On the top step it turned. Jane caught her breath. It was Lady Heritage. She stood there for a long minute, her left hand just resting on the newel post with its twining tendrils and massive overhanging grapes. The light shone full upon her, and her face was sharpened, blanched, and sorrowful. Her eyes seemed to look into unfathomable depths of gloom. The amber, the rose, and the violet of the stained glass fell in a hazy iridescence upon the black of her cloak.
In front the cloak fell away and showed the straight white linen of an overall, and cloak and overall were deeply stained with dull wet smears. A piece of the stuff hung jagged from a tear.
Jane looked, and could not take her eyes away.
“Oh, she’s so unhappy,” she said to herself.
With a quick movement Raymond Heritage pushed the hood back from her hair. Then she turned, faced her own portrait for a moment, and passed slowly out of sight. Jane heard a door close very softly.
She stood quite still and waited, gathering her courage. She would have to mount the stair and pass through that light before she could reach the safely shadowed corridor. Just for a moment it seemed as if she could not do it. Her feet seemed to cleave to the ground. Five minutes passed, and another five.
Jane felt herself becoming rigid, and with a tremendous effort, she took one step forward, but only one, for as her foot touched a new cold patch of floor, some one moved overhead.
For an instant a little pencil of electric light jabbed into the darkness and went out again. The next moment Mr. Ember stepped into the moonlight. He too wore a linen overall, and in his left hand he carried the mask-like head-dress which was in use in the laboratories. His right hand held a torch.
He came down the stairs, walking with astonishing lightness. Half-way down the torch came into play again. He sent the little ray in a sort of dazzle-dance about the hall. With every leaping flash Jane’s heart gave a jump, and she only stopped her teeth from chattering by biting hard upon the cuff of Renata’s dressing-gown. She had covered her face instinctively, and peered, terror-stricken, between her fingers.
The light skimmed right across her once, and but for the crimson flannel, she would certainly have screamed aloud. If Mr. Ember had been looking, he could have seen a semicircle of white forehead, two clutching hands, and a quivering chin. But his eyes were elsewhere, and the dancing flash passed on.
Ember crossed the hall to the far corner out of which Lady Heritage had come. Suddenly the light went out.
Jane heard again the very, very small creaking noise which she had heard before. It was followed by a faint click, and then unmitigated silence. The seconds added themselves together and became minutes, and there was no further sound. The minutes passed, and the beam of moonlight slipped slowly downwards. Now The Portrait was in darkness, now the newels were just two black shadows. It was a long, long time before Jane moved. She climbed the staircase with terror in her heart. At the edge of the moonlight she waited so long that it moved to meet her. When the edge of it touched her bare, hesitating foot she gave a violent start, and ran the rest of the way.
The dark corridor felt like a haven of refuge.
She came panting to her own door, and suddenly there was no haven of refuge anywhere. The door was shut. She had left it ajar. It was shut.
Jane stood with her outstretched hand flat on the panel of the door. She kept saying over and over to herself:
“I left it open, but it’s shut. I left it open, but it’s shut.”
Once she pushed the door as if it could not really be shut at all, but it did not yield; the latch had caught. It was shut. At last she turned the handle slowly and went in. A gust of wind met her full. Perhaps it was the wind that had shut the door. She left it ajar, moved to the middle of the room, and waited. For a moment there was a lull. Somewhere in the house a clock struck four. The sound came just over the edge of hearing, with its four tiny distant strokes. Then the wind rushed in again through the open window, and the door fell to with a click.
Chapter Sixteen
By next morning the wind had brought rain with it. A south-west gale drove against the dripping window-panes, and covered the sea with crests of foam.
Jane, rather pale, wrote a neat letter to the Misses Kent, Hermione Street, South Kensington, mentioning that she would be much obliged if they would send her patterns of jumper wool by return. She hesitated, and then underlined the last two words.
“I always think big shops do you better,” was Lady Heritage’s comment, and Mr. Ember added, “Do you knit, Miss Renata? I thought you were the only girl in England who didn’t”—to which Jane replied, “I want to learn.”
