“N-no,” said the voice with a catch in it, “I d-don’t think so.”
Sarah took her hand away and got up.
“You’d know if you had. Get up and see if you can walk! I’m Sarah Trent, and I suppose you’re Lucilla Hildred. Now, where did you fall from, and what were you doing there anyhow?”
Lucilla scrambled up, said “Ouch!” and giggled again. “Nothing’s broken. I was up on the bank. I wanted to see you pass.”
“And how did you think you were going to see me in the dark?”
“I’d got a torch—I was going to shoot it at you as you passed.”
“Nice child!” said Sarah. “You might have made me run into the bank. If that’s what you wanted, you’ve done it all right. The Bomb is probably a corpse, and if I hadn’t been pretty nippy with my brakes, you’d have been one too. What’s the bright idea?”
“I didn’t—” said Lucilla. “I mean there wasn’t any idea—I mean I only wanted to shoot you with the torch and see if you’d jump. You see, it takes no end of a nerve to be any good at looking after me, so I thought I’d better find out whether it was any use letting you come. I mean if I really lay down and screamed, I suppose Aunt Marina and Uncle Geoffrey wouldn’t make me have you.”
“I don’t know. Are you going to try?” said Sarah.
It would have given her the greatest possible pleasure to box Lucilla’s ears. They appeared to be rather above the level of her own and temptingly near. She swept the ray across her face instead. Pale face, pale hair, round pale blue eyes that blinked against the light. A long thin slip of a girl in heavy black. She let the torch fall again.
“You haven’t told me what happened,” she said. The anger had gone out of her and she felt rather cold.
There was an odd little silence, rather a breathless little silence.
“I fell,” said Lucilla in a small uneven voice.
“How did you fall?”
“I don’t know—I just fell. I didn’t mean to.”
That was what Sarah had been wondering. A good deal depended on it. If Lucilla had meant to fall, no extra salary was going to drag Sarah Trent into her affairs. And then quite suddenly she was sure that Lucilla hadn’t meant to fall. Her every instinct told her so. Lucilla’s giggle told her so, and Lucilla’s really brazen cheek. She might be a little beast, but she wasn’t a would-be suicide.
Sarah gave a laugh of pure relief.
“Well, are you going to lie down and scream?” she said.
Lucilla giggled in the dark.
“I don’t think so. You can come on appro if you like. I suppose they’ve engaged you. Uncle Geoffrey wanted a young one, and Aunt Marina’s hated everyone she’s seen so far. Can do.”
“How do you know I’ll come?” said Sarah.
“Well, you wouldn’t let a little thing like this put you off—I mean, would you? I knew you’d do as soon as you called me a blinking idiot. A real proper governess would have said ‘My dear child!’” She broke off and gave a whistle of dismay. “Oh golly! I shall be late for dinner! I say, they’ve not let you go without any food, have they?”
“I’m supposed to be dining with a friend,” said Sarah. “Sometime, you know, in the remote future, if I ever do get back to town.”
“Will she wait for you?” said Lucilla.
“Oh yes, he’ll wait,” said Sarah.
CHAPTER III
Bertrand could wait, and Bertrand certainly would have to wait. If she got back by nine, The Bomb would be doing her proud. The picture of Bertrand Darnac waiting for his dinner till nine o’clock made Sarah feel warm and pleased all over. “So good for you, Ran darling,” she murmured as The Bomb turned the corner into the main road.
She felt at peace with all the world. Aunt Marina was a pussy old thing. When Sarah stroked her, she would purr. Uncle Geoffrey was going to eat out of her hand. She knew the symptoms. Lucilla was undoubtedly a little devil, but she would probably be quite an amusing little devil. Over and above all this, and the twenty pounds, and the prospect of acquiring The Bomb, there was the heady exhilaration which is natural when you think you have killed someone and then find that you haven’t. It was amusing to be alive, and it was going to be very amusing to see Bertrand’s face when she arrived hours late. If The Bomb hadn’t behaved like a perfect saint after being run up the bank, Ran might have waited till closing time. “Noble, angel Bomb!” said Sarah in a much more affectionate voice than she had ever used to Mr. Bertrand Darnac. And with that The Bomb spluttered, slowed down, and stopped dead. The most horrible suspicion assailed Sarah. Bertrand had sworn that the tank was full. It now appeared probable that he had been thinking about last week. It was a waste of time looking for a spare can. You drove The Bomb on luck, not on good management.
