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.
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:
“Andwhereis 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.”
“Howdo 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 offnotto 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.
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.”
“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.