But there was no wind. Not even a breeze.
Kerrie told herself indignantly she was a fool. She turned over on her right side, drawing her knees up to her chest and pulling the silk quilt up so that her nose and eyes were covered.
That creak.
Abruptly she sat upright in bed. In the darkness she concentrated all her forces of vision on the windows. The darkness was thin and soupy, as if it had been strained through a sieve. She could just make out the curtains.
They were stirring!... No. They were not.
There! Again!
This is ridiculous, she thought in panic. It’s a sudden breeze that’s sprung up on the river. It’s a breeze moving the curtains. A breeze...
Well, there was a simple way to find out. Just get out of bed and march across the floor to the window, and poke your head out. That’s all. Very simple. Then you would know it was a breeze, and that you’d been imagining things like a tot frightened by the dark, and you could go back to bed and sleep.
She slid under the quilt and curled up in a taut ball again, almost smothered.
She could hear her heart clamoring, as if it had slipped out of her chest and taken up a position just above her ear. Oh, this is childish! And she found her legs and arms shaking.
What should she do? Jump out of bed, race across the room to the door that led across the boudoir and into Vi’s room...
Her heart stopped clamoring. It seemed to stop altogether.
There was something — something — in the room.
Kerrie knew it. She knew it. This wasn’t imagination. This was knowledge.
She followed the steps that could not be heard with ears that could not hear... from the window, across the patch of hardwood floor to the edge of the hooked rug, on the rug... toward her bed, toward her, where she was lying in a ball under the quilt...
Roll over.
She rolled over and off the bed. In the same instant something struck the bed where she had been lying. There was a hissing sound, like the sound of a snake.
Scream.
Kerrie screamed. Screamed and screamed.
Her nightgown crumpled, her eyes still red from sleep, Vi met Kerrie in the boudoir.
“Kerrie! What on earth—”
“Vi, Vi!” Kerrie lunged for her friend’s high bosom and held on for dear life. “Something — somebody — in my bedroom — tried...”
“Kerrie, you had a nightmare.”
“I was awake, I tell you! Somebody — climbed up the vines — I think — tried to — knife me—”
“Kerrie!”
“When I screamed, he — it jumped back through the window — I saw the flash of the curtains—”
“Who was it?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. Oh, Vi—”
“You stay here,” said Vi grimly. She grabbed an iron poker from the rack of firetools at the boudoir fireplace and ran into Kerrie’s bedroom. She snapped on the light.
The room was empty.
Kerrie followed to the doorway, looking in, her teeth chattering. The curtains were still moving a little.
Vi looked at the bed; Kerrie looked at it. There was a fresh slash a foot long in the silk coverlet. Vi threw back the coverlet; the sheet and mattress were slashed, too.
She went to the windows and locked them.
“Got away clean. Kerrie, haven’t you any idea—”
“N-n-no. I couldn’t really s-see. It was too d-dark.”
“Kerrie. Hon. You’re—”
There was a sharp-and-soft rap on the corridor door.
The two women looked at each other.
Then Vi moved to the door and said: “Who — is it?”
“Queen. Did— Who screamed in there?”
“Don’t let him in,” whispered Kerrie. “You — I’m not dressed...” She felt calm suddenly.
Vi unlocked the door and opened it to a space of two inches. She looked at Beau coldly. He was in pajamas and his hair was a tumbled log-jam.
“What’s wrong?” he demanded in an undertone. “Where’s Kerrie? It was Kerrie who screamed, wasn’t it?”
“Somebody climbed in from the terrace just now and tried to knife her. She yelped, and whoever it was beat it.”
“Knifed!” Beau was silent. Then he cried: “Kerrie!”
“What do you want?”
“Are you all right?”
“Perfectly all right.”
Beau grunted with relief. “Who was it?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t see.”
“Knifed, huh,” muttered Beau. “Listen. Don’t say anything about it. I’ll... I’ll keep my eyes open. And after this keep your doors and windows locked at night!”
“Yes,” said Kerrie.
Vi shut and locked the door. With Kerrie following her closely, she shuffled on her bare soles to the boudoir door and locked that. Then she locked her own bedroom door.
“I guess we’re safe now, hon.”
“Vi,” whispered Kerrie. “Are you — scared?”
“Not... much.”
“Would you mind if I spent the rest of the night with you?”
“Oh, Kerrie!”
Kerrie fell asleep in Vi’s bed, clutching Vi’s big warm body desperately. Vi lay awake for a long time, staring into the darkness.
Beau did not sleep at all. He returned to his room, dressed, and began a noiseless tour of inspection. He found the place where the intruder had climbed into Kerrie’s room — from the terrace directly under her windows. He climbed the vine like a cat, examining each foot of it in the light of an electric torch. But except for several bruises and, in one place, a snapped piece of trellis-work, there were no clues.
He sought out the night-watchman. But the watchman had seen and heard nothing.
In the house again, he stole into Edmund De Carlos’s bedroom. In the heavy half-light the man’s beard jutted toward the ceiling, his mouth open and his teeth palely visible as he snored. There was a smell of alcohol about his bed. He was sprawled on it fully clothed.
Beau listened to his snores, eyes on the motionless figure. The snores were regular, too regular. And there was a tension about the supine man which was not like the relaxation of sleep.
De Carlos was shamming.
Beau almost yanked him out of bed by the throat. But then he turned and quietly left the man’s room. He spent the rest of the night patrolling the corridor outside Kerrie’s suite.
De Carlos absented himself during the next three days. He was reported to be bucking an intimate little poker syndicate somewhere in town.
The morning he returned, livid under his beard and cursing his losses, Beau was not there; and Kerrie felt an overwhelming desire to get away from the house.
She dressed in a riding-habit and went down to the stables with Violet. A groom saddled two horses — Panjandrum, Kerrie’s white Arabian mare, to which she was passionately attached, and Gargantua, the big roan stallion Vi rode.
They trotted into the cool of the woods side by side. The nightmare of three nights before seemed far away, as if it had happened in a world of dark dreams. The sun’s rays seeped through the trees like sparkling water, splashing the bridle-path with drops of light.
Kerrie inhaled deeply. “This is the first time in ages I’ve felt really alive. Trees have an odor, Vi, did you know that? I never realized it before.”
“So have horses,” said Vi, wrinkling her nose. “Gee up, you plug!”
“You’re so romantic! I’m going to run for it.”
“Kerrie! Be careful!”
But Kerrie was gone, the little white mare skimming down the path, her fine neck extended, her slender legs contemptuous of the speckled earth. They vanished round a turn.