When Jane turned, and ran back down the dark passage, she had just the
one thought—to get away out of earshot. That she, or any one but Anthony
Luttrell, should have heard that breaking tone in Raymond’s voice
shocked her profoundly. She felt guilty of having intruded upon the
innermost sacred places of another woman’s life. It shocked and moved
her very deeply. Tears blinded her, and she ran into the dark without a
thought for herself. It was only when, looking back, she could not see
even a glimmer of outside twilight that she halted and began to think
what she must do.
The practical was never very long in abeyance with Jane. She began to
plan rapidly, even whilst she dried her eyes. She would feel her way to
the foot of the stairs. If she kept touching the left-hand wall, there
would be very little risk of losing her way. Only one passage had led
off in that direction and that one diverged at right angles, so that she
would not run the risk of going down it unawares. When she came to the
foot of the stairs, she would turn back again and wait in the first
cross-passage until Raymond passed. Then she would follow her up the
steps and watch to see how the door opened on this side.
Jane was very much pleased with her plan when she had made it. It made
her feel very intelligent and efficient. She began to put it into
practice at once, walking quite quickly with her right hand feeling in
front of her and the left just brushing the wall. Of course the stone
was horrid to touch—cold, damp, slimy. She was sure the slime was green.
Once she jabbed her finger on a rock splinter, and once she touched
something soft which squirmed. The dark seemed to get darker and darker,
and the silence was like a weight that she could hardly carry.
Her little glow of self-satisfaction died down and left her coldly
afraid. Then, quite suddenly, she came to the cross-passage. Her fingers
slid from the stone into black air, groped, stretched out, and
touched—something—warm, alive.
Jane’s gasping scream went echoing down the dark. A hand came up and
caught her wrist, another fell upon her right shoulder.
“Jane, for the Lord’s sake, hush!” said Henry’s voice.
Jane caught her breath as if she were going to scream again.
“Henry, you utter, utter, _utter_ beast!” she said, and incontinently
burst into tears.
Henry put his arms round her, and Jane wept as she had never wept in her
life, her face tightly pressed against the rough tweed of his coat
sleeve, her whole figure shaking with tumultuous sobs.
Presently, when she was mopping her eyes and feeling quite desperately
ashamed, she exclaimed:
“I had just touched a slug, and you were worse. I didn’t think anything
could be worse than a slug, but you were.”
Henry had kissed the back of her neck twice while she was crying. Now he
managed to kiss a little bit of damp cheek.
“You’re not to,” said Jane, in a muffled whisper.
“Why not?” said Henry, with the utmost simplicity. “You don’t mind it,
you know you don’t.” He did it again. “Jane, if you had minded, you
wouldn’t have clung to me like that. Jane darling, you do like me a
little bit, don’t you?”
“Oh, I don’t! And I didn’t cling, I didn’t.”
“You did. Take it from me, you did.”
Jane made a very slight effort to detach herself. It was unsuccessful
because Henry was a good deal stronger than she was and he held her
firmly.
“Henry, I really hate you,” she said. “Any one might cling, if they
thought it was a slug or Mr. Ember and then found it wasn’t.” Then,
after a pause, “Henry, when a person says they hate you, it’s usual to
let go of them.”
“My book of etiquette,” said Henry firmly, “says—page 163, para. ii.—‘A
profession of hatred is more compromising than a confession of love; a
woman who expresses hatred in words has love in her heart.’ And I really
did see that in a book yesterday, so it’s bound to be true, isn’t
it?—isn’t it, darling?”
“Henry, I told you to stop,” said Jane; “I simply _won’t_ be kissed by a
man I’m not engaged to.”
“Oh, but we are,” said Henry. “I mean you will, won’t you?”
Jane came a very little nearer.
“We should quarrel,” she said, “quite dreadfully. You know there are
some people you feel you’d never quarrel with, not if you lived with
them a hundred years; and there are others, well, you know from the very
first minute that you’d quarrel with them and keep on doing it.”
“Like we’re doing now?” said Henry hopefully. Jane nodded. Of course
Henry could not see the nod, but he felt it because it bumped his chin.
