.

“There’s the devil to pay down there,” he said.... “No, no, the girl’s
all right.... This is something I ought to have told you when you were
down. I ought to have told you the whole thing. I couldn’t bring myself
to.”

“Sit down, Tony. What is it?”

“No, I can’t sit.” He walked to the window and stood there, looking out.
His hands made restless movements. He spoke, keeping his back to Henry:

“You didn’t go through all the passages?”

“No, I was going to to-night.”

“I ought to have told you. The big place under the terrace, you
know—they’ve turned it into a laboratory. Molloy may have been working
there, for all I know; he had the name of an expert chemist.”

“Yes, go on.”

“You’d have found it yourself to-night, but I couldn’t let you go
blundering in unwarned. Ember might be there—any one might be there.
It’s damnable, Henry, but I believe she’s up to her neck in it.”

Henry was silent. There seemed to be nothing to say. He also believed
that Raymond Heritage was up to her neck in whatever secret enterprise
was being developed at Luttrell Marches. He remembered the passion in
her voice when she said, “I should like to smash it all,” and he
remembered how she had sung, “Would we not shatter it to bits, and then
re-mould it nearer to the heart’s desire?” Whatever the thing was, he
believed she was in it up to her neck. So he was silent, and Anthony was
grateful for his silence.

The silence was broken by a tapping, and a rustling, and the turning of
a handle. The door opened very abruptly, and Mrs. de Luttrelle March
made a precipitous entrance. She wore a pink silk _négligé_ and a
boudoir cap embroidered in forget-me-nots, also an expression of extreme
terror—the cook’s description of their early visitor having prepared her
to find Henry’s corpse stretched upon the hearth-rug. When a living and
annoyed Henry confronted her, she clung to his arm and gazed round-eyed
at the long, thin man who had swung round at her entrance. Uncertainty
succeeded fear. Henry was saying, “Do go back to your room, Mother,” but
it is doubtful whether she heard him.

Gradually her grasp of his arm relaxed. She walked slowly across the
room, and stared with horrified amazement at Anthony.

He looked over her head at Henry, shrugged his shoulders just
perceptibly, and made as if to turn back to the window again. Either
that shrug, or the faintly sarcastic lift of the eyebrows that
accompanied it, brought a sort of broken gasp to Mrs. March’s lips. She
put out her hand, touched his coat sleeve with her finger-tips, and
said:

“Anthony—it’s Anthony—oh, Henry, it’s Anthony!”

She backed a little at each repetition of the name, looked wildly round,
and sinking on to the nearest chair, burst into tears.

“Henry—oh, please somebody speak,” she sobbed.

“It’s all right, Aunt Rosa. I’m not a ghost,” said Anthony in his driest
voice.

Henry experienced a cold dread of what his mother would say next. She
had talked so much and thought so incessantly of Luttrell Marches.
Latterly she had been so sure of Henry’s ownership, and so proud of it.
What would she say now—as she dropped her hands from her face and gazed
with streaming eyes at Anthony, who regarded her quizzically?

“Tony, you’re so dreadfully changed. That fearful scar—oh, my dear,
where have you been all this time? We thought you were dead. I don’t
know how I recognised you. And you were _such_ a pretty little boy, my
dear. I used to be jealous because you had longer eyelashes than Henry,
but you haven’t now.”

“Haven’t I?” said Anthony, with perfect gravity. He took his aunt’s
plump white hand and gave it a squeeze and a pat. “It’s very nice of you
to welcome me, Aunt Rosa. The scar isn’t as bad as it looks, and Henry’s
going to lend me a razor and some clothes.”

It was later, when Anthony could be heard splashing in the bathroom,
that Mrs. March beckoned Henry into her room, flung her arms round his
neck, and burst into tears all over again.

“My poor boy,” she sobbed, “it’s so hard on you—about Luttrell Marches,
I mean—do you mind dreadfully?”

“Not an atom. Besides, I knew Tony was alive; I always told you he would
turn up.”

“I couldn’t think of any one but him at first,” said Mrs. March,
sniffing gently. “Then afterwards it came over me Henry won’t have the
place—and I couldn’t help crying because, of course, one does get to
count on a thing, with every one saying to me as they did, ‘_Of course_
your son comes into Luttrell Marches, such a beautiful place,’—and so it
is, and I did think it was yours, and what I felt about it was, if I
feel badly about it, what must Henry feel? You see, don’t you?”

Henry endeavoured to disengage himself.

“Yes, Mother, but you needn’t worry—you really needn’t. Look here, you
dress and don’t cry any more. I’ve got to telephone.”

Mrs. March clasped her hands about his arm.

“Henry, wait, just a minute,” she said. “That Miss Smith—you’re not
still thinking about her, are you?”

Henry laughed.

“I am,” he said.

“Well——” said Mrs. March. She fidgeted with Henry’s coat sleeve, bridled
a little, and looked down at her mauve satin slippers. “Well—you know,
my dear boy, I didn’t want to be _unkind_, but I simply couldn’t picture
her at Luttrell Marches—as its mistress, I mean—and I’m sure you did
think me unkind about it; but now that it’s all different—Tony coming
back like this does make a difference, of course, and what I was going
to say about it is this. If you really do care for her and it would make
up to you for the disappointment, I wouldn’t hold out about it, not if
you really wanted it, my dear, and really cared for her, only of course
you’d have to be quite sure, because once you’re married you’re married,
and there’s no way out of it except divorce, and, whether it’s the
fashion now or not, I always have said and always will say, that it’s
not respectable, it really isn’t, and it’s not a thing we’ve ever had in
our family—not on either side,” added Mrs. March thoughtfully, after a
slight pause for breath.

“I really do care for her, and I really am sure,” said Henry. He kissed
his mother affectionately, and once more attempted to detach himself
from her hold.

Mrs. March let go with one hand in order to dab her eyes with a scrap of
pink-and-white chiffon. Then she looked up at her son fondly.

“Your eyelashes are _much_ the longest,” she said.

Henry made an abrupt departure.

“Piggy’ll see you as soon as you can get there,” he told Anthony five
minutes later—“at his house. I’m off to Luttrell Marches. I was going
down anyhow to-night, but, things being as they are, I think I’ll get a
move on. Piggy’s sending some one to the address you gave, to keep an
eye on Molloy. He doesn’t want him arrested yet, as he’s in hopes that
Belcovitch will roll up—that’s the other man concerned in the actual
sale of the formula. He went to Vienna, but was in Paris yesterday. Good
Lord, Tony, I’m glad you’ve got rid of that beastly beard!”




                              CHAPTER XXIV


Sir Julian Le Mesurier’s study was an extremely pleasant room, friendly
with books, and comforted by admirable chairs.

A Sabbath peace reigned outside in the deserted street. Within there was
no peace at all. A crocodile hunt was in progress. Piggy, as a large and
very fierce crocodile, was performing a feat described by himself as
“trailing his sinuous length” across the floor, his objective a Persian
carpet island upon which a small fat girl of three in a fluffy Sunday
dress was lifting first one plump foot and then the other, whilst at
regular intervals she uttered small but piercing screams. Upon the
crocodile’s back sat a thin, determined little boy of six who battered
continuously upon the crocodile’s ribs with the heels of a new pair of
boots, whilst he shouted his defiance at the foe. At the far end of the
room sat Lady Le Mesurier with a book. At intervals she looked up from
it to say helplessly, “Piggy, it’s Sunday”—or “Baby’s got a new frock
on, and I expect nurse will give notice if you tear it.”

“Not tear,” said the fat little girl, patting her skirts. Then she
shrieked, for the crocodile made a sudden snap at the nearest ankle.

Upon this scene the door opened.

“Mr. Luttrell,” said an expressionless voice, and Anthony entered.

Lady Le Mesurier gathered her baby and her book, the crocodile unseated
the small boy and arose, dusting its trousers. A well-trained family
vanished, and Sir Julian shook hands and waved his visitor to a chair.

“Come up to report?” said Piggy.

“Not primarily,” began Anthony, but was cut short.

“You followed Molloy. Yes, I think I prefer to have it that way, if you
don’t mind. You followed Molloy to this South Kensington address. How do
you know he’s stopping there?”

“I asked the servant who was cleaning the knocker whether they had a
room, and she said, ‘No’—that the gentleman who had just come in made
them quite full up.”

“Well, I’ve sent a man to watch the place. Now, what have you to report
from Luttrell Marches?”

Anthony looked straight over Sir Julian’s shoulder with a hard, level
gaze, and spoke in a hard, forced voice:

“There are a number of secret passages and chambers under the house at
Luttrell Marches. One of the passages has an exit outside the grounds on
the seashore about a mile and a half from Withstead. The secret has been
very carefully preserved until now. Each successive owner told his heir.
No one else was supposed to know. My father told me. When he thought
that I was dead, he also told my cousin, Henry March. Until I went to
Luttrell Marches the other day I had no idea that any one else had
discovered the secret. I have to report that the passages have not only
been discovered, but made use of in a way which points to something of
an illegal nature. One of the chambers is a fair-sized one: it has been
turned into a laboratory——”

“Any sign that it has been used as such?”