Five minutes later Sarah was convinced that her luck was out. The Bomb was dead to the world, and no motorist ever stopped for you now, because if they did, you would probably turn out to be a bandit. The days were gone by when any young woman could stop any passing car however lordly. No, the only chance was a house, and it didn’t seem to be a very good chance. It wasn’t a housey road. It was dark, and straight, and overshadowed by trees.
Sarah took out her torch and flashed it about. On this side of the road the trees bordered an open common—two or three of them, and then a gap, and half a dozen more and some gorse bushes. “Blasted heath!” said Sarah viciously, and turned the torch across the road. Here the trees were much bigger. They bulged up against the sky and hung low down over the grass verge. She went across to have a nearer look, and found that under the drooping branches, all black and shadowy, there ran a high stone wall. “Somebody’s park. That means a house, and that sort of house means a garage, and a garage means petrol.” Pleasant visions of an obliging young chauffeur rose before her. Chauffeurs were always very obliging to Sarah.
Well, well, the next thing was to find a gate. It might quite easily be a quarter of a mile away. It was a good two miles from the Manifolds’ main gate to the one that came out on the Godswick corner.
Sarah set off up the road, and almost at once she came upon a gate. The trees receded and two ghostly pillars loomed up. There didn’t seem to be a lodge, and the gate stood open. She began to walk up what was evidently not a main drive. It had not been swept for some time. She trod on dry leaves and snapping twigs. The trees closed in above her, shutting out the sky. It was awfully early in the year for the leaves to be so dry. Could there possibly be so many in October, or had this blighted park lain unswept since goodness knows when—a year—two—three—ten—or twenty? The idea that she might be walking briskly up to a house that hadn’t been lived in for years was an extremely daunting one. “On the other hand, it may be full of the most delightful people who are going to be my friends for life. If you’ve got umpteen drives, and you haven’t got umpteen gardeners, the leaves just have to lie. Forward, Sarah my child!”
The drive came out on a flat place where the bulk of a big house just showed against the sky. There was a little light in the sky, but there was none at all in the house.
Sarah switched out her torch, because it made her feel conspicuous. The place was very lonely and the house was very dead. A star looked over the edge of a chimney-stack, and no smoke blurred it. Sarah shivered. She hated a house that wasn’t anybody’s home any more.… And a complete wash-out as far as petrol was concerned.… On the other hand, there might be someone living in the stables, or there might be a caretaker lurking in a kitchen wing.
She began to walk round the house in the direction in which she supposed the back premises would lie, and she hadn’t gone twenty yards before a light flashed high up above her head. She had been looking up at the house. The light flashed and was gone. She was left with the startled impression of a long narrow window and a spark that broke the blankness of its panes. She stood still and continued to look up.
Then all at once the light showed again. It was lower down, and it was nearer the front of the house. It stay
ed a little longer, and it was not so bright. Someone was moving about in the dark house with an electric torch. The narrow window probably lighted a staircase. The beam had touched the glass and dazzled there. Now the person who carried the torch was crossing one of the ground floor rooms. The windows were shuttered, so the light showed only in a faint line here and there. If it hadn’t been so dark, she would not have seen it at all. There was a knothole in one of the shutters.
“No good standing here, Sarah,” said Miss Trent with decision.
She put on her torch again and examined the side of the house. Just under the narrow window which had showed in the first flash, her own small feeble ray discovered a door. It was the sort of door that leads to a garden room, a quiet, unassuming door with three steps leading up to it. But the interesting thing about this quite ordinary door was that it was ajar. It slanted in under the ray and showed a full hand’s breadth of shadow between its edge and the door-post.
