The Coldstone

by Patricia Wentworth

  He stepped back from the door, went barefoot to the chest of drawers, and felt for the small electric torch which lay there. A candle or a lamp would advertise him to whoever there might be below. He put the torch in the pocket of his pyjama coat and emerged upon the black uneven corridor. By dint of moving very slowly he reached the stair-head with no more than a stubbed toe—a step up, a step down, and another step up. His toe caught the last step, but without making any sound. Then a dozen feet of passage, and the stairs.

  Going down the stairs was like going down a black well. He came to the bottom and stood against the newel-post, listening. The square hall was in the middle of the house. He faced the front door, and had on his right the drawing-room, and on his left the dining-room, with the library behind it, and beyond the library a door that led to the kitchens and offices. All this side of the house was very old, but the drawing-room and Sir Jervis’ room over it had been built when the glass passage that led to the outer gate had been added.

  Anthony stood by the left-hand newel-post. There was a narrow passage between him and the wall. He looked down it, and his heart jumped. For a single instant a thread of light showed where the library door was. It was there, and it was gone again and all the passage was dark. The library must be dark too. But a moment ago there had been a light there. Someone had turned on a light, and a faint silver thread had showed under the crack of the door where the old boards had been worn away.

  Anthony began to move towards the place where the light had been. As he moved, his fingers touched the wall and slid without any sound over the smooth panels. The door-post was rougher. His hand slipped downwards, groped for the handle, and closed upon it gently. For a long minute he was turning it. Then when the latch was free, he pushed the door a bare half inch and slowly released the catch again.

  There had been a light in the room, but there was no light there now; the half-inch opening was as impenetrable as the door. He made the opening wider, and then wider again, until the door, opening inwards, stood at a right angle with the wall. This brought him into the room. He stood just over the threshold, listening, his hand on the torch in his pocket.

  The room was profoundly still and most profoundly dark. It smelt faintly of beeswax and turpentine, and of all the old books which lined its walls. But Anthony had no sooner stepped into it than he was aware of something more than the night, and the silence, and the ghosts of dead books.

  He took the torch out of his pocket, and was as sure as he had ever been of anything in his life that there was someone else in the room, someone standing still with caught breath, or moving and breathing with as little sound as he himself had made. He had his finger on the switch of the torch, he had even begun to move it, when he heard a sound. From the moment that he had waked until now everything had passed in dumb show; he had not even heard his own movements; the action had been like the action of a dream. This was the first sound, and it came, not from this room in which he discerned a presence, but from the passage behind him.

  In an instant he had stepped sideways, clear of the doorway; and as he did so, he heard the sound again. Someone was moving in the hall. The sound that he had heard was the sound of a cautiously planted foot. Someone was undoubtedly coming down the passage towards the library door. And then, as he stood there straining his ears, there was a faint click on his left and the beam of a torch cut the darkness. A man was standing on the threshold.

  Anthony saw three things almost simultaneously. He was standing in the corner of the room about six feet from the door, and at the sound of the click he looked instinctively in the direction from which it came, and he saw three things. First, very dimly, the outline of a man holding out a torch in front of him. Then the long ray, stabbing the darkness as it turned here and there. And lastly the portrait of Miss Patience Pleydell. It hung low on the left-hand wall, where a strip of panelling divided one book-filled space from another. He had noticed only that afternoon how cleverly the painting had been sunk into the panel so as to give the effect of a person standing against the wall. The ray came to rest upon the portrait, and Anthony could have cried out, so lifelike did it seem.

  Next moment someone did cry out. The girl in the flowered dress and blue petticoat moved visibly, or seemed to move, as the beam dipped and came to rest on her again. Anthony could have sworn that she moved. And at the same time someone gave a little choking cry, and this cry came from somewhere quite close at hand; he thought from behind the open door.