“Every sign. Power has been diverted from the dynamos which were
installed for the Government experiments and the passages have been
wired, and some of the chambers fitted with electric light. The whole
thing has been going on under Sir William’s very nose.”

“M’, I’ve had him here to see me—terribly gone to pieces, quite past his
job, also very much annoyed with me for having sent Henry down. Now the
question is, who’s been wiring the passages and using the laboratory?”

“Oh, Ember; there’s no doubt about that, I think.”

“And the sale of the formula? Ember?”

“I’m sure of it.”

“Must have proof. No earthly good my being sure, or your being sure, or
Henry’s being sure. We’ve got to have something so solid that, after Sir
Dash Blank, K.C., has done his best to tear it into shreds, what’s left
of it will convince a jury. Now who else is in it besides Ember and
Molloy? In the household, I mean, down there at Luttrell Marches? Any
one else?”

Anthony continued to look over Sir Julian’s shoulder. He remained
silent. Piggy got up and walked to his writing-table. When he reached it
he swung round, and asked again sharply:

“Any one else, Luttrell?”

There was still silence. Then Piggy said dryly:

“I take it that there is somebody else involved. I don’t wish to
cross-examine you, but I must know one thing. Is it suspicion, moral
certainty, or proof?”

“Moral certainty,” said Anthony Luttrell. He passed his tongue across
his dry lips. Piggy did not look at him.

“Now, look here,” he said, “it seems to me that Luttrell Marches is
about to be the centre of some unpleasant happenings. I think, I rather
think, it would be advisable to induce any ladies who may be there to
leave the place. Lady Heritage is there, is she not, and er, er,
Miss...?”

“Miss Molloy.”

“Exactly. Miss—er, Molloy. Now I consider that these two ladies should
leave at once. When I say at once I mean to-day. I should like you to go
down—by car, of course, there won’t be any Sunday trains—and er, fetch
them away, using such inducements and persuasions as you may think
expedient. Only they must leave. You understand, they must leave
to-day.”

Anthony rose stiffly.

“I’m afraid, sir,” he said, “that I must decline the responsibility. The
reasons which made me leave Luttrell Marches make it impossible for me
to return there.”

“I see,” said Piggy. He picked up a piece of indiarubber, and occupied
himself for about a minute and a half in endeavouring to balance it upon
the edge of a handsome brass inkstand with an inscription on it. When
the indiarubber fell into the ink with a splash he fished it out, using
a pen with a sharp nib as a gaff, dried it carefully on a new sheet of
white blotting-paper, and turned again to Anthony.

“I’d like just to put a hypothetical case to you,” he said. “Government
puts a certain very important and confidential piece of work into the
hands of an eminent man, a man of European reputation and unblemished
probity. Evidence comes to hand of things entirely incompatible with the
secrecy and other conditions which were an honourable obligation. Worse
suspicions of illegality and conspiracy. Cumulative evidence. Arrests. A
public trial. Now, my dear Luttrell, can you tell me what would happen
to the Government which had displayed such incompetence as, first, to
commit a vital undertaking to a person capable of betraying it; and
second, of permitting the consequent scandal to become public property
in such a manner as to make this country a laughing-stock in the eyes of
the world? It’s not a question that requires a great deal of answering,
is it?”

“Sir William is not involved,” said Anthony harshly.

“My dear Luttrell, I was putting a hypothetical case. But if you wish to
talk without camouflage I will do so—for five minutes. I will do so
because I consider that the situation is one of the most serious which I
have ever had to deal with. Sir William is not involved, but Sir William
has become incompetent to control his household and incapable of
perceiving that a dangerous conspiracy is being carried on under his
roof. It’s not only the matter of the stolen formula. Your report of a
hidden laboratory certainly tends to corroborate the very grave
allegations made by Miss Molloy. A situation so entirely serious
justifies me in demanding the sacrifice of your personal feelings and
inclinations. I repeat, Lady Heritage and Miss Molloy must leave
Luttrell Marches to-day. I don’t care what inducements you use. They
must leave. I believe you can get them to leave. I don’t believe any one
else can. I am detaining Sir William in town—it was not difficult to do
so. What more natural than that his daughter should join him. My wife is
expecting Miss Smith to pay us a visit. There must be no delay of any
kind. You understand, Luttrell?”

There was a short tense pause.

Anthony stood as he had been standing during all the time that Sir
Julian talked. He looked moodily out of the window. Now and then his
face twitched, now and then he moved his hands with a sort of jerk. At
last he said in a constrained voice:

“I—understand.”

“Very well,” said Piggy briskly. “Then you’d better be off. From the
fact that you have shaved and returned to civilised raiment, I imagine
that George Patterson is now obsolete, and that Mr. Luttrell has ceased
to be a corpse in some unknown grave?”

“Yes, I’ve come back.” A pause—then, “Sir Julian—this—this duty is
particularly unwelcome. If I undertake it, will you send me abroad again
as soon as possible? England is distasteful, impossible—but, of course,
I realise that I couldn’t go on being dead—there are too many legal
complications, and it wasn’t fair on Henry.”

“Henry,” observed Piggy, “was becoming the object of most particular
attentions from matchmaking mammas. My wife informs me that his stock
has been very high for some months past. Gilt-edged, in fact. I’m afraid
there will be a slump as soon as your resurrection is established.
Henry, I think, will bear up. Well now, about sending you abroad—I can’t
say for certain, but I rather think it could be managed, if you still
wish it, you know. I wouldn’t be in a hurry, if I were you, Luttrell,
about going abroad, but as to the matter in hand—well, hurry is the
word. You’ll find a car outside with Inspector Davison. Take him along.
I hope he won’t be needed, but—well—take him along.”




                              CHAPTER XXV


Mr. Ember was spending a busy Sunday. As he stood in the empty
laboratory, realising Molloy’s defection and all that it involved, there
was no change in his impassive face. The web of his plan was broken.
Like some accurate machine his brain picked up the loose ravelled
threads and wove them into a new combination.

Molloy himself was no loss. His place could be filled a dozen times
over. As to any harm that he could do, unless he had gone straight to
the police, he could be reached—reached and silenced. And Ember knew his
Molloy. He would not go straight to the police. If he meant to sell
them, he would set about it with a certain regard for appearances. There
would be _pourparlers_, some dexterous method of approach which would
save his face and leave him an emergency exit. Ember checked over in his
mind the four or five places to which Molloy might have retreated. Then
there was the money. That they must have; but Molloy, once found, could
be scared into giving it up.

Ember let his eyes travel around the laboratory. The lists lay upon the
bench where Jane had put them not five minutes before. He frowned and
picked them up, stared at them, and frowned more deeply still. They had
been folded and refolded, doubled into a small package since he had last
handled them. Who had done it? The sheets had been smooth from the
typewriter when he gave them to Molloy. They had been handled and
creased, with the creases that come from tight folding. Had Molloy meant
to take them with him, and then at the last moment been afraid? It
looked like it. He turned over the pages, counting them. Suddenly his
eyes fixed, his fingers tightened their hold. There was a fresh smudge
of ink on the top of the fifth page—a smudge so fresh that the blue ink
had not yet turned black. That meant two things: Molloy had copied the
lists before he left, and he had only been gone an hour or two—that at
the outside, probably less.

In the moment that passed before Ember laid the papers down, Mr. Molloy
received his death sentence as duly and irrevocably as if it had been
pronounced by an Assize Judge in scarlet and ermine, white wig and black
cap.

Ember gave just a little nod, opened a safe that stood in the corner,
pushed the papers into it, and pocketed the key.

It was a little later that he found the first spot of candle grease. It
was half-way up one of the side passages, on the spot where Jane had
been standing when he and Molloy entered the laboratory the evening
before. He looked at it for a long time very thoughtfully before he took
his torch and proceeded to a systematic search of the passages.

He found no living person, but came upon dropped wax in three more
places, at the edge of the well, by the headland exit, and half-way down
the steps to the beach. He came slowly back along the main passage, and
stood for some time with his light focused on the sand which he had
spread at the foot of the stair. There was no footmark upon it, but he
was prepared to swear that it was not as he had left it. He had
scattered the sand loosely, and it was pressed down and too smooth. He
thought that it had been smoothed by a hand passing over it. He mounted
the first two steps. The thread of cotton which he had fastened across
the stairway was still there. He bent beneath it, came to the top, and
threw his light full upon the back of the panelled door. The second
piece of cotton was gone.

He flashed the ray upon the floor once—twice. The third time he found
what he was looking for, a fine black thread lying across the threshold.
It ran out of sight under the door. Some one had gone out that way since
Mr. Ember had come in. Who? Not Molloy—impossible that it could have
been Molloy.

Ember passed through the panel, closed it behind him, and walked slowly
and meditatively along the corridor to the library, still pursuing his
train of thought. Molloy would have blundered through that first piece
of cotton without ever feeling it at all, just as Molloy’s foot in its
heavy boot would have been unaware of the sand. If it was a woman who
had passed—now who would have used a candle in the passages? Not
Raymond. She had more than one electric torch which she used constantly
for night work. But Renata, the little soft-spoken stupid mouse of a
thing, if she had a fancy to go spying, she’d take a candle; yes, and
let it gutter too.

