“What is all this?”
Miss Silver said, “Hush-”
Nearer to the door than himself, she had seen a momentary dancing spark at the head of the stairs. It danced, it slid to light the entrance to the corridor, and it went out again, but she had caught behind it the impression of a shadow that moved. One shadow, or two? She thought that there were two, but she could not have sworn to it. Or to anything at all except that dancing spark. There was a sense of something that was not exactly sound or movement. She took a half step back and drew the door with her until it was nearly closed. The movement which could not be distinguished as movement, the sound that was not quite sound, drew nearer and ceased. It ceased just on the other side of the bathroom door, and the door was three fingers’ width ajar. Her hand was still on David Moray’s arm, its pressure intensified.
And right on the other side of the door a whispering voice said,
“Well, what now?”
There had certainly been two shadows, for one spoke and the other answered just above the edge of sound. The one that answered said,
“We go in.”
David Moray put the flat of his hand on the jamb and leaned forward over Miss Silver’s head to catch the whispered words. He thought that the person who had spoken first was a man, and that he spoke again.
“You’re sure he won’t wake?”
The other was a woman. She said,
“Well, I put two of those things in his coffee. He said how sleepy he was and went off early.”
The man said, “It ought to do the trick. You open the door. If he wakes you can say you heard him call out in his sleep and came to see if there was anything wrong. Go on- get it over!”
The two who stood there moved. They crossed the corridor and came to the opposite threshold. The handle turned. They listened, and then went forward.
David straightened himself, stepped back, and opened the bathroom door. Miss Silver had released him. Her hand dipped into the pocket of her dressing-gown and came up with the electric torch which she had provided for this night’s vigil. With her finger on the switch she moved quickly and silently across the passage. The door into Lucius Bellingdon’s room had been closed but not latched. She pushed it and went in. The curtains were drawn back from the two large windows. The sky was not clear, but somewhere behind the veil of cloud there was a moon. They had been standing in the dark for so long that the room was quite visible in a kind of twilight. There was the great black mass of wardrobe, a tallboy, the lesser bulk of a dressing-table, and away to the right the straight, plain outline of the bed.
Straight and plain but not unbroken. The head of the bed was against the right-hand wall, and on either side of it a black shadow stooped. David Moray, a step behind Miss Silver, found his mind groping. Two voices that had whispered in the dark, two shadows leaning together across the bed on which Lucius Bellingdon lay-he was conscious of these things, but he hadn’t begun to think what they could mean, and before he got any farther than that Miss Silver made a quick step backwards and pressed down the wall switch which was just inside the door.
The room sprang into light, and he no longer had to think. He saw. There was a cut-glass bowl in the middle of the ceiling. The light dazzled in rainbows on its facets and shone down upon the bed where Lucius Bellingdon lay, straight and tall and very deeply asleep. It shone down upon the man and woman who leaned together across the low pillow and the sleeping face. They held another pillow between them, and when the sudden revealing light came on they had been lowering it. Just for an instant they were there like that, with outstretched hands and the pillow coming down. Then the picture broke. It was the man who had his back to David and Miss Silver. He dropped his end of the pillow and ran for the open window. He had a leg across the sill, when David’s two hands came down upon his shoulder and hauled him back. They went down on the floor with a thump, the large Mr. Moray on top. After a passing glance Miss Silver spared them no more of her attention. She needed it all for Moira Herne who stood on the far side of the bed and stared at her as if she saw a ghost. Perhaps she did. The ghosts of dead hopes, dead plans, dead fortunes. After a moment she pulled the dropped pillow towards her, and as she did so Lucius stirred. He threw up an arm, muttered unintelligibly, and blinked at the light. Moira spoke. She said in a dragging voice,
“What do you want?” and Miss Silver said, “To stop a crime.”
Lucius Bellingdon got up upon his elbow. He had the look of a man who is dazed or drugged. Moira spoke again.
“He was having a bad dream-he called out. I came in to bring him another pillow.”
Miss Silver crossed the room, slim and upright in her blue dressing-gown. She put out a hand to the pillow which Moira had brought. The movement took Moira by surprise. She stepped back, but not in time. Miss Silver’s hand falling from the linen cover was already damp.
It all took so short a time to happen. Of the two struggling men on the floor one lay prone and the other, David Moray, was getting to his feet. If he was still quite at a loss to know why a man with a handkerchief over his face and two slits cut in it for eyeholes should have been trying to smother Lucius Bellingdon in his bed, he was at least quite sure in his own mind that that was what had been happening, and that if ever a fellow had asked for it, it was the fellow whose head he had just had the pleasure of banging on the floor. Though in no case at the moment to offer any further resistance, it was desirable that he should be well and truly secured. Looking back on it afterwards, David was astonished at his own temerity, but at the time it seemed perfectly natural to approach Miss Silver and not so much ask for as demand the cord of her dressing-gown. Since she immediately complied, he was able to tie his captive up and make a good job of it, by which time Lucius was on his feet and dominating the scene. It struck David forcibly that he showed no surprise, yet the scene must be considered an unusual one, including as it did one man barefoot and in his pyjamas, another unconscious on the floor, Moira Herne clutching a draggled pillow and looking like death, to say nothing of Miss Silver in the blue dressing-gown.
Lucius, however, looked at one person and one person only. He looked at Moira Herne, and she looked back at him.
The first impact of the shock was very great. There are things which the mind does not readily receive. If it is obliged to do so it cannot immediately accustom itself to the alien presence. The girl who stood there facing him with the naked stare of hatred was the child that Lily had brought into his house all those years ago. Lily had had no right to do it without asking him. Any man would have been angry about it, and they had quarrelled. But Moira had been a child in his house. He wondered now whether his anger and Lily’s resentment were the parents of the hatred with which she looked at him. He had not loved her-was that the head and front of his offending? He wondered whether Lily had loved her either. If a child was starved of love, would hatred take its place? He did not formulate these things, he felt them. But something in him rose in protest. He had not been unkind. If it had been possible, he would have loved her. You cannot love at will, and even when she was a child it was not love that Moira wanted. She wanted to have her way, to be admired, to be deferred to. She wanted all the glittering toys of life. She wanted money, and she wanted power, and if they were not hers as a willing gift she would take them, and at any cost.