  Miss Patience Pleydell moved her arm, someone cried out, the light went out with a click, and Anthony jumped for the man with the torch—jumped, touched a rough sleeve, made a grab in the dark, dropped his own torch, which he had forgotten, and, to the sound of another little gasping cry, grappled with someone quite extraordinarily hard and lithe. He got hold of a coat-collar, heard something rip, and received a bang on the side of the head from the intruder’s torch. At the same time the collar was twisted out of his hand and its owner took to his heels. Anthony slipped and came down sprawling. He scrambled up to sounds of flight. He thought he could hear more than one man running away. A door banged. He had fallen on his torch. By the time that he was up and had switched it on, the passage was empty.

  He ran into the hall and found it empty too. The front door was ajar. The door leading from the glass passage into the street was shut, but not locked. Anthony wondered whether Lane had been as slack as all that. He wondered about Nurse Collins, and the keys which Miss Arabel had been so anxious about. But surely there should be bolts to both these doors.

  He turned the light on to the outer door, frowning. There were bolts top and bottom. He bent to the bottom one, tried it, and found that it was all he could do to move it at all. He promised himself a few words with Lane in the morning. Somehow he didn’t want to wake Lane now.

  He went back to the library, wondering about that little gasping cry and about the portrait of Miss Patience Pleydell. He flashed the light here and there, found matches, and lighted the lamp which stood on a table by the fireplace. After the intense dark, its mediocre yellow light seemed quite bright. He held it up and surveyed the room.

  Standing by the fireplace, he had the door on his left, and two shuttered windows on his right. The portrait of Miss Patience Pleydell faced him. He shifted the lamp this way and that to see if he could induce that effect of movement. It was the right arm that had moved. Miss Patience stood with her hands lightly clasped before her; her feet were on the bottom step of a dim flight. She appeared to be stepping down into the room, and the portrait was hung so low that the step would have been an easy one.

  Anthony moved the lamp up and down, and sideways; but the arm did not move again. He crossed the room and let the light fall on the picture full. In the yellow light the colours did not look so bright as they had seemed by the flash of the torch. The whole effect for that one moment had been startlingly vivid and alive. And he could have sworn that the arm had moved. The arm had moved, and then someone had cried out. The sound hadn’t come from the picture at all; it was nearer him, and nearer the door—much nearer the door. He was as certain as he could be that the person who had uttered that gasping cry had been hidden behind the open door.

  He crossed over to the spot. There were a couple of armchairs in this corner. If anyone had been hiding, they might have crouched down behind the one that was nearest the door. He moved it, and caught sight at once of something white. It was a scrap of a pocket-handkerchief. Anthony set down the lamp and spread it out—seven or eight inches of fine linen lawn with a border of three wavy lines. It had neither name nor initial. He walked round the room. There was a big sofa, chairs, a writing-table, books—and the portrait; but no conceivable hiding-place. It was all very odd.

  He returned to the hall, passed down the glass passage, and drove home two very reluctant bolts. The bolts on the inner door simply wouldn’t move at all. He locked it, and then went back for another look at the library. The lamplight seemed to fill it with a stea
dy golden glow.

  The handkerchief was gone.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Susan stood still and held her breath. Her heart was racing with excitement. She did not feel like a ghost at all; she felt most splendidly, radiantly alive. She stood behind the panel which held Miss Patience Pleydell’s portrait, and shook with laughter. The rescued handkerchief was crumpled in the hand that had just closed the panel. She pushed it down inside her dress and stopped her laughter to listen. Someone was coming back into the room. She must see who it was; because there had been three people there besides herself.

  Another tremor of laughter shook her from head to foot. When a ghost walks at midnight she does not expect to find herself the centre of a family reunion. Yet when she swung the panel back—it swung inwards, portrait and all—and was just going to step down into the room, there were three people waiting for her. It was frightfully funny, but it was also rather puzzling. The person who had dropped the handkerchief was behind the door, scared to death. Susan wasn’t worrying about her; she was just glad she had seen the handkerchief, because it might have been traced.