Mr. Ember’s instinct for danger had always reacted to this question of
Renata Molloy. Over and over again there had been the tremor, the
response, the warning prick. An extreme regret that he had not arranged
for a convenient accident to overtake Renata possessed Jeffrey Ember.
The omission, he decided, should be rectified with as little delay as
possible. He locked the library door and went to the telephone.

It took him half an hour to get the number that he wanted, but he
betrayed no impatience. When at last a man’s voice came to him, along
the wire, he inquired in the Bavarian dialect, “Is that you, Number
Five?” The voice said, “Yes,” whereupon Ember gave a password and waited
until he had received the countersign. He then began to issue orders,
using an unhurried voice. Every now and then he shivered a little in the
early morning cold, and shrugged his coat higher about his ears.

“You are promoted. You go up to Four and come on to the Council. I will
notify you of the next meeting. Number Three is a traitor. He left here
last night with copies of lists containing names of all agents. It is
believed that it is his design to sell us. He has secreted a large sum
of money, the property of the Council. Before he is eliminated he must
be made to hand this over. Take down the following addresses; he may be
at any one of them. Put Six and Seven on to finding and dealing with him
immediately.” He read out the addresses, and paused whilst they were
repeated. He then continued speaking:

“I shall require the motor-boat off Withstead Cove at nightfall. Yes,
to-night, and without fail. A change of base is imperative. Proceed
first to ...”—he gave another address—“and communicate also with Ten. If
Belcovitch has arrived tell him that he is promoted to Three, and bring
him with you. The Council can then meet, as Number One is here.”

A very slight gleam of something hard to define broke for a moment the
dull impassivity of Ember’s voice as he pronounced the last words. Then
he added:

“Repeat my instructions.”

He listened attentively whilst the voice reproduced his own words. Then
he said:

“That is all. We shall meet to-night,” and rang off.

He had breakfast alone with Jane, and ate it with a good appetite. He
talked very pleasantly too. Jane wondered why every succeeding moment
left her more afraid. She had been up all night, of course. It must be
that, yes, of course, it must be that. She faltered in the middle of
some inane sentence and stopped. Ember’s eyes were fixed on her with an
entire lack of expression, yet behind those blank windows she felt that
there were strange guests. It was like looking at the windows of a
haunted house, quite blank and empty, and yet at any moment out of them
might look some unimaginable horror.

“You seem a little tired this morning, Miss Renata,” said Ember gently.
“Why didn’t you follow Lady Heritage’s example and have your breakfast
upstairs? You don’t look to me as if you had had much sleep. You haven’t
been walking in your sleep again by any chance, have you?”

Jane clenched her foot in Renata’s baggy shoe.

“Oh, I hope I haven’t,” she said. “I don’t always know when I’ve been
doing it. What made you think of it?”

“It just crossed my mind,” said Ember. “It’s a very dangerous habit,
Miss Renata.”

Jane pushed her chair back and rose.

“I’m going into the garden,” she said; “this room is too hot for
anything. It’s like....” A little devil suddenly commandeered her
tongue. She reached the door, opened it, and flung over her shoulder:

“It’s like the snake house at the Zoo, Mr. Ember.”

She ran straight out into the garden after that, and stayed there. She
had the feeling that it was safer to be in the open. She wanted to keep
away from walls, and doors, and passages. She saw no one all the
morning, and came back to lunch with her nerve steadier. As soon as
lunch was over, she went out again. The hour in the house had brought
her fears back with reinforcements. She began to count the hours before
Henry could arrive. It was only half-past two, and perhaps he would not
come till midnight.

The thought of the dark hours after sunset was like a black cloud coming
nearer and nearer. If she could hide, if she could only get away and
hide until Henry came. She felt as if it was quite beyond her to go back
into the house and sit for hour after hour, perhaps alone with Jeffrey
Ember, his blank eyes watching her, or to endure Raymond Heritage’s
presence, and, looking at her, remember the line in Molloy’s letter:
“Renata followed Number One.” It was Raymond she had followed. She had
told Molloy that she had followed Raymond. Then Raymond, beyond doubt or
cavil, was the Number One of that horrible Council. She could not bear
it. She thought of Raymond’s voice breaking when she said “Anthony,” and
she could not bear it. If she could only get away and hide until Henry
came.

She went into the walled garden and walked up and down. Perhaps Anthony
Luttrell would come to her as he had come once before. Presently she
came to the tool-shed, stopped for a moment hesitating on the threshold,
and then went in. There was a way into the passages from here; she was
quite sure of it. If she could find the spring, she believed that she
would be able to reach the cross-passage where she had run into Henry.
She did not believe that Ember used it. Why should he, since it would be
of no use to his schemes? If she could get into the passage and hide
there, she need not go back to the house. She could wait there for Henry
and catch him as he passed. She would be able to warn him too, and it
came to her with startling suddenness that he stood very much in need of
warning; so much had come to light in the forty-eight hours since he
left.

It took Jane an hour to find the spring. She might not have found it
then, but for the chance that made her slip and throw all her weight
upon one place just under the wide potting-shelf. There was a creak, and
one of the boards gave a little. She found a trap-door and steps beneath
it.

There were some old sacks in the shed. Jane took one of them, climbed
down the steps, and shut the trap-door again. She felt her way down to
the level, spread the sack on the second step, and sat down. She felt
utterly forlorn and weary.




                              CHAPTER XXVI


Mr. Ember, having completed all his arrangements, went in search of Lady
Heritage. She had sat silently through lunch and disappeared directly
afterwards. Having failed to find her downstairs, Ember was about to
pass along the upper corridor to the steel gate which shut off the north
wing, when he noticed that the door of the small Oak Room on his left
was standing ajar. He thought he heard a movement within, and, after
pausing for a moment to listen, he pushed the door wide and looked in.
As far as his knowledge went, Lady Heritage had never entered this room
during the time that they had been in the house. He accepted the fact
and could have stated the reasons for it. It had been the playroom, and
the walls were covered with Anthony Luttrell’s school groups. The book
shelves held his books, the cabinets his collections. In a very intimate
sense it was his room.

Raymond Heritage stood at the far end of it now. She wore a dress of
soft white wool bound with a plaited girdle from the ends of which heavy
tassels swung. She had taken one of the groups from the wall and was
looking at it with an intensity which closed her thought to all other
impressions. She stood half turned from the door. Ember looked at her
and, looking, experienced some strange sensations. This was Raymond
Carr-Magnus, a younger, softer, lovelier woman than Raymond Heritage.
The curious cold something, like transparent glass or very thin ice,
which seemed to wall her from her fellows, was gone. It was as if the
ice had dissolved leaving the air misty and tremulous.

The little flame which always burned in him took on brightness and
intensity, and a second flame sprang up beside it, a flame that burned
to a still white heat of anger because this change, this softening, was
for Anthony Luttrell and not for Jeffrey Ember.

There was no sign of emotion, however, in face or expression as he moved
slightly and said:

“Are you busy? May I speak to you for a few minutes?”

It was characteristic of Raymond that she did not appear in the least
startled. She turned quite slowly, laid the photograph on the open front
of the bureau by which she stood, and said:

“Now? Do you want me now?” A softness was in her voice as she spoke, and
a dream in her eyes.

Her beauty struck Ember as a thing seen for the first time. He had to
use great force to keep his answer on a note of indifference.

“If you can spare the time,” he said.

Raymond looked round her. There was a caressing quality in her glance.

“Yes; I’ll come downstairs,” she said.

This was Anthony’s room. She would not talk to another man in Anthony’s
room. The thought may have been in her mind. The breath of it beat on
Ember’s flames and fanned them higher still. He led the way downstairs
and into Sir William’s study.

Raymond Heritage had passed from the despairing mood of her first
interview with Anthony. Then to know him alive and to feel him
unforgiving had stabbed her to the quick. But that phase had passed.
During the many hours that she had spent alone the one amazing radiant
thought that he was alive had come to dominate everything. The cold
finality of death had been lifted. Instead of a blank wall, there opened
before her an infinite number of ways, any one of which might lead her
back to her lost happiness. She began to live in the past, to go over
the old times, to make a dream her companion.

She came into the study with Ember and waited to hear what he wanted,
giving him just that surface attention which he recognised and resented.
His first words were meant to startle her.

“Lady Heritage,” he said, “you know, of course, that there are certain
passages and rooms under this house?”

She did start a little, he thought. Certainly her attention deepened.

“Who told you that, Jeffrey?” she said, and hardly heard her own voice
because Anthony’s rang in her ears insisting, “I _know_ that you told
Ember.”

“Mr. Luttrell told me,” said Ember.

She exclaimed incredulously. At least her thoughts were not wandering
now. Ember felt a certain triumph as he realised it. He went on speaking
quite quietly:

“It was when Sir William and I were down here the year before Mr.
Luttrell died. He, Mr. Luttrell, was taken very ill and I sat up with
him. In the night he was delirious. It was obvious that he had something
on his mind. He began to talk about the passages and to say that the
secret must not be lost. He took me for his nephew Henry March, and
nothing would serve him but he must show me the entrance in the hall. He
got out of bed, and was so much excited that I thought it best to give
way. When he had shown me the spring he calmed down and went quietly
back to bed. In the morning he had forgotten all about it.”

Raymond listened, frowning.

