Something must be done, she must rouse Jeanne, give the alarm. She
quickened her pace towards the dressing-room, then, as she reached it,
drew up abruptly, her heart in her mouth. There, just in front of her,
she beheld the source of the conflagration. Smoke, thick, dark grey,
oozed in ribbons from beneath her cousin’s door, streamed through the
keyhole and round the cracks at the side.
“Oh, my God!”
She choked suddenly as the fumes mounted in her nostrils.
Germaine’s room was on fire. Did the poor creature know? She took
drugs to make her sleep. The crackling grew, small popping explosions
came from the other side of the door. She seized the knob and turned
it, only to meet with an unexpected resistance. She pushed with all
her strength, beat upon the panels, then gave up. Cold sweat broke out
all over her. God in heaven, the door was locked!
Like lightning she darted into the adjoining room, straight to the
couch in the corner, where in the tempered gloom she was just able to
make out the dark mass of the maid’s recumbent body, covered to the
ears with a thick eiderdown. A smothered snore greeted her. She
grasped the huddled shoulders violently, shouting:
“Jeanne, wake up! Madame’s room is on fire. She will be killed!”
Then she dashed to the inner door, tried it, pushed with might and
main. To her horror this, too, was securely fastened, nor was there
any sign of a key. What could it mean?
In desperation she turned back to the bed, amazed to see that for all
her shakings the woman yonder was still wrapped in slumber. How was it
possible? The small room was filled with smoke. With a ruthless hand
she swept the covers to the floor, and as she did so a double clink of
metal tinkled upon the floor. Yet throughout the sleeper had not
stirred. There she lay in her stuffy night-gown, her head buried in
the pillow. The idea shot into Catherine’s mind that the maid herself
was drugged. Once more she attacked her vehemently, screaming in her
ear. At last a grunt came, the form moved in the darkness,
protestingly, and a voice thick with sleep muttered:
“_Qu’est-ce qu’il y a donc? Qui me dérange?_” Then as the girl
continued her merciless pounding, the eyes opened with a dull vacancy.
“_Mademoiselle----? Qu’est-ce que vous faites ici? Vous êtes revenue,
alors…!_”
Without replying, Catherine made a dive for the light, switched it on.
The glare shone on the hazy room, revealing the pile of neat garments
lying across a chair, the heap of bed-clothes on the floor, the
stripped couch with its supine occupant.
“Get up, Jeanne! Don’t you hear me? Madame’s room is in flames and the
door is locked! Quick--where is the key?”
“Flames? Impossible! What is all this fuss about?”
Hysterical with despair, Catherine gazed at her helplessly. The
situation was like some fantastic dream. Had the keen-witted Jeanne
taken leave of her senses? Then all at once she caught a gleam in the
brown eyes, and in a flash saw through the whole ruse. This stupidity
was assumed--the woman was pretending! No other explanation was
possible with the smoke pouring in through every crevice, the fire
next door swelling to a roar.…
Suddenly she recalled the metallic clink of a moment ago. She looked
down and spied a little distance apart, two keys lying where the cover
had swept them from the bedside table. She swooped upon them, even as
a hand from the bed shot downward like a bird of prey, striking her
own in its descent.
No time to think. She was at the door now, fitting first one key then
the other into the lock. The next instant there was a cataclysmic
movement behind her, her arms were grasped and she felt herself
powerfully dragged away.
“What are you doing? Are you mad?” a harsh voice grated in her ear.
Jeanne, every vestige of sleep or shamming gone, had clutched her in a
grip of steel. Catherine fought like a tigress, her brain too
distraught to grasp the significance of what was happening. All she
knew was that a few feet away the helpless invalid was trapped in a
furnace, while this idiot of a woman tried to prevent her going to the
rescue.
Terror lent her super-normal strength. She wrenched herself free,
turned the knob and threw open the door. A column of smoke billowed
through the gap, and even as she recoiled before the suffocating fumes
her starting eyes beheld like a vision in a nightmare a picture she
was never to forget.
In the room beyond, lit by a red glare, she saw the bed wreathed in
pennants of fire, galloping, racing to the ceiling. The carpet,
scorched to a cinder, spouted with jets of orange, while through the
blackened draperies gleamed upon the wall the silver crucifix, the
candles beneath it melted to dripping streams of wax. On the floor
between the bed and the chair, outstretched and motionless, lay Mme.
Bender, her night-dress just beginning to ignite. One glance at the
still face revealed to Catherine the awful truth. Germaine was already
dead.…
She screamed and took a step forward. Then an incredible thing
happened. The door was driven back upon the seething holocaust, and
she herself was pushed aside by an impact so violent as to knock the
breath from her body. Through the choking atmosphere a voice was
saying:
“Too late.… You are insane to go in there, mademoiselle. Do you wish
to be burned alive?”
Then and only then did the truth rush upon her. The locked doors, the
cool deliberation of Jeanne’s speech!
Like a maniac she cast herself upon her assailant, who, with set face
and shoulders squared, had braced herself against the closed door. Her
heart-beats stifled her, she shrieked in a voice that was not her own
the horrible suspicion now hardened into belief.
“Murderess--murderess! It is you who set fire to that room, you who
planned this! You have killed her, locked her in so she couldn’t
escape! Open the door, beast that you are!”
Out of the saturnine face the dark eyes bored into hers with an
expression of venomous hatred. Slowly a dark smile twisted the corners
of the mouth.
“_En bien--et aprés?_” she caught the words, uttered in a curious
undertone.
“Murderess! Murderess!”
Her voice made no sound. Her breath was exhausted, yet she continued
to rain blows upon the rigid figure which hardly seemed to feel them.
Jeanne’s eyes, narrowed with bitter triumph, were fixed now, not upon
herself but at a point just over her shoulder. Even in the anguish of
the moment the girl noticed an attitude of expectancy, as though the
woman were watching for something to occur.
It all took place within a few seconds. She suddenly became aware of a
pounding noise, like that of a heavy knocker hammering upon a door. At
the same instant she saw the woman’s face alter, the eyes suddenly
dilate with a look of terror. Then, behind her a board creaked, and
instinctively she turned her head.
There, only a pace removed, stood the Portuguese, swarthy features
livid, lips drawn back to disclose yellowed teeth. His right arm was
uplifted, there was a glinting object in his hand, probably a heavy
candlestick. For a second he poised above her, and she knew from his
transfixed gaze that he, too, was listening to that persistent
clamour.
That was all she saw. The same instant a crashing blow fell upon her
skull and she crumpled to the floor.
Even then she made one final supreme effort to raise herself, groped
in a world suddenly grown black. Across her mental vision shot points
of dazzling silver, like meteors threading a midnight sky. A roaring
as of the sea filled her ears, then that, too, subsided, and
consciousness ebbed away.