  It was the two men who were bothering her. One of them was Anthony Colstone; but she didn’t know which one. She didn’t know whether it was Anthony who had stood in the doorway and flashed the light on to her in that perfectly terrifying manner, or whether it was Anthony who had sprung out of the dark corner of the room with an even more terrifying suddenness. She wondered if either of the men had seen her move; because she had moved when the light struck her.

  It was Anthony who had come back into the room and lighted the lamp. There was a little knot-hole on the right beyond where the panelling opened. It had glimmered like a keyhole when he lit the lamp, and when she put her eye close to it she could see him, with his hair standing on end and a puzzled, angry look on his face. She saw him go into the corner of the room, and she saw him come back with the handkerchief in his hand and stand there, turning it over and looking at it. When he put it down and went out of the room, she had her chance, but she had to be very quick. The panel had a catch. She had her hand on it, and the moment Anthony was out of sight, she slipped the catch, pulled the panel inwards, and stepped down into the room with her long full skirt gathered up in her left hand. She snatched the handkerchief, and was back again before she had time to take three breaths. Now she stood and looked through the knot-hole at Anthony.

  He was puzzled, and he was angry. She thought he was very angry; and she thought being angry suited him, because his jaw stuck out and his eyes went dark. And then all at once he almost frightened her into crying out, for he picked up the lamp and marched straight up to the picture. She had a dreadful feeling of not being able to move. Her forehead was pressed against the rough inner side of the panelling, and she could neither close her eyes nor move away from the knot-hole. The light seemed to rush towards her, and she remembered having heard that fish will come to a diver’s light far down in the dark sea and stay there goggling at it stupidly in a sort of helpless fascination. In her mind she saw herself with bulging eyes and a large open mouth. She said “Cod-fish!” which was about the most withering thing she could think of, and with a jerk—s he hoped it was a noiseless jerk—she threw back her head and shut her eyes.

  She heard Anthony say “Damn!” on the other side of the portrait, and then after a moment—but it didn’t seem like a moment; it seemed like a long time—she heard him set the lamp down, and she opened her eyes and looked through the hole again.

  Anthony was standing on the other side of the room. He had put down the lamp, but as she looked, his hand went up and turned it out. The light jumped, and then all the shadows in the room rushed down and smothered it. Anthony went out and shut the door with a bang.

  Susan relaxed. She did not know how stiffly she had been holding herself until the door banged like that. She let go, and all at once she wanted to sneeze, and she thought how dreadful it would have been if she had sneezed before. She moved back from the panelling and turned on the torch which she had stowed away in a conveniently large pocket. The light showed a narrow standing-place about three feet square, and beyond it steps going down into the darkness.

  Susan moved towards the steps. She ought to go back and be thankful she was so well out of the adventure. It must be getting awfully late, and if Gran woke up.… She didn’t want to go back in the least; she wanted to go through the panel and explore.

  With her foot on the top step, she halted, whisked round, and switched off her light. The panel swung in, and she stepped down into the library for the third time that night, pulling the panel behind her so that it stayed open about half an inch. First of all she wanted to look at the portrait. That was what she had come here for, and she had only had a glimpse of it, because the minute her light went on, there had come that frightened cry. She turned the light on it now and bobbed a little curtsey to the lady who looked as if she was stepping down to meet her.

  “I really am like her,” she said to herself—“awfully like.” Then she laughed, because she thought of Anthony with his rumpled hair and his blue and white pyjamas, and his puzzled, angry face. She realized suddenly that she was enjoying herself very much, and she hadn’t the slightest intention of going back to bed. She switched off her light, went tiptoe to the door, opened it, and stopped to listen. There was something absolutely thrilling about being a ghost. She loved the soft swish of her blue petticoat and the soft feel of the flowered muslin gown.