“Why do you tell me this?” she said. “I knew Mr. Luttrell had told
Henry.”

“Henry March knows?” said Ember.

“Yes, I think so. Yes, I’m sure he does. Why, Jeffrey?”

Ember was too busy with his thoughts to speak for a moment. What an
appalling risk they had run. If Henry March knew of the passages, then
they had been on the very brink of the abyss all along. He spoke at
last, very seriously:

“I want you to come down with me into the passages if you will. There’s
something I want to show you—something which I think you ought to know.”

“Something wrong?”

“I think you ought to see for yourself. I’d rather not say any more if
you don’t mind. I’ll show you what I mean. I really think you ought to
come and see for yourself. This is a good time, as the servants are
safely out of the way and Miss Molloy seems to have taken herself off.”

“Very well, I’ll come. I must get a cloak though, or I shall get into
such a mess. Those passages simply cover one with slime.”

Ember stood still with his hand on the half-opened door.

“You’ve been down there?”

“Why, yes, once or twice.”

“Lately?” His voice was rather low.

“Yes, quite lately.”

Ember gripped the door.

“And how did you know—oh, I beg your pardon.”

“Yes, I don’t think we need go into that.” She spoke gently but from a
distance. As she spoke she passed him and went through the hall and up
the stairs. The heavy tassels of her girdle knocked softly against each
shallow step.

Ember went on gripping the door until she came down again wrapped in a
long black cloak. When he dropped his hand there was a red incised line
across the palm. He saw that the cloak was smeared with green. How near
to the edge they had been, how horribly near!

He opened the door and lighted her down the steps in silence, and in
silence walked as far as the laboratory turning. When he turned to the
left and flashed his light ahead of them, Raymond spoke:

“I’ve never been along that passage,” she said. “I know there are holes
in some of them, and I’ve never liked the look of these side tunnels.”

“This one’s quite safe,” said Ember, and led the way.

Jane heard the murmur of their voices, and for a moment saw the faint
glow of the light. Then the glow and the voices died again. It was dark,
she was alone, she was cold, she wanted Henry, oh, how she wanted Henry.

At that moment Jane’s idea of Paradise was to be able to put her head
down on Henry’s shoulder and cry. It was not, perhaps, a very exalted
idea, but it was very insistent.

When Ember switched on the light, swung open the steel gate, and stood
aside for her to pass, Lady Heritage uttered a sharp exclamation.

“Jeffrey, what’s this?” she said.

“That is what I wanted you to see,” replied Ember.

She crossed the threshold, walked a pace or two into the room, and
looked around her with eyes from which all dreaminess had vanished.
Bewilderment took its place.

“Who did this? What does it mean?” she asked.

Ember did not answer her until he too was within the chamber. He pushed
the steel gate with his hand and it fell to with a clang.

“It is, as you see, a well-equipped laboratory,” he said—“worth coming
to see, I think.”

“Yes, but, Jeffrey——”

“You are interested? I thought you would be; won’t you sit down?”

She looked about her with puzzled eyes.

“Do sit,” said Ember in his quiet, friendly way. “You will find this
chair more comfortable than the benches.”

He brought it forward as he spoke—a high-backed chair with arms. It
struck her then as a curious piece of furniture to find in a laboratory.

“Brought here on purpose for you,” said Ember.

But Raymond did not sit. Instead she rested her hands lightly on the
back of the chair, and, looking across it, said:

“Jeffrey, what does all this mean?”

“I’m going to tell you,” said Ember seriously. “I have brought you here
to tell you, only I wish you would sit down.”

“No, thank you. Jeffrey, what is this place?”

“A laboratory,” said Ember. “As you see, a laboratory, and the scene of
some extremely interesting experiments.”

“Carried out by you?”

“Carried out by me ... and some others.”

“You have brought other people in here? Jeffrey, I think that was
inexcusable.”

“I have not yet attempted to excuse myself.”

For a moment his eyes met hers. She saw something, a spark, a flash,
from the flames within. It was her first hint that there was, or could
be, a flame there at all. It startled her in just the same degree that
an actual spark touching her flesh would have startled her—not more.

He spoke again at once.

“Just now I called this place a laboratory. If I were a poet”—he laughed
easily—“I might have used another word. I might have said, ‘This is the
crucible out of which has come the new Philosopher’s Stone.’”

Raymond lifted her eyebrows.

“You’ve not been touched by that mediæval dream?” she said. “This is the
twentieth century, Jeffrey.”

“Yes,” said Ember slowly. “Yes, the twentieth century, and I said ... ‘a
_new_ Philosopher’s Stone.’ The mediæval alchemists dreamed of something
that would turn all it touched to gold, that would transmute the baser
metals. I have found something which will touch this base civilisation,
this rotten fabric with which we have surrounded ourselves, and dissolve
it. And when it is in solution there will be gold and to spare.”

“What do you mean?” said Lady Heritage.

Ember met her frown with a smile.

“Was it a week ago that I heard you say, ‘If I could smash it all’? And
didn’t you sing:

  “‘Ah Love, could you and I with Fate conspire
  To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,
    Would we not shatter it to bits, and then
  Re-mould it nearer to the Heart’s Desire?’

You sang that as if you meant it, Raymond. You sang it with all your
heart in your beautiful voice. Well, Fate has conspired for you and
given this sorry scheme of things into your hands to shatter—to shatter
and re-mould.”

Raymond had been leaning a little forward over the back of the chair,
touching it lightly. She straightened herself when Ember used her name,
and looked at him with a sort of grave displeasure. He laughed a little.

“Do you begin to understand?” he said.

“I don’t think, Jeffrey, that I want to understand,” said Lady Heritage.

“How like a woman,” said Mr. Ember. “Here is what you cried out for.
Here is opportunity, power, the greatest adventure that ever has been or
ever will be, and you are afraid to face it. I offer you the throne of
the world—and you don’t wish to understand.”

The extreme quiet of his voice was in sharp contradiction to the
flamboyant words. Raymond looked at him in some anxiety.

“You’re not well,” she began, and then stopped before the sarcasm of his
glance.

“I’m not mad,” he said. “This is a business proposition. You’ve had
poetry, but I can give you prose if you prefer it. I have discovered
something—I won’t at this moment go into details—which enables me to
smash up civilisation as you’d smash a rotten egg. Every city, every
town of the so-called civilised world is accounted for, divided amongst
my agents. They only await my signal. Those alone whom we mark for
survival will survive, the rest are eliminated. Remains a world at our
disposal to recreate. In that world I am supreme—and you. Is that plain
enough?”

Her face showed deep distress and concern.

“Jeffrey, indeed you’re not well,” she repeated.

“Am I not?”

He came a step towards her and saw her draw back, as it were,
involuntarily. “Have I not made you understand yet? Perhaps a little
documentary evidence will assist you?” He took a quick step towards her,
looked at her full, and said in a different voice, “Raymond, I’m in dead
earnest—dead sober earnest.” Then with a sudden movement he turned away
and went across to the safe in the far corner of the chamber. With his
back to Raymond he unlocked it, and occupied himself for a minute or two
with the picking out of some papers. When he turned she was at the gate
with her hand on it. He spoke at once in his most ordinary voice:

“That’s a safety-catch. It won’t open without the key.”

“Will you open it, please?”

He said, “No, Raymond,” in a tone of cool finality, and she lost colour
a little.

“Jeffrey,” she began, then paused and bit her lip.

“Raymond.”

A scarlet patch of anger came suddenly to her cheek and she was silent
until it had died again. Long years of self-control do not go for
nothing. When she spoke at last there was only sadness in her voice:

“Jeffrey, I have valued our friendship—very much.”

“I hope,” he said, “that you will value my love even more.”

Her hand dropped from the door. She did not answer. The hope of moving
him died. She drew her cloak about her, crossed the floor slowly, and
seated herself in the chair. She did not look at Ember.

When the last faint murmur of voices ceased, and the dark silence closed
about her, Jane sat quite still for a while. It is very difficult indeed
to keep one’s eyes open in the dark. Jane found that her lids dropped,
or else that the blackness became full of odd traceries that worried and
disturbed her. She felt as if she had been there for hours and hours;
and she knew that it really might be hours before Henry came.

She got up and walked slowly to where the passage came out into the main
corridor. She stood under the arch and looked towards the laboratory
turning. She had only to feel her way as far as that, turn up it, and
she would come within sight of the lighted chamber where Ember and Lady
Heritage were talking. The laboratory drew her, and the light drew her.
She began to move cautiously along the corridor. She had on light
house-shoes which made no sound.

The little glow which presently relieved the blackness cheered her
unreasonably. It was a danger signal and she knew it, but it cheered
her.

“One would rather be doing something dangerous than just mouldering in
the pitch dark,” she told herself, and edged slowly nearer and nearer to
the light.

She was now at the corner, and could look round it and through the steel
bars into part of the laboratory. The disadvantage of her position was
that she might be taken in the rear by any one who came along either the
passage that she herself had come up or the slanting passage with the
well in it which ran into the other at an acute angle, about six feet
from where she was standing.

