Jane waked that night, and did not know why she waked. After a moment it
came to her that she had been dreaming. In her dream something
unpleasant had happened, and she did not know what it was. She sat up in
the darkness with her hands pressed over her eyes, trying to remember.
The vague feeling of having passed through some horrifying experience
oppressed her far more than definite recollection could have done.
She got up, switched on the light, and began to pace up and down, but
she could not shake off that feeling of having left something, she did
not know what, just behind her, just out of sight. She looked round for
the book she had been reading, but she remembered now that she had left
it downstairs. She looked at her watch. It was three o’clock. The house
would be absolutely still and empty. It would not take her two minutes
to fetch the book from the drawing-room. She slipped on Renata’s
dressing-gown, put out her light, and opened the door.
With a little shock of surprise she saw that the corridor was dark. Some
one must have put out the light which always burned at the far end.
Instead of the usual faintly rosy glow, there was darkness thinning to
dusk, and just at the stairhead a vivid splash of moonlight. After a
moment’s hesitation Jane slipped out of her room, leaving the door ajar.
Somehow she had not reckoned upon having to cross that brightly lighted
space. She came slowly to the head of the stairs and looked down into
the hall. It was like looking into the blackness and silence of a vast
well. She could see nothing—nothing at all. The moon was shining in
through the rose window above the great door. There was a shield in the
window, a shield with the Luttrell arms, and the light came through the
glass in a great beam shot with colour, and struck the portrait of Lady
Heritage and the vine leaves and grapes on the newel just below. The
window and the portrait were on the same level, and the ray seemed to
make a brilliant cleavage between the silvery dusk above and the dense
gloom below.
Jane descended the stairs, walking carefully so as to make no noise. At
the foot she turned sharply to the left and passed the study door, the
fireplace, and the steel gate which shut off the north wing. The door of
the Yellow Drawing-Room was straight in front of her. She opened it
softly and went in.
The book would be on the little table to the right of the fireplace,
because she remembered putting it there when Lady Heritage made an
unexpectedly early move. She stood for a moment visualising the
arrangement of the chairs, and then walked straight to the right place.
The book was where she had left it, put down open, a bad habit for which
Jimmy had often rebuked her. She was back at the door with it, and just
about to pass the threshold when she heard a sound. Instantly she stood
still, listening. The sound came from the other end of the hall, where
the shadows lay deepest round the massive oak door.
“But there can’t be any one at the door at this hour,” said Jane—“there
can’t, there can’t possibly.”
The sound came again, something between a rustle and a creak, but so
faint that no hearing less acute than Jane’s would have caught it.
“It’s on the left of the door, underneath Willoughby Luttrell’s
picture....”
Jane suddenly pressed her hand to her lips and made an involuntary
movement backwards, for there was an unmistakable click, and then, slow
and faint, a footfall. Jane stood rigid, staring into the darkness of
the corner. She thought she heard a sigh, and then the footsteps crossed
the hall, coming nearer. At the stair foot they paused, and then began
to ascend.
Jane gazed into the deeply shadowed space where the footfall sounded,
but nothing—not the slightest glimpse of anything moving—came to her
straining sight.
She looked up and saw the level ray of moonlight overhead. Whoever
climbed the stair must pass up into the light and be visible, but from
where she stood she could only see the side of the stair like a black
wall. But she must see—she must. If some one had come out of the
darkness where there was no door she must know who it was. Her bare feet
made no sound as she moved from the sheltering doorway. Step by step she
kept pace with those slow mounting footsteps. She passed the steel gate,
and, feeling her way along the wall, came to a standstill by the cold
black hearth. Then, with her whole body tense, she turned and looked up.
There was a darker shadow among the shadows, a shadow that moved
upwards, towards the beam of moonlight. Jane watched, breathless, and
from where The Portrait hung, the sombre eyes of Raymond Heritage seemed
to watch too. Out of blackness into dusk a something emerged; one step
more and the moonlight fell on a dark hood. Up into the light came a
cloaked figure, draped from head to foot, shapeless.
On the top step it turned. Jane caught her breath. It was Lady Heritage.
She stood there for a long minute, her left hand just resting on the
newel post with its twining tendrils and massive overhanging grapes. The
light shone full upon her, and her face was sharpened, blanched, and
sorrowful. Her eyes seemed to look into unfathomable depths of gloom.
The amber, the rose, and the violet of the stained glass fell in a hazy
iridescence upon the black of her cloak.
In front the cloak fell away and showed the straight white linen of an
overall, and cloak and overall were deeply stained with dull wet smears.
A piece of the stuff hung jagged from a tear.
Jane looked, and could not take her eyes away.
“Oh, she’s so unhappy,” she said to herself.
With a quick movement Raymond Heritage pushed the hood back from her
hair. Then she turned, faced her own portrait for a moment, and passed
slowly out of sight. Jane heard a door close very softly.
She stood quite still and waited, gathering her courage. She would have
to mount the stair and pass through that light before she could reach
the safely shadowed corridor. Just for a moment it seemed as if she
could not do it. Her feet seemed to cleave to the ground. Five minutes
passed, and another five.
Jane felt herself becoming rigid, and with a tremendous effort, she took
one step forward, but only one, for as her foot touched a new cold patch
of floor, some one moved overhead.
For an instant a little pencil of electric light jabbed into the
darkness and went out again. The next moment Mr. Ember stepped into the
moonlight. He too wore a linen overall, and in his left hand he carried
the mask-like head-dress which was in use in the laboratories. His right
hand held a torch.
He came down the stairs, walking with astonishing lightness. Half-way
down the torch came into play again. He sent the little ray in a sort of
dazzle-dance about the hall. With every leaping flash Jane’s heart gave
a jump, and she only stopped her teeth from chattering by biting hard
upon the cuff of Renata’s dressing-gown. She had covered her face
instinctively, and peered, terror-stricken, between her fingers.
The light skimmed right across her once, and but for the crimson
flannel, she would certainly have screamed aloud. If Mr. Ember had been
looking, he could have seen a semicircle of white forehead, two
clutching hands, and a quivering chin. But his eyes were elsewhere, and
the dancing flash passed on.
Ember crossed the hall to the far corner out of which Lady Heritage had
come. Suddenly the light went out.
Jane heard again the very, very small creaking noise which she had heard
before. It was followed by a faint click, and then unmitigated silence.
The seconds added themselves together and became minutes, and there was
no further sound. The minutes passed, and the beam of moonlight slipped
slowly downwards. Now The Portrait was in darkness, now the newels were
just two black shadows. It was a long, long time before Jane moved. She
climbed the staircase with terror in her heart. At the edge of the
moonlight she waited so long that it moved to meet her. When the edge of
it touched her bare, hesitating foot she gave a violent start, and ran
the rest of the way.
The dark corridor felt like a haven of refuge.
She came panting to her own door, and suddenly there was no haven of
refuge anywhere. The door was shut. She had left it ajar. It was shut.
Jane stood with her outstretched hand flat on the panel of the door. She
kept saying over and over to herself:
“I left it open, but it’s shut. I left it open, but it’s shut.”
Once she pushed the door as if it could not really be shut at all, but
it did not yield; the latch had caught. It was shut. At last she turned
the handle slowly and went in. A gust of wind met her full. Perhaps it
was the wind that had shut the door. She left it ajar, moved to the
middle of the room, and waited. For a moment there was a lull. Somewhere
in the house a clock struck four. The sound came just over the edge of
hearing, with its four tiny distant strokes. Then the wind rushed in
again through the open window, and the door fell to with a click.