  The skirt swung as she stepped over the threshold and felt her way to the foot of the stairs with the torch in her left hand. She had just touched the newel, when the first sound reached her and stopped her dead. It was the smallest sound that could be heard at all, so little audible that she could not have said that she heard anything; yet all at once she couldn’t move and everything in her listened. She listened, and couldn’t hear anything at all. There wasn’t anything to hear—there hadn’t ever been anything. She would count twenty, and then she would go on again. She began slowly, one—two—three—four—five—and just as she said five, someone opened the drawing-room door on the other side of the hall. She heard the handle turn and the latch click faintly, and she heard someone move. She hoped that the someone didn’t hear her.

  The full skirt swung again as she turned and ran for the library door. Even as she got there, she thought that she would be trapped if they came this way, because she didn’t dare show a light, and she couldn’t make sure of reaching the panel in the dark. She had got no farther than just inside the door, when a spark of light came dancing past, and as she pressed against the wall, a soft sound followed it.

  The light went past the door and down the passage. Susan stood just within the door, pressed close against the wall, and saw it go. Her heart thumped, stood still, and thumped again. The light came from a little lantern held high in a man’s hand. There were two men, and they went straight past the open door and pushed the baize door at the end of the passage and went through it. She saw the spot of light move for a moment on the rough baize, making a little green island in a sea of blackness. Then the door swung, the men went through. The door swung back, and the light was gone.

  Susan was astonished at her own anger. How dared they? She could feel her cheeks burning with pure rage. She wasn’t frightened; she was angry—angry and excited, and quite determined to find out what was happening on the other side of the swing door. She picked up her petticoats and crept down the passage.

  The door moved easily. She pushed it an inch or two at a time. Someone was whispering, moving, whispering again. The sound died. She pushed the door quite wide and passed through into the passage beyond. There was a light on ahead. It came through the half open door of a room on the right. Voices came from it too. She came as near as she dared, and stood listening.

  There were two voices, both sunk to a whisper. The light was the dim glow from the dark lantern which she had seen in the man’s hand. One of the voices said,

  “He won�
�t. Why should he?”

  The other whisper came—lower, more muffled. She caught only one word, “risk,” and heard a smothered laugh.

  “His—not ours. He’ll get more than the torch this time.”

  The other voice said, “Ssh!” and then “Well?”

  There was a rustle of paper. Susan crouched down and looked round the edge of the door. She saw a room, very faintly lit. The lantern stood on a table, with the light spreading away from it into the right-hand corner of the room. There was a man with his back to her, and another man leaning forward across the table with a paper in his hand. He was holding the paper to the light. She could not see face or feature, just two black shapes without contour, like flat black shadows; only, when the paper came into the light, she could see the hand that held it—a long, slim hand.

  “The second shield—”

  She heard the words quite distinctly. The man who held the paper spoke then.

  “Where is it?”

  “The stone that Merlin blessed”’”

  “Go on.”

  “To keep in safety

  The source of evil.”

  He read, or seemed to read, from the paper in a soft toneless voice that just wasn’t a whisper.

  The man with his back to Susan broke in:

  “You’re translating?”

  “Yes—it’s Latin.”

  “And it doesn’t say where?”

  The hand that held the paper sketched a light gesture; the paper rustled. Susan’s heart stood still. Her fingers pressed against the jamb, contracted, tried to close, bruised themselves.

  The paper rustled. The man who held it said, still in that muffled voice, but with just a hint of laughter in it,

  “Under the second shield.”

  It was as he finished saying it that Susan became aware of the strain on her hand. She had to make a conscious effort to relax. She missed the next words. She felt stiff, and cold, and numb, and she thought that if they came her way, they would find her kneeling here, because all power and will to move had gone out of her at that little familiar gesture. And then the man with his back to her moved. He put his hand on the lantern and began to slew it round; the light slipped in a vague smear over a space of dingy wall. It was coming nearer; in a moment it would strike on the doorpost and shine right into her wide, terrified eyes, and then she would scream—and then she didn’t know what would happen. She could see it like a picture in her mind. It was just like being in two places at once; she was in the picture, and she was looking at it. The light was slipping round, and when it touched her she would scream.