Jane, however, knew of no one who was at all likely to arrive except
Henry. She therefore did not trouble about her rear, but looked with all
her eyes into the laboratory. She saw Lady Heritage sitting in a tall
chair, a little turned away. Her right elbow rested on one arm, and her
chin was in her hand. Her eyes were downcast. She was speaking in a
cold, gentle voice:

“I have not many friends—I thought you were my friend. Was it all lies,
Jeffrey?”

Mr. Ember came into view for a moment. He must have been at the far end
of the room. He came down it now, walked past Lady Heritage, and turned
to face her. Jane saw his profile. He was smiling faintly.

“I am not fond of lies,” he said; “they are very entangling—so hard to
keep one’s head and remember what one has said. Now the truth is so
simple and easy; besides, you may believe it or not, I really do dislike
lying to you. I have always told you the truth where it was humanly
possible to do so. Even in the matter of Miss Molloy——”

Lady Heritage exclaimed suddenly and sharply, lifting her chin from her
hand and throwing her head back:

“Renata Molloy! She’s in this wretched conspiracy of yours, I suppose?”

Ember laughed.

“No,” he said.

“Then what is she?”

“I wish I knew,” said Ember, speaking soberly enough.

“But what you told me wasn’t true?”

“Some of it was. I was really rather pleased with my neat dovetailing.
I’ll run over it, and you’ll see that I told the truth whenever I could.
All that about my having known Molloy in Chicago—solid fact. Then I
think I said that I ran across him again in London, and found he had
taken Government service with Scotland Yard—that was fiction, and so was
the yarn about his warning me that foreign agents were on the track of
the Government formula. But it’s perfectly true that he has a daughter,
and that she sometimes walks in her sleep. When I told you that she had
come in—sleep walking—during an important conversation about the
Government formula, and that neither Molloy nor I was sure how much she
had heard, I was mingling fact and fiction. Renata Molloy happened in on
a meeting of The Great Council—that is the Council of the managing
agents from all the countries within the scope of our operations, and no
one knew what she had heard, or what she understood. When I told you
that I thought she would be safer down here under my own eye, and that I
was not sure whether she had been got at, I was speaking very serious
fact indeed. They’d have killed her then and there if corpses were just
a little easier to dispose of in London. I now very much regret that we
didn’t chance it.”

A trembling bewilderment had descended upon Jane. She saw Raymond stare
for a moment at Ember with a curious horrified look and then drop her
chin upon her hand again. Ember came a step nearer.

“Having disposed of that,” he said, “I should be glad if you would just
look at these papers. Documentary evidence, as I said just now, is
convincing. This is a short summary of our plans which has been issued
to all managing agents. This is a list of those agents. They form The
Great Council. These four names”—he paused—“I should have told you that
there was an Inner Council. It is the Inner Council which really runs
everything. There are four members. I come Second, Molloy was Third, and
Belcovitch, who will be here presently, is Number Four.”

Jane’s heart beat faster and faster. She heard that Belcovitch would be
there presently, but she could not tear herself away. She saw Raymond
Heritage put out her left hand for the papers and glance at them
indifferently, saw her brow contract as she read, saw her drop the first
two papers upon her lap and lift the third. There was a dead silence
whilst she read it. It was the list which gave the names of the Inner
Council. She let it drop from her hand and an extraordinary rush of
colour transformed her.

“What is my name doing there?” she said. Her voice was not loud, but it
rang.

Ember turned upon her a face from which all blankness and coldness had
vanished.

“Your name?” he said. “Why, the whole thing has been built up round your
name. The head of the Council, the inspiration of the movement, the
driving force—you, you, Raymond, you. You are as indissolubly knit with
the plan as if you had conceived it. The whole Council, The Great
Council, knows you as Number One of The Four who are the Inner Council.
The work has been done here under your auspices.” His air of excitement
vanished suddenly, his voice dropped to an ordinary note. “I told you it
was a business proposition. I assure you that it has been most
adequately worked out. In the painful and improbable event of criminal
proceedings, you would be cast for the chief rôle. A wealth of
corroborative detail has been provided. In business, as you know, one
has to think of everything. I’m showing you the penalty of failure, but
we shan’t fail. I’m showing what success will mean. Think of it—the
absolute power to say, ‘This shall be done.’ The absolute power to
impose your will! The absolute power to blot out of existence whatever
crosses it!” A gleam came into his eyes like nothing that Jane had ever
seen before. “Raymond, I’m not a visionary or a madman. The thing is
within my grasp. I’m offering it to you. It’s yours for the taking.”

Raymond did not speak. She only lifted her eyes and looked at him. It
was a long look. Whilst it lasted Jane held her breath. Raymond looked
down again; there was silence.

Into the silence came a distant sound—a faint dragging sound.




                             CHAPTER XXVII


Henry left his car at The Three Farmers on the Withstead road, and
proceeded with energy towards the beach. He was glad enough to walk
after the long drive.

The day was chilly, the air full of moisture, and a thin, cold mist was
rising off the marshes. What breeze there was came from the land and
took the mist only a few hundred yards out to sea. The motor-boat
telephoned for by Mr. Ember earlier in the day ran into it as she came
into Withstead Cove to land a passenger. The passenger, who was Mr.
Belcovitch, was very glad indeed to be landed. He had no nautical
tendencies, and would have preferred danger on dry land to safety at
sea. He made his way up the beach and, confused by the mist, went into
the wrong cave. As he turned to come out of it, having discovered his
mistake, he heard footsteps, and promptly sheltered himself behind a
convenient buttress.

Henry walked briskly past and, as Mr. Belcovitch stared after him,
disappeared into the next cave. He disappeared and he did not return.
Belcovitch heard a familiar sound, the sound made by the pivoting stone
as it swung back into its place. He recognised it, and became a prey to
some rather violent emotions, of which fear, hatred, and a desire to
annihilate Henry were the chief. Henry was unknown to him, therefore
Henry was not one of them. His walk, his carriage, his whole appearance
marked him out as belonging to that class which Mr. Belcovitch made a
profession of detesting. He possessed the secret of the passages, and
was therefore in the highest degree dangerous.

Belcovitch followed him as rapidly and as silently as a man can follow
whose very existence has for many years depended on his proficiency in
these respects. He closed the stone behind him with a good deal more
care than Henry had taken, and, having done so, went up the steps at a
surprising rate and in a moment had his quarry in view. Henry had
switched on a torch and was proceeding at a moderate rate down the main
passage. Belcovitch, moving after him like a cat, did some rapid
thinking. It would be very easy to shoot, but it would make a noise. He
fingered a length of lead piping in one of his pockets and thought with
impassioned earnestness of the back of Henry’s neck. Yet, supposing that
Ember knew of Henry’s visit—he did not want any unpleasantness with
Ember. It would probably be better not to kill Henry in case it should
prove that Ember would rather have him alive. It was always better to be
on good terms with Ember. Molloy had fallen out with him, and it
appeared that at this very moment two comrades were on their way to
eliminate Molloy. All this very rapidly.

He decided not to kill Henry. It was a pity, because there was a most
convenient well into which he could have dropped him. He decreased the
distance between them and unfastened the black silk muffler which he
wore instead of collar and tie.

Henry pursued his unconscious path, his mind occupied with Jane, and
plans, and Jane, and Ember, and Anthony, and Raymond, and Jane again. It
is to be regretted that he did not look behind him. The villain ought
not to be able to steal upon the hero in the dark without being heard,
but Henry had not had Mr. Belcovitch’s advantages. The latter had all
the tricks of the half-world at his command, and Henry had not.

Just before the laboratory turning Belcovitch came up with a quick run,
and that was the first that Henry heard of him. The next instant he felt
himself tripped, struggling desperately to keep his footing, slipped in
the slime, and came down choking, with a black silk muffler tightly
knotted about his throat. Belcovitch was a very neat operator. First the
trip, then the twist, and then the chloroform bottle. He had never made
a crisper job of it. He took Henry by the heels and proceeded to drag
him along the passage towards the laboratory, Henry being mercifully
oblivious of what was happening.

When Jane heard that faint dragging sound, she had just about half a
minute to decide which passage it came from, and to get away down the
other one. It really took her less than thirty seconds to realise that
some one was coming by the way that she herself had come, and to dart
into the slanting passage which held the well. A yard or two down she
turned and stood where she had stood to see Ember pass the day before.
Whoever was coming had no light. Of course they could see the light from
the laboratory and were steering by it. It was a man coming; she could
tell by the tread. He was dragging something—something heavy. What? Or
who? Jane sickened.

A dark figure passed between her and the glow that came from the
laboratory. She took three light steps, and saw that what he dragged
behind him was a senseless man—senseless or dead.

She heard Ember call out, “Belcovitch, is that you?” And a voice with a
strong foreign accent answered.

Then a great many things seemed to happen at once: the steel gate
opened; the helpless man was dragged in; and, as the gate fell to, there
came Raymond Heritage’s scream.

Jane shook from head to foot. The scream cut like a knife. Why did she
scream like that? Who was it? Who was it? Who _was_ it? She got her
answer in Raymond’s gasp of “Henry!”

An inner blackness, much, much worse than that intolerable dark which
had oppressed her, swept between Jane and everything in the world. When
Raymond said, “Henry!” the light went out of her world and left it
black. She heard Ember say, “Is he dead?” but she could not see
Belcovitch’s shrug and shake of the head. She leaned against the wall
and could not move. I suppose that in that moment she knew that she
really loved Henry. It hurt—dreadfully.