It was after the letter had been posted that she found Henry’s second message, “Hope to see you to-day, Friday.” She could have cried for pure joy.
At intervals during the day, the thought occurred to her that Henry was a solid comfort. She wasn’t in love with him, of course, but undoubtedly he was a comfort. She had plenty of time to think, for she spent the entire day by herself. Sir William had gone to town for three or four days. Lady Heritage disappeared into the north wing at eleven o’clock, and very shortly after, Mr. Ember followed her. Neither of them appeared again until dinner-time. Jane went to sleep over a book and awoke refreshed, and with a strong desire for exploration.
If only last night’s mysterious happenings had taken place anywhere but in the hall. The dark corner from which Raymond had emerged and into which Mr. Ember had vanished drew her like a magnet, but not until every one was in bed and asleep would she dare to search for the hidden door.
“If I were just sitting here and reading,” she thought to herself, “probably no one would come into the hall for hours; but if I were to look for a secret passage, all the servants would begin to drift in and out, and the entire neighbourhood would come and call.”
When the lights had been turned on, she wandered round, looking at the Luttrell portraits. This, she thought, was safe enough, and if not the rose, it was at least near it. Willoughby Luttrell’s picture hung perhaps five feet from the ground and about half-way between the hall door and the corner. Jane had always noticed it particularly because Henry undoubtedly resembled this eighteenth century uncle. _
Mr. Willoughby Luttrell had been painted in a Court suit of silver-grey satin. He wore Mechlin ruffles and diamond shoe-buckles. He had the air of being convinced that the Court of St. James could boast no brighter ornament, but his face was the face of Henry March, and Henry’s grey eyes looked down at Jane from beneath a Ramillies wig.
After an interval Jane stopped looking at Mr. Luttrell’s eyes, and reflected that the click which she had heard the night before came from a point nearer the corner. She did not dare go near enough to feel the wall, and no amount of staring at the panelling disclosed any clue to the secret.
Jane went back to her book.
By sunset the rain had ceased to fall, or, rather to be driven against the land. The wind, lightened of its burden of moisture, kept coming inland in great gusts, fresh and soft with the freshness and softness of the spring. The entire sky was thickly covered with clouds which moved continually across its face, swept on by the currents of the upper air, but these clouds were very high up. Any one coming out of an enclosed place into the windy night would have received an impression of extraordinary freedom, movement, and space.
Henry March received such an impression as he turned a pivoting stone block and came out of the small sheltering cave behind the seat on the headland above Luttrell Marches. At the first buffet of the gale he took off his cap, and stuffed it down into the pocket of the light ulster which he wore, and stood bareheaded, looking out to sea. His eyes showed him blackness and confused motion, and his ears were filled with the strange singing sound of the wind and the endless crash and recoil of the waves against a shingly beach.
He stood quite still for a time and then turned his wrist and glanced at the luminous dial of the watch upon it, after which he passed again behind the stone seat and was about to re-enter t
he blacker shadows when a tall figure emerged.
“Have you been here long?” said a voice.
“No, I’ve only just come. How are you, Tony?”
“All right. I didn’t think you’d be down here again so soon. It was touch and go whether I could get here.”
“Piggy’s orders,” said Henry. “Look here, Tony, don’t let’s go inside. It’s a topping night, and that passage I’ve just come along smells like a triple extract of vaults—perfectly beastly. I don’t suppose our friend Ember is addicted to being out late. He doesn’t strike me as that sort of bird somehow.”
“All right,” said Anthony Luttrell. He sat down on the stone seat as he spoke, and Henry followed his example.
“Piggy sent you down, did he? What for?”
Henry was silent. It seemed like quite a long time before he said:
“Tony, who knows about the passages beside you and me?”
“No one,” said Anthony shortly.
