“THE DEED IN THE DARK.”
The house was dark as the grave; quiet as death. From somewhere a clock
struck the hour with one solemn stroke, that clanged and echoed through
the silent halls.
Mrs. Trelane, lying sleepless in her bedroom, where she had been sent
like a beaten dog by one glance from Wray, sprang up with causeless
terror. Only the remembrance of Ismay’s locked door kept her from
running to the girl for companionship, but she dared not stand outside
that door, even for one minute, and knock in vain, with perhaps those
awful steps behind her.
Cowering in her pillows, she listened, but heard no more. Even to
herself she would not own that what she feared was not so much the
ghost, as what Marcus Wray might be going to do this night in the dark.
For she had seen him look once at Cristiane that day, and the look held
death in it.
Once, earlier in the night, she had fancied she heard the noiseless
tread of cautious feet, as though people passed her door silently. She
had looked out, then, and seen nothing but Ismay, pale as death itself,
standing alone in the still lighted hall.
“What’s the matter?” the girl said. “Don’t say you want me, because
I’m going to bed,” and she went into her room and locked the door
carelessly, as though death and retribution were left outside.
There were quiet steps again now, but Mrs. Trelane’s fingers were in
her ears, and she never heard them.
Marcus Wray and Cristiane had come up silently, he with a light in one
hand, the other round Cristiane’s waist, that terror might not make
her break away from him.
Frightened she was, but like a child who enjoys a game that startles
it, but also a little afraid of the arm that was so grimly protective.
It was amusing to be hunting ghosts at night with a man who was in love
with you; but it was also, somehow, disquieting.
There was not a sound as they stood at the turn of the stairs, with
only half a dozen more steps to mount to the hall the haunted room
opened from. Wray stopped, candle in hand. It was no ghost-hunting that
had brought him up here at the dead of night.
“Why didn’t you go on?” she whispered.
He kissed her, almost savagely.
“I don’t hear anything. I’m waiting for the music.”
“Oh, I’m frightened of it! I don’t want to hear it. Let us go down.”
Their voices were echoing in the hall above as in a whispering gallery.
“Down!” The man held his candle aloft, and looked down the well of the
stairs. Down, down, it went till his eye lost in the blackness the hard
oak floor of the great hall below. There was no one to see him, and his
face was the face of a devil. He set his candle on the stair.
“You can go down--presently,” he answered recklessly. He took a sharp
sideways step so that she was pressed near the banister. Far below
he saw the light of a candle. Thomas was carrying it, the old man
was coming up-stairs. It was all the better; an accident, without a
witness, sometimes smelled of murder. How slowly Thomas was mounting
the stairs! If some one in the hall above had seen Wray’s face, the
glare in his eyes, and caught their breath in swift horror, there might
have been precisely the little sound that reached Cristiane’s ears.
“What was that? I heard a noise,” she whispered, gazing up the stairs
with great, startled eyes.
“Nothing!” said Wray furiously. Thomas was nearly up now.
“Cristiane!” Wray cried at the top of his voice: “what are you doing up
here? There’s no ghost, don’t run. For God’s sake, take care of those
banisters--they’re rotten!” and with God’s name on his lips in the lie
that was to make Thomas a witness who would clear him, he shoved her
suddenly, savagely, against the banisters, that were frail as reeds
with dry rot.
Cristiane screamed the long, wild cry of a woman in the last pinch of
fear.
“Help me!” she shrieked again, and for one second his grasp of her
relaxed. She had fallen flat on the stairs, still pressed against the
banisters where they were socketed in the steps.
Wray put his shoulder against the rail; it cracked, crashed, with half
the uprights, down into the awful depths below. Only half-against the
splintered lower part Cristiane lay huddled.
With an inarticulate curse, Marcus Wray stooped to do deliberate
murder, to pick up the girl, whose only sin was her wealth and her
defenselessness. Thomas was not come yet; there was no witness.
But was there?
Who was that who stood just above him, in a curious white satin gown,
marked with blood on the breast? Who stood dead-white through her
flimsy gauze veil, her eyes burning like cold, green flames?
He looked, he sprang, kicking over the candle so that there was
darkness. But in that one glance he had known her. It was Ismay who
had played the ghost. Ismay who had seen him now! Beyond himself with
rage and terror, he leaped after her in the dark. In the dark she ran,
voiceless, weakened by the long strain on her, the horror of what she
had been within an ace of allowing to be done.
A square of moonlight marked the open door that was her safety. She
leaped to it, but Marcus Wray was quicker still. Her flying dress
caught round her feet as he seized it. She fell headlong on the hard,
oak threshold, her head striking it with a dull and awful sound.