In unreasoning panic she tugged at the handle, and beat with clenched fists on the panels. The noise was drowned by another clap of thunder, which drove her back to her bed, blundering into the furniture, and feeling blindly for the table which stood beside it. Her fingers at last found the tinder-box, but they were trembling so much that it was some time before she succeeded in striking the spark. She relit her candle, but even as the little tongue of flame dimly illumined the room her panic abated, and was succeeded by anger. She climbed into bed again, and sat hugging her knees, trying to find the answer to two insoluble problems: who had locked her in? and why? The more she cudgelled her brain the less could she hit upon any possible theory. She began to feel stupid, and, as the storm seemed to be receding into the distance, blew out the candle, and lay down.
When she next woke, it was morning, and the pale sunlight, seeping into the room through the chinks in the blinds, made the night’s alarms ridiculous. She could almost believe that she had dreamt the whole, until her eyes alighted on the chair she had overturned, and she realized that her toes were bruised. She slid out of bed, and went to try the door again. It opened easily, but she noticed, for the first time, that there was no key in its lock. She went thoughtfully back to bed, determined to demand an explanation of her aunt.
But Lady Broome, listening to her with raised brows, merely said: “My dear child, if you wish to lock yourself in, a strict search shall be made for the key! But why do you wish to do so? Who, do you imagine, has designs on your virtue?”
“No, no, ma’am, you mistake! What I wish is not to be locked in!”
Lady Broome regarded her in some amusement, but said, with perfect gravity: “Certainly not! But were you, in sober fact, locked in?”
Kate flushed. “Do you think I’m cutting a sham, ma’am?”
“No, dear child, of course I don’t!” replied her ladyship. “Merely of having allowed your mind to be quite overcome by the storm! Extraordinarily violent, wasn’t it? That first clap, Dr Delabole tells me, made Torquil start up with a positive shriek!”
“Then it was he who uttered that cry of terror!” Kate exclaimed.
“Yes, did you hear it?” said Lady Broome smoothly. “He hates storms even more than you do! They bring on some of his worst migraines. Indeed, he is quite prostate today!”
“Is he? I am sorry,” said Kate mechanically. “But—but—my mind was not overset, ma’am! It wasn’t the storm which made me get up, but that cry! And I couldn’t open the door!”
“Couldn’t you, my love?” said Lady Broome.
“No! I couldn’t!” stated Kate emphatically. “I can see that you don’t believe me, Aunt Minerva, but—”
“Dearest, I believe you implicitly! Your mind was all chaos! You were rudely awakened by that first clap; you heard Torquil cry out; you tumbled, half-asleep, out of bed; you tried to pull open your door, and failed! So you went back to bed. But when you woke for the second time, and again tried to open your door, you found that you could easily do so! Well—what interpretation would you wish me to put on that, my love, except the very obvious one that your senses were disordered?”
“I don’t know,” said Kate, feeling remarkably foolish.
But when she recalled the cry she had heard she did not think that Torquil had made it. He had a boy’s voice, and when he raised it it was rather shrill; what she had heard was unmistakably a man’s voice. She said nothing, however, because Mr Philip Broome walked in at that moment, saying: “Good morning, Minerva—Cousin Kate! The storm did a good deal of damage: several tiles blown from the roof, a tree down, and enough wreckage in the gardens to keep Risby and his minions busy for days. Where’s Torquil?”
“He has one of his migraines,” answered Lady Broome. “Storms always affect him in that way, you know.”
“I didn’t, but I can readily believe it.”
Kate looked at him in some surprise. “Why, are you so affected, sir?”
“No. I slept through it. Did you?”
“I’m afraid I didn’t, but it hasn’t given me a headache. But then I am not subject to headaches.”
“Oh, you shouldn’t have said that!” he told her reproachfully. “You made a headache your excuse for not playing backgammon with me the other evening.”
The twinkle in her eyes acknowledged a hit, but she replied without hesitation: “You are very right: it was uncivil of me to have said it, sir!”
He smiled. “Well done, Cousin Kate! A homestall!”
Dr Delabole, entering the room in time to overhear this, asked playfully: “And what, may one venture to ask, is a homestall, Mr Philip?”
One of the few adjuncts of the dandy which Mr Philip Broome affected was the quizzing-glass. He used it to depress pretension. He now raised it to his eye, and through it dispassionately observed the doctor, allowing his gaze to travel slowly from Dr Delabole’s feet to his head: a process which the doctor found to be strangely unnerving. After keeping it levelled for a few moments, he let it fall, and replied suavely: “Position, or place, sir—according to the dictionaries.” He waited for the effect of this snub to be felt, and then said: “May one—in one’s turn—venture to ask how your patient does?”
“Do you refer to Sir Timothy, Mr Philip?” countered the doctor, making a gallant recover. “Not very brisk, I regret to say. His constitution, you know—”
“No, I refer to my cousin Torquil,” said Philip, ruthlessly interrupting him. “Lady Broome has just informed me that he is quite knocked-up by the storm, which has brought on one of his distressing migraines.”
“Alas, too true!” said the doctor, mournfully shaking his head. “One had hoped—But we know too little, as yet, about the effects of atmospheric electricity upon the system! I have been obliged to administer a sedative. Not, I confess, a thing one would wish to do, in the case of so young a patient, but when a blister applied to the head, and cataplasms to the feet, had failed to produce any alleviation of what you so justly term his distressing migraines, sir, I considered it proper to administer a paregoric draught. He is now asleep, but will, I trust, wake up in better cue.”
“Even if he should be rather drowsy. And how, Doctor, is the faithful Badger?” inquired Philip affably.
“Badger?” repeated the doctor, apparently bewildered.
“Yes, Badger! I caught sight of him this morning, and he looked to be in very queer stirrups—almost as though he had been engaging in cross and jostle work, and had come off the worse for it.”
“Oh!” said the doctor, laughing. “One learns not to ask embarrassing questions of our good Badger when he has enjoyed leave of absence! If he has a fault, it is that he is rather too ready to sport his canvas when he has had a cup too much!”
“Indeed! He was never used to be so. Now that I come to think of it, I can’t recall that I ever saw him above his bend either,” said Philip reminiscently. He smiled limpidly at the doctor, and said with even more affability: “He was used to look after me, when I was a boy, you know. Or perhaps you don’t: it was before your time.”
Dr Delabole gave Kate the impression of one who was righting with his back to the wall. She glanced quickly at him, wondering if his smile was a little less urbane, or whether she was indulging her imagination. It broadened as she looked at him, and he replied, with a creditable assumption of amusement: “But that was many years ago, sir! Badger is not a young man, and I fear he does,now, occasionally, feel in need of—er—stimulants!”
At this point, Lady Broome intervened, saying in a tone of displeasure: “I hope you mean to tell me, Philip, what concern of yours are Badger’s failings—or the failings of any other member of my household?”