“Uncle James told me when he thought the Boche had done you in. He said then that no one knew except he and I. He drew out a plan of all the passages and made me learn it by heart. When I could draw it with my eyes shut, we burnt every scrap of paper I had touched. I’ve been into the passages exactly three times—once that same week to test my knowledge, again the other day, and tonight. I’ll swear no one saw me go in or come out, and I’ll swear I’ve never breathed a word to a soul.”
“Are you rehearsing your autobiography?” inquired Anthony Luttrell, with more than a hint of sarcasm.
“No, I’m not. I want to know who else knows about the passages.”
“And I have told you.”
“Tony, it is no good. I had my suspicions the other night, but to-night I’ve got proof. The passages have been made use of. Unfortunately there’s no doubt about it at all. I want to know whether you have any idea—hang it all, Tony, you must see what I’m driving at! Wait a minute; don’t go through the roof until you’ve heard what I’ve got to say. You see, I know that Uncle James gave you the plan when you were only sixteen, because he thought he was dying then, and I’ve come down here to ask you whether any one might have seen you coming and going as a boy, or whether… Tony, did you ever tell any one?”
“I thought you said that it was Piggy’s orders that brought you down here.”
“Yes, it was,” said Henry.
“Am I to gather then that Piggy has suggested these damned impertinent questions?” Mr. Luttrell’s tone was easy to a degree.
Henry, on the verge of losing his temper, rose abruptly to his feet, walked half a dozen paces with his hands shoved well down in his pockets, and then walked back again.
“Tony, what on earth’s the good of quarrelling?”
Anthony Luttrell was leaning back, his head against the back of the stone seat, his long legs stretched out in front of him. He appeared to be watching the race of clouds between the horizon and the zenith. He said something, and the wind took his words away.
Henry sat down again.
“Look here, Tony,” he said, “you’ve not answered my question. Did you ever tell any one? Damn it all, Tony, I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t have to!…Did you ever tell Raymond?”
A great gust swept the headland, another and more violent one followed it, battered against the cliff, and then dropped suddenly into what, after the tumult, seemed like a silence.
“Piggy Speaking, or you?” said Anthony Luttrell quite lightly.
“Both,” said Henry.
“You sound heated, Henry. Now I should have thought that that would have been my rôle. Instead, I merely repeat to you, and you in your turn, of course, repeat to Piggy that I have told no one about the passages, and, after you have admired my moderation, perhaps we might change the subject.”
“I’m afraid it can’t be done,” said Henry. “Tony, do you mind sitting up and looking at this?”
As he spoke he placed “this” on the seat between them and turned a light upon it, holding the torch close down on to the seat so that the beam did not travel beyond its edge. Mr. Luttrell turned lazily and saw a small handkerchief of very fine linen with an embroidered “R” in the corner. He continued to look at it, and Henry continued to hold the torch so that the light fell upon the initial. Then quite suddenly Anthony Luttrell reached sideways and switched off the light. His hand dropped to the handkerchief and covered it.
“No, I don’t want it,” said Henry, “but I thought you ought to know that I found it in the passage behind us, just where one stoops to shift the stone.”
“It’s one I found and dropped,” said Anthony, putting it into his pocket.
Henry said nothing at all.
A somewhat prolonged silence was broken by Luttrell. “I’m chucking my job here,” he said. “I’ve written to Sir Julian. Here’s the letter for you to give him.” He pushed it along the seat as he spoke, and Henry picked it up reluctantly. “I’ve asked to be replaced with as little delay as possible. You might urge that point on him, if you don’t mind. I want it made perfectly clear that under no circumstances will I stay on more than three days. I will, in fact, see the whole department damned first.”
He spoke without the slightest heat, in the rather cold, drawling manner which Henry had known as a danger-signal from the days when he was a small boy, and Anthony a big one and his idol.
“Are you giving any reason?”
“No, there’s no reason to give.”
“Piggy,” said Henry thoughtfully, “will want one. It’s all very well for you, Tony, to write him a letter and say you’re going to chuck your job without giving a reason. I’ve got to stand up at the other side of his table and stick out a cross-examination on the probable nature of the reasons which you haven’t given. You’re putting me in an impossible position.”