Then she heard Raymond’s voice again:

“What have you done to him? Devils, devils!” And Ember:

“My dear Raymond, calm yourself. He’s not dead, nothing so crude. Mr.
Belcovitch is an artist, and Captain March will come round in a minute
or two and be none the worse. I’m sorry you had a shock.”

Light, dazzling light flooded Jane’s consciousness. Henry wasn’t dead.
The dark was only a dream, and she was awake again. She was very much
awake, and her whole waking thought was bent upon the necessity of
getting help for Henry before that dream came true.

Ember and Belcovitch would murder him if they had time. Raymond would
make what time she could, but in the end they would murder him unless
Jane could get help.

She turned, holding to the wall, and moved along the passage. When she
had taken a step or two something happened which she could never think
of without self-abasement. Her nerve went suddenly, and she began to
run. It was only for a dozen steps; then her self-control came into
play. She pulled up panting, and, after listening for a moment, crept
the rest of the way, reached the steps, and came out into the empty
hall, dirty, wet, and as white as a sheet.

As soon as she had the panel shut she ran across the hall and down the
corridor to the library. She shut the library door with a sharp push,
and was across the room and taking down the telephone receiver before
the sound of the bang had died away.

“Exchange!” she said, “Exchange!” and clenched her hand as she waited
for the reply. It came with a dreamy accent, the voice of a girl
disturbed in the middle of Sunday afternoon. Nobody should be
telephoning in the middle of Sunday afternoon.

“Can you look up a London number for me? Sir Julian Le Mesurier”—she
spelt it. “Please be very quick; _please_, it’s important.”

“Righto,” said the dreamy voice incongruously.

Silence fell. Jane held on to the telephone, and tried to control her
breathing, which came in gasps. The room seemed full of mist; she shut
her eyes.

When Jane started to run down the laboratory passage Jeffrey Ember was
superintending the removal of the black silk muffler from Henry’s neck.
When they rolled Henry over on to his face he groaned, and when they
tied his hands behind his back with the muffler he tried to kick,
whereupon Ember produced a piece of rope and they tied his ankles too.

The sound of Jane’s running feet had come very faintly upon Ember’s ear.
Henry was groaning and kicking, and Belcovitch was cursing in a steady
undertone. It was not until he rose to get the piece of rope that his
mind took hold of that faint sound and began to analyse it. There had
been a sound in the passage outside—some one moving—some one running.
Yes, that was it, some one running, light foot and very fast.

Ember finished tying Henry up and got to his feet.

“There was some one in the passage just now,” he said. “I must go and
see. There was something; I heard something. It was like some one
running.” He spoke as if to himself, and then turned to Raymond.

“You will stay where you are in that chair—otherwise....” He swung round
to Belcovitch.

“If she moves, shoot Captain March at once,” he said, and was gone,
leaving the gate ajar behind him.

In the library Jane waited for her call. It came with startling
loudness—a bell that seemed to ring inside her head—and then the dreamy
voice drawling, “Here y’are.”

In Piggy’s study Isobel Le Mesurier said, “Hullo!”

“Is that Lady Le Mesurier?” said Jane.

“Yes, speaking.”

“Please tell your husband——”

And Isobel’s charming, friendly voice, “He’s here. Won’t you speak to
him yourself?”

Jane’s hearing, always acute, was strung to an extraordinary pitch. She
could hear the girl at the exchange speaking to some one; she could hear
Isobel saying, “Piggy, you’re wanted”; and behind these sounds, on the
extreme edge of what was perceptible, she heard the click of the panel
and Ember’s footsteps as he crossed the polished floor. She knew that
they were Ember’s footsteps, and she heard them coming nearer.

Sir Julian was speaking:

“Who is it?”

Jane heard her own voice, and it sounded small and far away.

“Jane Smith, speaking from Luttrell Marches. They’ve got Henry in the
passages. He’s hurt. They’ve got a motor-boat in Withstead Cove. Help as
quickly as you can. Some one’s coming.”

Ember was half-way down the corridor. Piggy was speaking:

“Anthony Luttrell’s on his way—should be with you any minute.”

Ember turned the handle. Jane called out:

“Oh, can’t you get me that number—oh, can’t you get it quickly?...” And,
as the door opened sharply, she dropped the receiver and turned.

Ember came in—a new Ember. There was something terrifying in his look,
and he said harshly:

“What are you doing?”

“Trying to telephone,” said Jane. “They take such ages.”

Mr. Ember’s look was terrifying, but Jane was not terrified. As she
dropped the receiver something happened to her which she did not
understand. Within the last half-hour she had felt an extremity of fear
and sudden anguish, violent relief, and again intensest fear and
suspense. From this moment none of these things came near her. She moved
among them, but they did not touch her at all. The thing was like a play
in which she had her part duly written and rehearsed. There was no sense
of responsibility, only a stage upon which she must play her part; and
she knew her part very well. She did not have to think, or plan, or
contrive. She knew what to do, and how and when to do it. From the
moment that she dropped the receiver at the telephone she never faltered
for an instant.

Ember looked at her with eyes which saw every tell-tale stain upon her
dress and hands. The something in his gaze which should have been
frightening became intensified.

“Lady Heritage wants you in the study,” he said.

Jane knew very well that he said the study because the study was next to
the door in the panelling. If she refused to go, he would stun her or
shoot her here. She did not refuse, and walked down the corridor by his
side in silence. They crossed the hall, and Ember kept between her and
the stairs. Jane walked meekly beside him with downcast eyes until he
passed ahead of her to open the study door. In that moment she turned on
her heel, sprang for the stairs and raced up them, running as she had
never run in her life.

Ember would not risk shooting her in the hall—she felt sure of that—but
he was after her like a flash, and she had very little start. She
reached for the newel at the top and jumped the last three steps, with
Ember about two yards behind. Then down the corridor with a rush and
into her room, and the door banged and locked as he reached it.

Jane wasted no time. She thought that Ember would hesitate to break down
the door until he had at least tried promises and threats, but she was
taking no chances. She heard him speaking as she opened the cupboard
door and locked herself inside it. His voice was only a murmur as she
heaved up the trap-door in the floor and climbed carefully down the
ladder upon which Henry had stood that night which seemed like weeks and
weeks ago. The catch in the wall at the bottom was a simple handle like
the one behind the panelling. She emerged into the garden room, opened
the window, dropped out of it, and ran quickly and lightly along the
terrace, keeping close to the wall of the house.

Ember talked through the door for five minutes. His remarks ranged from
persuasive promises to threats, which lost nothing from being delivered
in a chilly whisper. At the end of the five minutes he put his shoulder
against the lock and broke it. He found an empty room and a locked
cupboard. When he had broken the cupboard door and discovered nothing
more exciting than Renata’s schoolgirl wardrobe, he went to the open
window and stared incredulously at the drop to the terrace. Jane had
turned the corner of the house and was out of sight.

Ember came downstairs with the knowledge that he must complete his
business quickly if he meant to bring it to any conclusion other than
disaster.

He went straight to the library and rang up the Withstead exchange.

“The young lady who was telephoning just now, did she get the number she
wanted? She did? Would you kindly tell me which number it was?”

There was a pause, and then the information came: Sir Julian Le
Mesurier! There was certainly no time to be lost. Molloy and his
daughter both traitors, both spies, both in Government pay! Molloy
should be reckoned with by now, and some day without fail he would
reckon with Renata.

He came into the hall, and released the spring of the hidden door. As
the panel turned under his hand, he heard the purr of a motor coming
nearer. It drew up. The bell clanged. Mr. Ember stepped into the
darkness and closed the panel behind him.




                             CHAPTER XXVIII


Anthony Luttrell’s distaste for his errand had certainly not lessened
during the long drive from town. He stood now on his own doorstep facing
a strange butler, and heard a formal “Not at home,” in response to his
inquiry for Lady Heritage.

“And Miss Molloy?” he asked.

“Not at home,” repeated Blotson.

If this was a reprieve it was an unwelcome one. Anthony would very much
have preferred to get the thing over.

“I will wait,” he said briefly, and walked past Blotson into the hall.
“I am Mr. Luttrell,” he explained, and Blotson’s resentment diminished
very slightly. After a moment’s hesitation he threw open the study door
and ushered Anthony into the room.

“If Lady Heritage is in the house she will see me,” said Anthony. “If
she is out I should like to see Miss Molloy or, failing her, Mr. Ember.”
He walked to the window and stood there looking out until Blotson
returned.

“Lady Heritage is out, sir, and Miss Molloy is out. Mr. Ember was in
just now, but he must have stepped out again.”

“I will wait,” said Anthony for the second time.

When Blotson had gone, he stood quite still, following out a somewhat
uneasy train of thought. As the minutes passed, uneasiness merged into
anxiety.

Jane ran the whole way to the walled garden. Once inside its door she
made herself walk in order to get her breath. When she came into the
potting-shed she knew just what she was going to do, and set about doing
it in a quiet, businesslike way. From a stack of pots she took about
half a dozen, broke all but two of them, and gathered the sherds into
the lap of her dress. She put the two unbroken pots on the top of the
sherds. Then she took a sharp pruning-knife from the shelf, opened the
trap-door, and went down the steps.