Sarah went up the steps and lifted her hand to knock. She lifted her hand, but she stopped it just short of the panel. She had been thinking about a caretaker. But does a caretaker wander round in the dark with a torch? All at once Sarah felt quite sure that he didn’t. He would have a candle, or one of those lamps with a tin reflector, or a stable lantern. The thing that had flashed and dazzled on the pane just over where she was standing now was none of these things. It was an expensive up-to-date electric torch—“And I wouldn’t mind having half as good a one myself.”
She discarded the caretaker. What then? Owner? Burglar?
Sarah let her hand fall to her side. It was a lonely place to meet a burglar. She would have liked to run for it. The broken-down Bomb seemed a haven of safety—“And I suppose you’ll just sit there till a milk-float comes along in the morning. I should if I were you, and give Lucilla the whip hand once and for all.” After all, it might be a caretaker, or an owner, and if he hadn’t got petrol himself, he would at least know where you could get some. She turned off her torch, pushed open the door, and walked in.
It was dark as a winter midnight. She walked a few steps and stopped to listen. There was nothing to listen to. She felt before her and touched a door with glass panels. Well, she would just have to have a light. She wanted to see without being seen, but she couldn’t afford to make a noise, and she was bound to make a noise if she went barging ahead in the dark.
The light showed that the glass panel was on her left, while a little farther along on the right there was a swing door covered with old green baize and studded with tarnished brass nails.… That was her way.
The torch went out again before she pushed the door. When it had closed behind her, she thought longingly of the dark drive with the rustling leaves under foot. The silence here was an old, settled silence. She wondered how long it was since anyone had broken it. And then she remembered the torch. Whoever was carrying it must have passed this way, and not so long ago. Sarah’s heart warmed towards the torch-bearer as she felt her way forward, one hand on the wall and the other outstretched before her face. The wall felt damp. Her fingers clung to it.
She turned a corner, felt a draught blowing down, and saw facing her the pale shape of an open doorway. It broke the darkness as a window breaks it. There was not enough light to show her where she was or what place she was in, but since the faintly seen doorway was a long way off, she guessed that she had come into the hall of the big house.
Well, there was a room with an open door, and there was a light. She hadn’t come as far as this to turn back. But as she moved silently across a smooth polished floor, thought conjured up a flaring headline: EMPTY HOUSE MYSTERY. MURDERED WOMAN IDENTIFIED AS SARAH TRENT.… She wondered if it would be WOMAN or GIRL. Just when did you stop being a girl? BEAUTIFUL GIRL FOUND MURDERED. The plainest and most bun-faced female was beautiful as soon as she became news. On the other hand, her hair was probably turning snow-white at this very moment, in which case she would figure as WHITE-HAIRED MYSTERY WOMAN. That was a nasty thought.
At this point she reached the doorway and stood looking through it into the room beyond. It was a big room full of shadows. A bright, keen ray seemed to cut it in two. The torch from which it came was out of sight, screened from her by the open door. Everything either above or below the ray was vague and formless. There was something that might have been a chandelier high up in the gloom. There were blurs that might have been chairs and a table, but the darkness hid them like deep water. The ray itself helped to hide them, it made so sharp a contrast. Its white brilliance cut the empty air and came to rest in a wide diffused circle upon brown panelling with a linenfold pattern. The ray was motionless, but in the room, hidden by the door, someone moved. A slow footfall went to and fro—a slow, loitering footfall.
The headlines ceased to comfort Sarah. Petrol no longer lured her. The footfall filled her with a most vehement desire to scream and run away. “Atavism,” said a modern Sarah to a Sarah whose very, very remote ancestors had screamed and run. The modern Sarah stood her ground.
And then suddenly the ray moved. Someone had taken up the torch and was coming into sight. She saw the black outline of a man’s head and shoulders. The light slid over the tall backs of a number of chairs that were ranged against the wall. It crossed the corner of a long bare table and then swept up and came to rest on the wall which faced the door.
The room was a dining-room, the large old dining-room of a large old house. The man leaned against the far end of the long table, with his back to Sarah and the torch in his right hand. The light moved across the panelling and touched the gilt frame of a portrait.