“All really happily married people quarrel,” he said. “The really
hopeless marriages are the polite ones. And you know you’ll like
quarrelling with me, Jane. We’ll make up in between whiles, and there
won’t be a dull moment. Will you?”
“I don’t mind promising to quarrel,” said Jane. “No, Henry, you’re
positively not to kiss me any more. I’m here on business, if you’re not.
How did you get here? And why were you lurking here, pretending to be a
slug?”
“Suppose you tell me first,” said Henry. “How did _you_ get here?”
“I followed Lady Heritage. I’ve got an immense amount to tell you.”
She leaned against Henry’s arm in the darkness, and spoke in a soft,
eager voice:
“It really began yesterday. I woke up and couldn’t go to sleep again, so
I came down for a book, and just as I was at the drawing-room door, I
saw Lady Heritage come out of the corner by Willoughby Luttrell’s
picture. Did you know there was a door there, Henry?”
“Yes. Go on.”
“She went upstairs, and I was trying to screw up my courage to cross the
hall when Mr. Ember came down the stairs and disappeared into the same
corner. Of course then I _knew_ there must be a door there, so I made up
my mind to come down to-night and look for it.”
“Jane, wait,” said Henry. “You say Ember came down the stairs and went
through the door. Do you think Lady Heritage left it open? Or do you
think he watched her come out, and then found the way for himself?”
“No,” said Jane; “neither. I mean I’m quite sure it wasn’t like that at
all. She shut the door, for I heard it, and it certainly wasn’t the
first time Mr. Ember had been that way. Why, he even put his light out
before he came to the wall, and any one would have to know the way very
well to find it in the dark.”
“Yes. Then what happened?”
“I went back to bed. Henry, you simply haven’t any idea how much I hated
going up those stairs. There was a perfectly fiendish patch of
moonlight, and I felt as if I couldn’t go through it and perhaps be
pounced on by some one just round the corner. If it hadn’t been for the
housemaids finding me in the morning, I believe I should just have stuck
where I was.”
Henry’s arm tightened a little.
“Well, to-night I hid in the study quite early, but I had hardly got
there when Lady Heritage came down. I watched to see what she did, and
as soon as she had gone through the door and shut it, I hauled that
great heavy chair along and climbed on to it, and found the spring. Your
old secret door was made for much taller people than me, and I was just
dreadfully frightened that some one would come and find me standing on
the chair in the corner, and looking like a perfect fool. Oh, I _was_
thankful when I really got into the passage and found that Lady Heritage
was still in sight.”
“I think it was frightfully clever of you,” said Henry, “frightfully
clever and frightfully brave; but you’re not to do it again. You might
have run into Ember or any one.”
“Then you do believe there’s something dreadful going on,” said Jane
quickly.
“I don’t know about what I believe, but I know that the passages are
being used, and that they’ve been wired for electric light. I haven’t
explored them yet, but people don’t do that sort of thing for nothing.
Now go on. I may say that I saw Raymond pass, and you after her. What
happened next?”
Jane hesitated.
“I’ll tell you,” she said. “She opened another door, and went out—why,
it’s been puzzling me, but of course I know now, the passage leads to
the headland. And the other day, when I was so frightened, Mr. Patterson
must have come out of it; and he was there to-night.”
“Yes, go on. Did they meet?”
“Yes,” said Jane, in a queer, shy voice. “I couldn’t help hearing. I ran
away at once, but I couldn’t help hearing her call him Tony. It’s your
cousin, Anthony Luttrell, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it’s Tony,” said Henry. “Thank the Lord they’ve met. I’d just left
him there after jawing him about seeing Raymond.”
“Oh, I hope they’ve made it up,” said Jane. “She looked so dreadfully
unhappy last night that I felt I simply couldn’t bear it. It’s so
dreadful to see people hurt like that, and not be able to do anything.
Do you think they’ll make it up?”
“I hope so,” said Henry not very hopefully. “Tony’s a queer sort of
fellow, you know—frightfully hard to move, and a perfect devil for
hugging a grievance. He’s had a rotten time of it too. What with Raymond
marrying some one else, and then getting knocked out himself, and coming
round to find himself a prisoner—well, there wasn’t much to take his
mind off it. He escaped three times before he actually got away, and
then he went to Russia and had the worst time of the lot. So that he’s
got a good deal of excuse for sticking to his grouch.”
