Anthony Luttrell’s distaste for his errand had certainly not lessened
during the long drive from town. He stood now on his own doorstep facing
a strange butler, and heard a formal “Not at home,” in response to his
inquiry for Lady Heritage.
“And Miss Molloy?” he asked.
“Not at home,” repeated Blotson.
If this was a reprieve it was an unwelcome one. Anthony would very much
have preferred to get the thing over.
“I will wait,” he said briefly, and walked past Blotson into the hall.
“I am Mr. Luttrell,” he explained, and Blotson’s resentment diminished
very slightly. After a moment’s hesitation he threw open the study door
and ushered Anthony into the room.
“If Lady Heritage is in the house she will see me,” said Anthony. “If
she is out I should like to see Miss Molloy or, failing her, Mr. Ember.”
He walked to the window and stood there looking out until Blotson
returned.
“Lady Heritage is out, sir, and Miss Molloy is out. Mr. Ember was in
just now, but he must have stepped out again.”
“I will wait,” said Anthony for the second time.
When Blotson had gone, he stood quite still, following out a somewhat
uneasy train of thought. As the minutes passed, uneasiness merged into
anxiety.
Jane ran the whole way to the walled garden. Once inside its door she
made herself walk in order to get her breath. When she came into the
potting-shed she knew just what she was going to do, and set about doing
it in a quiet, businesslike way. From a stack of pots she took about
half a dozen, broke all but two of them, and gathered the sherds into
the lap of her dress. She put the two unbroken pots on the top of the
sherds. Then she took a sharp pruning-knife from the shelf, opened the
trap-door, and went down the steps.
As soon as she came into the main corridor she began to put down the
broken sherds, taking care to make no noise. She laid a trail of them up
to the laboratory turning, and then all along the turning itself,
disposing them in the middle of the fairway in such a manner as to
ensure that they should not fail to be seen by any one flashing a light
along the passage. She put the last two or three sherds in a little pile
about a yard short of the arch leading to the slanting passage with the
well in it. As she bent down there she heard Belcovitch maintaining an
impassioned Slavonic monologue within the laboratory.
She stood in the archway, threw her two unbroken pots against the
opposite wall with all her might, and then ran back down the well
passage until it turned.
Everything happened just as she knew that it would happen.
Belcovitch stopped talking and swore. It was a polysyllabic curse, very
effective. Then the steel gate was flung open, and in three languages
Mr. Belcovitch demanded of the silence an account of what was happening.
His voice ran away into a hollow echo, and died miserably.
Jane heard him stamp back into the chamber, cursing, and return. This
time he flashed a light before him. Flattened against the wall, Jane saw
its glow reflected from the side of the passage in which she was.
Belcovitch had seen the sherds and was exclaiming and muttering. She
heard him pass the arch.
Jane stole to the mouth of the slanting passage. Belcovitch was two
yards away on her left, flashing his light down the tunnel, seeing more
broken pots, and more and more, and swearing all the time, not loudly
but with considerable earnestness. Jane slipped like a shadow across
behind him and round the corner. The steel gate was wide open. She ran
through it and into the lighted laboratory.
Henry lay on the stone floor in front of her, bound hand and foot. He
had rolled over on to his side and was staring at the gate. Raymond had
risen to her feet, and was taking a half-step towards Henry as Jane came
running in.
“Shut the gate,” said Henry in a sharp whisper.
“There’s another way out, and I don’t think they know it. Quick, Jane,
quick!”
Jane slammed the gate. She had the pruning-knife in her hand, and she
was down on her knees and at work on the black silk muffler before the
sound of the slam reached Mr. Belcovitch. When it did reach him he spun
round and came back at a run with a revolver in his hand and murderous
fury in his heart.
Jane cut through the last shred of silk, and because Belcovitch’s hand
was shaking with rage his first bullet missed her and Henry handsomely.
“Get up against the wall, quick!” Henry commanded.
As he spoke he was himself half rolling, half scrambling towards the
wall. His ankles were still tied, but his arms were free. The second
bullet just missed his head. Jane cried out, and then they were both out
of the line of fire. Henry was breathing hard.
“Give me the knife,” he panted, and began to saw at some of the toughest
rope he had ever come across.
Raymond had remained standing. She had retreated almost to the end of
the room and wore a look of extreme surprise.
“Why do you call her Jane?” she asked. Her deep voice came through the
racket with strange irrelevance.
Belcovitch continued to make the maximum amount of noise in which it is
possible for a man and a revolver to collaborate. He banged the steel
gate in the intervals of firing, and he cursed voluminously.
The rope gave, and Henry was half-way on to his feet when there was a
sudden cessation of all the sounds. Raymond gave a warning cry, and
Henry caught at Jane’s shoulder and straightened himself. The steel gate
was opening.
Jane said, “Henry—oh, Henry darling!” and there came in Mr. Jeffrey
Ember, very cool and deadly, with his little automatic pistol levelled.
Just behind him came Belcovitch, a silent Belcovitch, at his master’s
heel.
“Touching scene,” said Ember. “Captain March, if you don’t put your
hands up at once I shall shoot Miss Molloy. From her last exclamation, I
should imagine that you’d rather I didn’t. Miss Molloy, go across to the
opposite wall and stand there. Belcovitch, kindly keep your revolver
against that young lady’s temple, but don’t let it off till I give you
leave. Raymond, I should be glad if you would resume your chair. A brief
conversation is, I think, necessary, and I should prefer you to be
seated.”
He stood not far from the entrance, dominating the room. The gate had
been closed by Belcovitch. Ember waited till his instructions had been
carried out; then he came a little nearer to Lady Heritage and said:
“Time presses, Raymond. I must go. I wish that there were more time, for
indeed I would rather not have hurried you.”
Jane, with the muzzle of Belcovitch’s revolver cold against her temple,
found her attention caught by Ember’s words. Time ... yes, that’s what
they wanted—time. Piggy had said that Anthony might arrive at any
moment. When he did arrive and found that they were all mysteriously
absent, surely his first thought would be to search the passages. She
raised her voice and said insistently:
“Mr. Ember.”
Ember threw her a dangerous look.
“Be quiet,” he said shortly.
“There was something I wanted to tell you,” said Jane.
“Out with it then, and be quick.”
“You called me Miss Molloy just now....”
“No, Jane, _no_!” said Henry violently.
Mr. Ember echoed the remark made by Lady Heritage.
“Why do you call her Jane?” he inquired.
“That is what I was going to tell you,” said Jane.
“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.