“He does not entertain very much, then?”
“Scarcely at all. The ’County’— do you know what I mean by the ’County?’— began by receiving him with open arms and ended by sending him to Coventry. His lavish style of entertainment they labelled ’swank’— horrible word but very expressive! They concluded that they did not understand him, and of everything they don’t understand they disapprove. So after the first month or so it became very lonely at Cray’s Folly. Our foreign servants— there are five of them altogether— got us a dreadfully bad name. Then, little by little, a sort of cloud seemed to settle on everything. The Colonel made two visits abroad, I don’t know exactly where he went, but on his return from the first visit Madame de Stämer changed.”
“Changed?— in what way?”
“I am afraid it would be hopeless to try to make you understand, Mr. Knox, but in some subtle way she changed. Underneath all her vivacity she is a tragic woman, and— oh, how can I explain?” Val Beverley made a little gesture of despair.
“Perhaps you mean,” I suggested, “that she seemed to become even less happy than before?”
“Yes,” she replied, looking at me eagerly. “Has Colonel Menendez told you anything to account for it?”
“Nothing,” I said, “He has left us strangely in the dark. But you say he went abroad on a second and more recent occasion?”
“Yes, not much more than a month ago. And after that, somehow or other, matters seemed to come to a head. I confess I became horribly frightened, but to have left would have seemed like desertion, and Madame de Stämer has been so good to me.”
“Did you actually witness any of the episodes which took place about a month ago?”
Val Beverley shook her head.
“I never saw anything really definite,” she replied.
“Yet, evidently you either saw or heard something which alarmed you.”
“Yes, that is true, but it is so difficult to explain.”
“Could you try to explain?”
“I will try if you wish, for really I am longing to talk to someone about it. For instance, on several occasions I have heard footsteps in the corridor outside my room.”
“At night?”
“Yes, at night.”
“Strange footsteps?”
She nodded.
“That is the uncanny part of it. You know how familiar one grows with the footsteps of persons living in the same house? Well, these footsteps were quite unfamiliar to me.”
“And you say they passed your door?”
“Yes. My rooms are almost directly overhead. And right at the end of the corridor, that is on the southeast corner of the building, is Colonel Menendez’s bedroom, and facing it a sort of little smoke-room. It was in this direction that the footsteps went.”
“To Colonel Menendez’s room?”
“Yes. They were light, furtive footsteps.”
“This took place late at night?”
“Quite late, long after everyone had retired.”
She paused, staring at me with a sort of embarrassment, and presently:
“Were the footsteps those of a man or a woman?” I asked.
“Of a woman. Someone, Mr. Knox,” she bent forward, and that look of fear began to creep into her eyes again, “with whose footsteps I was quite unfamiliar.”
“You mean a stranger to the house?”
“Yes. Oh, it was uncanny.” She shuddered. “The first time I heard it I had been lying awake listening. I was nervous. Madame de Stämer had told me that morning that the Colonel had seen someone lurking about the lawns on the previous night. Then, as I lay awake listening for the slightest sound, I suddenly detected these footsteps; and they paused— right outside my door.”
“Good heavens!” I exclaimed. “What did you do?”
“Frankly, I was too frightened to do anything. I just lay still with my heart beating horribly, and presently they passed on, and I heard them no more.”
“Was your door locked?”
“No.” She laughed nervously. “But it has been locked every night since then!”
“And these sounds were repeated on other nights?”
“Yes, I have often heard them, Mr. Knox. What makes it so strange is that all the servants sleep out in the west wing, as you know, and Pedro locks the communicating door every night before retiring.”
“It is certainly strange,” I muttered.
“It is horrible,” declared the girl, almost in a whisper. “For what can it mean except that there is someone in Cray’s Folly who is never seen during the daytime?”
“But that is incredible.”
“It is not so incredible in a big house like this. Besides, what other explanation can there be?”
“There must be one,” I said, reassuringly. “Have you spoken of this to Madame de Stämer?”
“Yes.”
Val Beverley’s expression grew troubled.
“Had she any explanation to offer?”
“None. Her attitude mystified me very much. Indeed, instead of reassuring me, she frightened me more than ever by her very silence. I grew to dread the coming of each night. Then— ” she hesitated again, looking at me pathetically— “twice I have been awakened by a loud cry.”
“What kind of cry?”
“I could not tell you, Mr. Knox. You see I have always been asleep when it has come, but I have sat up trembling and dimly aware that what had awakened me was a cry of some kind.”
“You have no idea from whence it proceeded?”
“None whatever. Of course, all these things may seem trivial to you, and possibly they can be explained in quite a simple way. But this feeling of something pending has grown almost unendurable. Then, I don’t understand Madame and the Colonel at all.”
She suddenly stopped speaking and flushed with embarrassment.
“If you mean that Madame de Stämer is in love with her cousin, I agree with you,” I said, quietly.
“Oh, is it so evident as that?” murmured Val Beverley. She laughed to cover her confusion. “I wish I could understand what it all means.”
At this point our tête-à-tête was interrupted by the return of Madame de Stämer.
“Oh, la la!” she cried, “the Colonel must have allowed himself to become too animated this evening. He is threatened with one of his attacks and I have insisted upon his immediate retirement. He makes his apologies, but knows you will understand.”
I expressed my concern, and:
“I was unaware that Colonel Menendez’s health was impaired,” I said.
“Ah,” Madame shrugged characteristically. “Juan has travelled too much of the road of life on top speed, Mr. Knox.” She snapped her white fingers and grimaced significantly. “Excitement is bad for him.”
She wheeled her chair up beside Val Beverley, and taking the girl’s hand patted it affectionately.
“You look pale to-night, my dear,” she said. “All this bogey business is getting on your nerves, eh?”
“Oh, not at all,” declared the girl. “It is very mysterious and annoying, of course.”
“But M. Paul Harley will presently tell us what it is all about,” concluded Madame. “Yes, I trust so. We want no Cuban devils here at Cray’s Folly.”
I had hoped that she would speak further of the matter, but having thus apologized for our host’s absence, she plunged into an amusing account of Parisian society, and of the changes which five years of war had brought about. Her comments, although brilliant, were superficial, the only point I recollect being her reference to a certain Baron Bergmann, a Swedish diplomat, who, according to Madame, had the longest nose and the shortest memory in Paris, so that in the cold weather, “he even sometimes forgot to blow his nose.”
Her brightness I thought was almost feverish. She chattered and laughed and gesticulated, but on this occasion she was overacting. Underneath all her vivacity lay something cold and grim.