The next moment Sarah very nearly did scream, because she saw in the ray what she had seen in the off-side headlight of The Bomb not half an hour ago. She saw a round white face and a nimbus of flaxen hair. She thought she saw Lucilla Hildred, and it frightened her out of all reason. With extreme suddenness she ceased to be modern. She gasped audibly and ran across the hall with outstretched groping hands, feeling for the way by which she had come and by some miracle of good luck finding it. The baize door swung to let her through and swung again behind her. She tripped on the step and very nearly fell. Panic snatched at her, but with flying feet she drew away from it. Over the rustling leaves, down the dark drive, and out between the ghostly pillars she ran, to draw up panting beside the derelict Bomb and curse herself for a fool.
CHAPTER IV
Sarah stood in the damp road and wondered how much longer she would have to stand there. She had got her breath again, but her pulses still thudded. Why on earth had she suddenly taken leave of her self-control and run like a rabbit? She repeated the word with a vicious emphasis—“a blithering rabbit.” She had never done such a thing in her life before—“and if you’re going to make a habit of it, Sarah my girl, you’d better get into a home for the half-baked and stay there!” Her legs were actually shaking still, and she hadn’t the remotest idea why. “Oh, for goodness sake wake up and behave like something human for a change!”
She sat down on the running-board and looked about her. It was very dark indeed. The sky was a little less dark than the trees, but that was all that could be said for it. The road was damp under her feet, but the leaves in that blighted avenue had been rustling dry. There must have been a shower whilst she was having her heart-to-heart talk with Aunt Marina and Uncle Geoffrey. It couldn’t have been much—enough to damp the road, but not enough to penetrate those overhanging trees. Well, the question now was, did she and The Bomb just quietly moulder here till daylight, or would someone come along and rescue them?
The night was as still as it was dark. If a car did come along she would be able to hear it about half a mile away, and if it went by without stopping, it wasn’t going to be Sarah’s fault. She disliked this place as she had ever disliked a place in all her life. The proximity of those ghostly pillars and that rustling drive was definitely unpleasant. She wanted to get a long way away from them as quickly as possible. The dead stillness of the night offered her no
encouragement to suppose that she had any immediate prospect of being able to get away from them. An echo of her nursery days came back to her: “I want—” “Then want must be your master, Miss Sarah.” The only balm was the thought of Bertrand Darnac waiting for his dinner.
It may have been ten minutes later, or it may have been no more than five, that she heard the first faint beginnings of a sound. It began like the stirring of a pulse, and it was so small a sound that it was almost lost in the clammy silence. She had to listen for it, straining, and even then for a moment or two she wasn’t sure. It is queer how a sound grows. There was the moment when she wasn’t sure, and the moment when she was and the space between. Then she was on her feet looking for the car that was coming down the road. The sound grew. Away in the distance there was a faint glow. The direction puzzled her until the headlights shone across the road and then swung round, dazzling her with their two bright beams.
The car hadn’t come down the road at all, it had turned into it from a side road. For one horrid moment she had wondered which way it was going to turn, the next she was out in the middle of the road with her arms spread wide.
Mr. John Brown was in a hurry. He was travelling fast. He said something short and sharp and jammed on his brakes, and as he did so, Sarah jumped for the side of the road. It had been a nearer thing than she had meant it to be. The virtuous fury of the pedestrian boiled in her. He must have skidded that corner at forty, the blighted road-hog!
Mr. Brown opened the near-side door and descended into the road. He was in a hurry, and he was as angry as a man may be. He didn’t think he’d hit the girl, but he wasn’t absolutely sure. It had been a near thing, and he’d got the wind up. He looked about him, and immediately a furious voice said,
“You nearly killed me!”
Mr. Brown immediately became a great deal angrier than he had been before. The girl sounded most vigorously alive, and he could therefore give his whole mind to being angry instead of having about three-quarters of it taken up with the most repellant and, as it turned out, unnecessary visions of a coroner’s court. He had a quiet drawl when he was angry. He used it now as he said,
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