“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.
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