As soon as she came into the main corridor she began to put down the
broken sherds, taking care to make no noise. She laid a trail of them up
to the laboratory turning, and then all along the turning itself,
disposing them in the middle of the fairway in such a manner as to
ensure that they should not fail to be seen by any one flashing a light
along the passage. She put the last two or three sherds in a little pile
about a yard short of the arch leading to the slanting passage with the
well in it. As she bent down there she heard Belcovitch maintaining an
impassioned Slavonic monologue within the laboratory.

She stood in the archway, threw her two unbroken pots against the
opposite wall with all her might, and then ran back down the well
passage until it turned.

Everything happened just as she knew that it would happen.

Belcovitch stopped talking and swore. It was a polysyllabic curse, very
effective. Then the steel gate was flung open, and in three languages
Mr. Belcovitch demanded of the silence an account of what was happening.
His voice ran away into a hollow echo, and died miserably.

Jane heard him stamp back into the chamber, cursing, and return. This
time he flashed a light before him. Flattened against the wall, Jane saw
its glow reflected from the side of the passage in which she was.
Belcovitch had seen the sherds and was exclaiming and muttering. She
heard him pass the arch.

Jane stole to the mouth of the slanting passage. Belcovitch was two
yards away on her left, flashing his light down the tunnel, seeing more
broken pots, and more and more, and swearing all the time, not loudly
but with considerable earnestness. Jane slipped like a shadow across
behind him and round the corner. The steel gate was wide open. She ran
through it and into the lighted laboratory.

Henry lay on the stone floor in front of her, bound hand and foot. He
had rolled over on to his side and was staring at the gate. Raymond had
risen to her feet, and was taking a half-step towards Henry as Jane came
running in.

“Shut the gate,” said Henry in a sharp whisper.

“There’s another way out, and I don’t think they know it. Quick, Jane,
quick!”

Jane slammed the gate. She had the pruning-knife in her hand, and she
was down on her knees and at work on the black silk muffler before the
sound of the slam reached Mr. Belcovitch. When it did reach him he spun
round and came back at a run with a revolver in his hand and murderous
fury in his heart.

Jane cut through the last shred of silk, and because Belcovitch’s hand
was shaking with rage his first bullet missed her and Henry handsomely.

“Get up against the wall, quick!” Henry commanded.

As he spoke he was himself half rolling, half scrambling towards the
wall. His ankles were still tied, but his arms were free. The second
bullet just missed his head. Jane cried out, and then they were both out
of the line of fire. Henry was breathing hard.

“Give me the knife,” he panted, and began to saw at some of the toughest
rope he had ever come across.

Raymond had remained standing. She had retreated almost to the end of
the room and wore a look of extreme surprise.

“Why do you call her Jane?” she asked. Her deep voice came through the
racket with strange irrelevance.

Belcovitch continued to make the maximum amount of noise in which it is
possible for a man and a revolver to collaborate. He banged the steel
gate in the intervals of firing, and he cursed voluminously.

The rope gave, and Henry was half-way on to his feet when there was a
sudden cessation of all the sounds. Raymond gave a warning cry, and
Henry caught at Jane’s shoulder and straightened himself. The steel gate
was opening.

Jane said, “Henry—oh, Henry darling!” and there came in Mr. Jeffrey
Ember, very cool and deadly, with his little automatic pistol levelled.
Just behind him came Belcovitch, a silent Belcovitch, at his master’s
heel.

“Touching scene,” said Ember. “Captain March, if you don’t put your
hands up at once I shall shoot Miss Molloy. From her last exclamation, I
should imagine that you’d rather I didn’t. Miss Molloy, go across to the
opposite wall and stand there. Belcovitch, kindly keep your revolver
against that young lady’s temple, but don’t let it off till I give you
leave. Raymond, I should be glad if you would resume your chair. A brief
conversation is, I think, necessary, and I should prefer you to be
seated.”

He stood not far from the entrance, dominating the room. The gate had
been closed by Belcovitch. Ember waited till his instructions had been
carried out; then he came a little nearer to Lady Heritage and said:

“Time presses, Raymond. I must go. I wish that there were more time, for
indeed I would rather not have hurried you.”

Jane, with the muzzle of Belcovitch’s revolver cold against her temple,
found her attention caught by Ember’s words. Time ... yes, that’s what
they wanted—time. Piggy had said that Anthony might arrive at any
moment. When he did arrive and found that they were all mysteriously
absent, surely his first thought would be to search the passages. She
raised her voice and said insistently:

“Mr. Ember.”

Ember threw her a dangerous look.

“Be quiet,” he said shortly.

“There was something I wanted to tell you,” said Jane.

“Out with it then, and be quick.”

“You called me Miss Molloy just now....”

“No, Jane, _no_!” said Henry violently.

Mr. Ember echoed the remark made by Lady Heritage.

“Why do you call her Jane?” he inquired.

“That is what I was going to tell you,” said Jane.

“You called me Miss Molloy, and I just thought I would like you to know
that I’m not Renata Molloy. It would make an untidy sort of finish if
you went away thinking that I was, and I hate things untidy.”

“You’re a little devil,” said Ember ... “a little devil.”

Jane stuck her chin in the air.

“Well, I’m not Renata Molloy anyhow,” she said. “No one would ever have
called her a devil. She was a white rabbit—a nice, quiet, tame white
rabbit.”

Jane’s voice failed suddenly on the last word. Yet Mr. Ember had not
looked at her again. His eyes went past her to Belcovitch, and it was to
Belcovitch that he spoke.

“No, not yet,” he said, “but if she speaks again you can shoot.”

A long, slow shudder swept Jane. She leaned against the wall and was
silent, and she shut her eyes because she could not bear to see Henry’s
face. Ember turned back to Raymond.

“I’m sorry to hurry you.” His voice was low and confidential. “What I
have to offer, you know. It is yours for the taking. Please don’t make
any mistake. I have to change my base, it is true—I have even to change
it with some haste—but neither that nor anything else can now affect my
purpose and its achievement. What I offered is, without any shadow of
uncertainty, mine to offer and yours to take, if you will ... if you
will, Raymond?”

Raymond’s sombre gaze dwelt on him as he spoke. The whole scene affected
her as one is affected by something which is taking place at a great
distance. She did not seem able to adjust her mental focus to it. Her
mind seemed to be divided into two parts. One of them was entirely and
unreasonably preoccupied with the relationship between Jane and Henry,
and the reason why Henry should have addressed Renata Molloy as Jane.
These thoughts seemed to circle as continuously, and with as little aim,
as goldfish in a glass bowl. The other part of her mind was bruised and
sick because Jeffrey Ember had been her friend. When he said, “Will you,
Raymond?” she did not speak. She looked at him in silence, and presently
made a slow gesture of refusal.

Ember came a step nearer.

“I told you,” he said, “that I was in dead earnest. Perhaps you don’t
realise just what I mean by that. I’ve played for a high stake, and I
mean to have what I’ve played for or nothing. I’ve played for you, and
if....” He broke off. “Let me put it this way. Either we make the future
together or there’s no future for either of us. I’m speaking quite
soberly when I tell you this. Think well before you answer, but don’t be
too long. If there is to be no future our present will end here and now.
This place is mined, and if I press that unobtrusive knob, which you may
notice above the safe, the end will be quite a dramatic one. I have
always had some such contingency in view, and this makes as good a
stepping-off place as any other. Think before you refuse, Raymond.”

She shook her head again. Her eyes never left his face. Ember made an
impatient gesture.

“Are your friends going to thank you?” he said. “You are taking the
heroic pose, and forgive me if I say that it’s a little unworthy of you.
I expected something less obvious. Take my offer, and I guarantee to
leave Captain March and Miss Molloy here unharmed. Can any woman resist
sacrificing herself? Come, will you save them, Raymond?”

Lady Heritage spoke for the first time:

“I suppose that I must be a fool because I trusted you.... I did trust
you, Jeffrey ... but I don’t know what you have ever seen in me to make
you suppose that I am such a fool as to trust you again ... now.”

Her words and her voice caused a change in Ember, a change as difficult
to define as to describe. It is best realised by its effect upon those
present. Some impression of shock was received in varying degree by them
all. Henry March had, perhaps, the most vivid sense of it. In Belcovitch
it bred panic.

Whilst Ember was speaking the hand that held the revolver to Jane’s
temple had become more and more unsteady. The muzzle knocked cold
against her cheek bone and jabbed against her ear. Jane wondered when
the thing would go off. So, it is to be imagined, did Henry, for he was
grey about the mouth and his forehead was wet.

Ember did not speak for a moment. Then he said:

“Touché!” in a queer, bitter voice.

Belcovitch began to mutter in an undertone that gradually became louder.
His hand shook more and more.

“Sure, Raymond?” said Jeffrey Ember. “Quite, quite sure?”

He came up quite close, and laid his right hand lightly on her shoulder.
It was the first time that he had touched her.

She said just the one word, “Yes.” For a moment his hand closed hard
upon her. Then he sprang back with a laugh.

“All right, then we go up together.” And, as he spoke, he made for the
corner where a little vulcanite knob showed above the steel safe.