“It’s that damned conscience of yours, I suppose. I cannot tell a lie, and all that sort of thing.”
“Not to Piggy about this.”
“All right,” said Anthony, getting to his feet, “tell him the truth. Why should I care? I suppose, in common with everybody else, he is perfectly well aware that I once made a fool of myself about Lady Heritage. Well, I thought I could stick being down here and seeing her, but I can’t. It just comes to that. I can’t stick it.”
“Does she know you’re here?”
“No, she doesn’t. She sees me in an overall and a mask. She has been pleased to commend my skill. This afternoon she leaned over my shoulder to watch what I was doing. Well, I came away and wrote to Piggy. I can’t stand it, and you can tell him so with the utmost circumstance.”
Henry was leaning forward, chin in hand. He looked past Anthony at the black moving water.
“Why don’t you see Raymond?” he said. “No, Tony, you’ve just got to listen to me. What you’ve been saying is true as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go very far. You wouldn’t chuck your job just for that. You know, and I know that you’re chucking it because you are afraid that Raymond is involved. If you know it, and I know it, don’t you think Piggy will know it too? That’s why I say, see Raymond. If she’s let herself get mixed up with this show, it’s because she’s had a rotten time and wants to hit back. She said as much to me—oh, not a propos of this, of course; we were just talking.”
“I heard her,” said Anthony Luttrell. He paused, and added with a distinct sneer, “You displayed an admirable discretion.”
“Thank you, Tony. Now what’s the good of you clearing out? If you do, Piggy will send some one else down here, and if Raymond has got mixed up with any of Ember’s devilry, she’ll get caught out. For the Lord’s sake, Tony, see her, let her know you’re alive! I believe she’d chuck the whole thing and go to the ends of the earth with you. Nobody would press the matter. We should catch Ember out, and you and Raymond could go abroad for a bit. I don’t see any other way out of it.”
“You seem to me to be assuming a good deal, Henry,” said Anthony Luttrell.
“I’m not assuming anything”—H
enry’s tone was very blunt. “I know three things.”
“Yes?”
“One”—Henry ticked his facts off on the fingers of his left hand: “the passages are being used. Two: they’ve been wired for electric light. Three: Raymond has been through them, and quite lately. Those three facts, taken in conjunction with a deposition stating that something of a highly dangerous and anti-social nature is being manufactured on these premises, and under cover of the Government experiments—well, Tony, I don’t suppose you want me to dot the ‘i’s’ and cross the ‘t’s.’”
“It never occurred to you that my father might have had the place wired, I suppose?”
“He didn’t,” said Henry. “It’s no good, Tony. You can’t bluff me, and I hate your trying to. There’s only one way out of this. You’ve got to see Raymond.”
Anthony made an impatient movement.
“You assume too much,” he said, “but I’ll put that on one side. From the cold, official standpoint, where does my interview with Lady Heritage come in? Wouldn’t it rather complicate matters? You appear to assume that there is a conspiracy, and then to suggest that I should warn one of the conspirators.”
“No, I do not. I ask you to let Raymond know that you are alive, nothing more. In my view nothing more is necessary. She’ll naturally think you are here to see her, and you can let her think so. As to the cold, official standpoint, the last thing that the department would want is a scandal about a woman in Raymond’s position. Piggy would say what I say—for the Lord’s sake get her out of it and let us have a free hand. She’s an appalling complication.”
“Women always are,” said Anthony Luttrell in his bitter drawl.
He moved a pace or two away, and then turned back again. “You’re not a bad sort in spite of the conscience, Henry,” he said. “From your standpoint, what you’ve just said is sense—good, plain common sense—in fact, exactly the thing which one has no use for in certain moods.”
“Scrap the moods, Tony,” said Henry, in an expressionless voice.
Anthony laughed, rather harshly.
The Astonishing Adventure of Jane Smith: A Golden Age Mystery Page 14