Jane suddenly pinched Henry very hard, put her lips quite close to his
ear, and breathed:
“Some one’s coming.”
As she spoke Henry drew her noiselessly back a yard or two. The faint
glow which Jane had seen brightened until it seemed dazzling. The arched
entrance to the tunnel in which they stood became sharply defined. The
light struck the opposite wall, showing it rough and black, with patches
of dull green slime.
Instantly Jane felt that her finger-tips would never be clean again. As
the thought shuddered through her mind the light went by. That’s what it
looked like, the passing of a light. Raymond’s dark figure hardly showed
behind it. The lighted archway faded. The darkness spread an even
surface over everything again.
Jane laid her face against Henry’s sleeve, pressed quite close to him,
and said in a little voice that trembled:
“Oh, they haven’t made it up—they haven’t. He’d have come with her if
they had.”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Of _course_ he’d have come with her. You wouldn’t have let me go by
myself, you know you wouldn’t. No, they haven’t made it up, they can’t
have, and—oh, Henry, why do people quarrel like that? You won’t with me,
will you—ever? I mean that dreadful world-without-end sort. I couldn’t
bear it. You won’t, will you?”
Jane was shaking all over. Henry put his arms round her very tight, laid
his cheek against hers, and said:
“Not much! It’s a mug’s game.”
After a little while Jane said:
“I must go. You know she came to my room before, and last night when I
got back I found the door shut. I had left it open so as not to make any
noise, but it was shut when I got back. That frightened me more than
anything, but now I think it must have been the wind that shut it. I
think so, only I’m not sure. It might have been the wind, or it might
have been ... somebody. It’s much more frightening not to be sure. So
I’d better go, hadn’t I?”
“Yes, you must go,” said Henry. “I’ll come with you and show you how to
get out. And you must promise me, Jane, that you won’t come down here by
yourself?”
“How can I promise? I might have to.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know why,” said Jane, “but I might have to. Supposing they were
murdering some one, and I heard the screams? Or suppose I knew that they
were just going to blow the house up?”
“Well,” said Henry, with strong common sense, “I don’t see what good
you’d do by getting murdered and blown up too, which is what it would
come to. You really must promise me.”
“I really won’t.”
Henry gave her an exasperated shake.
“Look here, Jane,” he said, “the whole thing’s most infernally
complicated. Tony’s chucking his job here, says he can’t stand it, and I
must go back to town and see Piggy about that.”
“Who on earth is Piggy?” said Jane.
“Sir Julian Le Mesurier, my chief. Every one calls him Piggy. I must see
him about Tony, and I also want to report what I told you about the
passages being wired and in use. I’ll try and see Tony again before I
go. You see the thing is, I don’t know how far Raymond is involved, and
I want to get her out of the way. Tony’s the only man who can get her
out of the way. I suppose I ought to go through all the passages
to-night, but I’m not going to. I shall tell Piggy why. As a matter of
fact, he’ll be just as keen as I am on getting Raymond out of it. Once
she’s clear, we can come down on Ember like a cartload of bricks and
smash up any devilry he may have been contriving. Now do you see why you
must keep clear? I can’t possibly do my job if I’m torn in bits about
your running into danger. And next time you went feeling along these
passages you might really run into your friend Ember, you know.”
“I won’t unless I’ve got to,” said Jane. “You don’t imagine I like green
slime, and slugs, and the pitch dark, do you? But I won’t promise. Now
I’m going. Good-bye, Henry.”
“You’re an obstinate little devil, Jane,” said Henry.
Jane gave a little gurgling laugh.
“We haven’t made an assignation yet,” she said. “When are you coming
back?”
“Well, I’ve made an appointment with Tony for to-morrow night, but I’ll
try and catch him now and put that off for twenty-four hours. If for any
reason I have to come down sooner, I will come and tap on your cupboard
door. If I’m not there by midnight to-morrow, don’t expect me. But I’ll
be there for certain the following night—let me see, that’s Sunday.”
“But if you don’t come?”
“I will.”
“Well, just supposing something prevented you?”
“It won’t,” said Henry cheerfully.