With a sort of howl Belcovitch whirled to meet him. They crashed
together and grappled, Ember silent, Belcovitch torrential in
imprecation and fighting as a man frenzied with terror does fight. His
revolver dropped from his hand, and Ember stumbled over it.

Like a flash Henry had Raymond by the arm, whilst his eyes commanded
Jane and he pointed to the passage that led out of the laboratory on the
extreme right. It was the one that Jane had explored first, and as she
ran into it she remembered that it ended in a small chamber full of
packing-cases. In a panting whisper she said:

“It’s full of boxes.”

“Then we must shift them,” said Henry, and, groping in the almost dark,
he began to pull the cases away from the right-hand wall.

“A light—he can’t find the spring without a light.”

Raymond heard her own voice saying this, and then she ran back down the
passage and into the laboratory.

Belcovitch had put his torch down on the bench from which Jane had taken
the lists. Its exact position was, as it were, photographed on Raymond’s
consciousness. She reached, snatched it, and was back again in the least
possible space of time. As she came, she saw Ember and Belcovitch
swaying, struggling—horribly near the corner. And as she went she had an
impression of Belcovitch falling and, as he fell, dragging Ember down
with desperate, clawing hands. Then she was trying to steady her hand
and throw the light upon the wall space which Henry had cleared; but the
beam wavered and shook, shook and wavered; and Jane took the torch out
of her hand, setting it on one of the packing-cases.

“It should be here. It should be just here”—Henry spoke in a muttering
whisper; then with sharp irritation, “Nearer with that light, Jane.”

Jane held it closely to the wall. Henry’s hands slid up and down,
feeling ... pressing. Once they heard Belcovitch shout, and all the time
the sound of the struggle filled their straining ears. Some one fired a
shot—and Henry found the spring. A slab of stone swung outwards,
pivoting as the other doors had done.

Henry pushed Jane through the opening, flung his arm round Raymond,
dragged her through and slammed the stone into place. They were in the
narrow alley-way between the row of veronica bushes and the terrace
wall, on the spot where Mr. George Patterson had stood listening to
Raymond’s voice. The air, the daylight, the mist, seemed wonderful
beyond words. Jane never again beheld a mist without remembering that
joyful lift of the heart which came to her when the stone shut and she
drew her first long, free breath. Henry gave her no time to savour the
joys of freedom.

“Run, run like blazes!” he shouted.

Jane ran. Once she started she felt as if nothing would ever stop her.
She heard Henry just behind her; she heard him urging Raymond on, and
they came out of the alley-way round the end of the terrace, round the
side of the house.

Then it came.

The ground shook; there was a muffled thud and a long, heavy rumble that
died slowly. Then with a terrific crash two of the stone urns along the
terrace wall fell and broke. As the noise ebbed there came the tinkling
sound of splintered glass falling upon stone.

Jane stopped running as if she had been shot, and reeled up against
Henry, who put his arms round her and held her tight. Up to that very
moment the feeling of unreality, of playing a part in a play for which
she had no responsibility whilst her real self looked on remotely—this
feeling had dominated her. Now it was as if the curtain fell and she,
Jane, was left groping amongst events that terrified her. She trembled
very much, and clung to Henry, who was at that moment the one really
safe and solid thing within reach.

Raymond did not pause or turn her head, but walked straight on towards
the house.




                              CHAPTER XXIX


The last rumble of the explosion had hardly died away before Anthony
Luttrell had flung open the study door, and was making his way at a run
towards the Yellow Drawing-Room.

At the glass door which led on to the terrace he halted, opened it wide,
and stood on the step looking out. Some glass was still falling from the
broken windows on this side of the house. All the terrace on the right
of where he stood was like a drawing in which the perspective has gone
wrong. There was a great bulge in one place, and some of the
paving-stones were tilted aslant, whilst others had fallen in, leaving a
gaping hole over which a cloud of dust was settling.

Anthony turned his back upon all this and came back with great strides
into the hall. Without so much as a look behind him to see whether he
was observed, he loosened the spring, pushed open the door in the
panelling and there halted, suddenly remembering the need of a light. He
went back for a torch, and then passed down the steps without waiting to
close the door.

That something appalling had happened was obvious. With the self-control
without which it is impossible to meet an emergency Anthony kept his
thought focused upon what he was doing. At the bottom of the steps the
way was still clear. He saw Jane’s broken pots and wondered what on
earth they were doing there. Then he turned into the laboratory passage,
flashing the light ahead of him. Half-way along the passage the roof had
fallen in.

Anthony turned, came back into the main corridor, ran along it until he
came to the place where the well passage joined it. Here he turned off,
made his way cautiously past the well, and again found a mass of stone
and rubble blocking his path. A cold horror came over him, and all those
thoughts to which he had barred his mind came insistently nearer,
pressing past those barriers and taking his consciousness by storm. He
came back into the hall and shut the door in the panelling.

The hall was quite empty, but the voice of Blotson could be heard at no
great distance. It was raised in exhortation and rebuke. Obviously he
rallied a staff which inclined to hysteria, for one could hear a woman’s
sobs and a subdued chorus of perturbation and nervous inquiry.

Anthony went to the front door and flung it open. His car stood at a
little distance, the inspector and the chauffeur in close conversation.
Anthony did not see them. He only saw Raymond Heritage, who was coming
slowly up the steps. She was bareheaded, and her face was very pale. She
wore a white dress with a black cloak over it. She stumbled twice as she
climbed the steps and, if Anthony was only conscious of seeing her, she
did not appear to be conscious of seeing any one at all.

It was only when the hand which she put out in front of her actually
touched Anthony that she lifted her eyes and looked at him. Then she
said in an odd, piteous sort of voice:

“Tony.”

“What is it? What has happened, Raymond? Are you all right?”

“I must speak to you—I must,” she said, catching at his arm and drawing
him towards the study. They went in, and when the door was shut she
turned to him with the tears running down her face.

“Tony, you heard? I think he’s dead. That place downstairs was mined,
and he tried to kill us all, only we got away, Henry, the girl, and I.
But Jeffrey’s dead—yes, I think he must be dead, and I know now what you
thought. I didn’t know what you meant before, but I know now. You were
wrong, Tony. Oh, Tony, won’t you believe me? I didn’t tell him about the
passages, and I didn’t know anything until to-day. They can tell you I
was speaking the truth—Henry and Miss Molloy; but, oh, Tony, can’t you
believe me, just me?”

Anthony looked at her, and looked. His face was twitching. As her voice
broke on the last two words he dropped to his knees, flung his arms
about her, and hid his face in the folds of her cloak.

By the time that Jane and Henry came into the house Blotson had set all
his machinery running once more. He himself presented a magnificent
front to two of the most dishevelled people whom he had ever been called
upon to receive. It was not until afterwards when it came home to Henry
how much green slime there was in his wildly ruffled hair, and how
little the original colour of his collar could be discerned, that he
realised how marvellous had been the unflinching calm of Blotson. He
referred neither to the explosion nor to Henry’s appearance. In point of
fact, what were emergencies and accidents that Blotson should notice
them? The hour being five o’clock, it was his business to announce tea.
He announced it.

“Tea is served in the library,” he said, and passed upon his way.

But in the library the tea cooled while Henry, very much relieved to
find that the wires had not been cut, galvanised the Withstead exchange
and got on to a distinctly relieved Sir Julian.

They arranged, speaking in Italian, that an explosion had occurred in
the course of an important experiment in Sir William’s laboratory. It
was agreed to notify Sir William and the press. The loss of two lives
was greatly to be deplored. When this was finished Piggy became less
official.

“That girl of yours is a brick; you can tell her so from me. She’s all
right, I hope?”

Henry said “Yes,” that Jane was quite all right. He sounded a trifle
puzzled.

Piggy laughed.

“Didn’t you know she had rung me up to say you’d been nobbled? Most
businesslike communication I’ve ever had from a lady in all my life.
Told me they’d got a motor-boat in Withstead Cove. And, thanks to her,
we ought to have gathered it in. I got through to the coastguard station
at once. Now look here, what’s the likelihood of laying hands on Ember’s
papers?”

“Ember’s papers?” repeated Henry. “Well, there was a safe down there,
and that’s where he’d be most likely to keep them; but I expect they’re
all gone to blazes, as the door was open.”

At this point Jane’s voice came in breathlessly:

“Henry, wait, keep him on the line!” she said, and was gone.

“It’s Jane, sir,” said Henry. “I think she’s gone to get something.”

In the middle of Piggy’s subsequent instructions Jane came back. She
held a bundle of closely written sheets. She spread them before Henry’s
eyes, holding them fan-wise like a hand at cards.

“I’d forgotten them till you said that about the papers—I’d actually
forgotten them. It’s lists of his agents in all the big towns
everywhere. I sat up all night copying them because I didn’t dare keep
the originals. I keep forgetting you don’t know what’s been happening.
But tell him, Henry, tell him we’ve got the lists.”

Henry told him.

Jane heard Sir Julian answer, and then Henry hung up the receiver and
hugged her.

“What did he say? Henry, you’re breaking my ribs! What did he say?”

“Jane, you’re a brick, and a wonder, and a darling, and he said—he said,
‘Bless you, my children!’”


                                THE END




                          Transcriber’s Notes


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