"A friend--man or woman?"
"Female," she assured us with a charming accent. "Your friend
Mademoiselle Thorold."
"Vera!" I gasped. "Is she here?"
"Yes," was her reply. "She is here."
How well Vera knew my character when she told me that day I was
"susceptible." I think I am dreadfully so. The look in those great
brown eyes gazing into mine seemed to weaken my will until I had to
answer almost sulkily--
"I suppose I must. Yes, I--well, I'll promise for the present anyhow,"
I said.
"Not to leave this room before my return?" she said.
"Not to leave this room before you return," I repeated.
Then she left us, and we sat looking at each other like a pair of fools.
"Well," Faulkner said. "If you can be rude to a pretty girl like that,
Ashton, I can't, and I don't intend to be. Besides, if Vera is here,
Gladys may be here also!"
"I thought you said you are engaged to be married?"
"I did. And I am. But I don't see why, for that reason, you need call
me a fool for being ordinarily polite to another woman, or to any woman,
especially if we are to meet Vera."
"You quite mistake my meaning," I said. "I say we are a pair of fools--
I am more to blame perhaps than you--for being coerced by a chit of a
girl into promising to stay here, as though we were a pair of schoolboys
put `on their honour.' It is downright silly, to say the least. Yet we
must not break our _parole_--eh?"
I liked Faulkner. His spirit, and his way of saying what he thought
amused me. One meets so few men nowadays with pluck enough to say what
they really think and mean.
The young girl, whose name was Violet--Violet de Coudron--spread the
white cloth, laid the table, and herself brought in our dejeuner. What
position did she occupy in the house, we both wondered. Surely there
must be servants, and yet... where was Vera?
"You have to stay here until to-morrow," she said, when we had begun our
meal--the cooking was excellent, and the wine was above reproach.
"And, until then, you are under my supervision. Those are my orders."
"Your orders, received from whom--eh?" I asked.
"Mademoiselle Thorold wishes it."
"Were we brought here yesterday, or when?" Faulkner asked presently.
"About two o'clock this morning."
"And what was this grim joke?"
"That I may not tell you, m'sieur," she replied. "Indeed, I couldn't
tell you--for I don't know. Miss Thorold knows."
"Who lives here usually?" I asked. "The Baronne?"
"She is rarely here. But that is enough. I cannot answer more
questions. Is there anything else that I can get you?"
Nothing else we needed, except tobacco, and she brought us that. Very
good tobacco it was, too.
Wearily the day passed, for though the room we were in was
well-furnished, there were few books in it. We could, of course, have
gone out of the room, out of the house probably, but our pretty little
wardress had placed us on _parole_.
Whether or not the house was occupied, even whether there were servants
in it, we could not tell. And the matter did not interest us much.
What we should have liked to know was, why we had been brought there,
still more, how Vera Thorold and Gladys Deroxe were faring in our
absence. During the past weeks my life seemed to have been made up of a
series of mysteries, each more puzzling than the last. I was
distracted.
During the afternoon, while sitting together, very dejected, we suddenly
caught the faint sound of a female voice singing.
Both of us listened. It was Vera's voice, a sweet contralto, and she
was singing, as though to herself, Verlaine's "Manoline," that sweet
harmonious song--
"Les donneurs de serenades,
Et les belles ecouteuses,
Echangent des propos fades
Sous les ramures chanteuses.
"C'est Tircis et c'est Aminte
Et c'est l'eternel Clitandre
Et c'est Damis qui pour mainte cruelle
Fait maint vers tendre."
The girl brought us tea presently, and, late in the evening, a plain
dinner. The room was lit by petrol-gas. Each time she stayed with us a
little while, and we were glad to have her company. She was, however,
exceedingly discreet, refusing to make any statement which might throw
light upon the reason of our confinement.
How strange it all was. Vera did not appear. We laughed at our own
weakness and our own chivalry.
She showed us the bedroom where we were to sleep. Beautifully and
expensively-furnished, it had two comfortable-looking beds, while a
log-fire burnt cheerily in the grate--for the evening after the sunshine
was singularly chilly in the mountains.
"If Vera does not come by mid-day to-morrow," Faulkner said, as we
prepared to get into bed, "I shall break my _parole_ and set out to
discover where she is. Our pretty friend is all very well, but my
patience is exhausted. I'm not in need of a rest cure just at present."
We had both been asleep, I suppose, for a couple of hours, when I
suddenly awoke. The room was in total darkness, but somehow I "felt"
the presence of some stranger in the room. At that instant it flashed
in upon me that we had left the door unlocked. Straining my ears to
catch the least sound, I held my breath.
Suddenly a noise came to me, not from the room, but from somewhere in
the house. It was a cry--A cry for help! Sitting bolt upright in the
bed, I remained motionless, listening intently. I heard it again. It
was a woman's cry--but this time fainter--
"Help! _Help_!" sounded in a long drawn-out gasp--a gasp of despair.
Something moved in the darkness. Again I "felt," rather than heard it.
My mouth grew dry, and fear, a deadly fear of the unknown, possessed me.
"Who is there?" I called out loudly.
There was no answer, but the sound of my voice gave me courage. I
stretched my arm out in the darkness, meaning to reach over to
Faulkner's bed and prod him into wakefulness, when by chance I touched
something alive.
Instantly a cold, damp hand gripped my own, holding it like a vice, and
a moment later I was flung down on my back on the bed, and held there
firmly by a silent, unseen foe.
In vain I struggled to get free, but the speechless, invisible Thing
pressing me down in the darkness, kept me pinned to the bed! I was
about to cry out, when a third hand closed about my throat, preventing
me. It was a soft hand--a woman's hand. Also, as it gripped me, a
faint perfume struck my nostrils, a perfume familiar to me, curious,
rich, pungent.
And then, almost as I stopped struggling, the room was suddenly flooded
with light.