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.
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 interestingaliasof 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 silknégligéand 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 weresucha 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 courseyour 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 beunkind, 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 aremuchthe 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!”
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.”
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 bepourparlers, 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.
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.