“Dr. Craig! . . . Help! . . . Dr. Craig’.”
Making a series of bounds incredible in a creature ordinarily so slow and clumsy of movement, M’goyna followed. His teeth were exposed like the fangs of a wild animal. He uttered a snarl of rage.
Regan twisted around and fired again.
Instant upon the crack of his shot, M’goyna dashed the weapon from Regan’s grasp and swept him into a bear hug. Power of speech was crushed out of his body. He gave one gasping, despairing cry, and was silent. M’goyna lifted him onto a huge shoulder and carried him back up the steps.
Only a groan came from the laboratory when the semiman ran down again to recover Regan’s pistol.
He coughed as he reclosed the steel door . . .
The office remained empty for another two minutes. Then Craig returned, swinging his keys on their chain. He went straight to the safe, paused—and stood sniffing. He had detected a faint but unaccountable smell. He glanced all about him, until suddenly the boyish smile replaced a puzzled frown.
“Smith’s pipe!” he muttered.
Dismissing the matter lightly, as he always brushed aside—or tried to brush aside—anything which interfered with the job in hand, he had soon unlocked the safe and set up his materials. He was so deeply absorbed in his work that when Camille came in, he failed to notice even her presence.
She stood in the open doorway for a moment, staring vaguely about the office. Then she looked down at her handbag, and finally up at the clock above the desk. But not until she began to cross to her own room did Craig know she was there.
He spun around in a flash.
“Shades of evenin’! Don’t play bogey man with me. My nerves are not what they were in my misspent youth.”
Camille did not smile. She glanced at him and then, again, at the clock. She was not wearing her black-rimmed glasses, but her hair was tightly pinned back as usual. Craig wondered if something had disturbed her.
“I—I am sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry about. How’s Professor What’s-his-name? Full of beans and ballyhoo?”
“I—really don’t know.”
She moved away in the direction of her open door. Her manner was so strange that he could no longer ignore it. Insomnia, he knew, could play havoc with the nervous system. And Camille was behaving like one walking in her sleep. But when he spoke he retained the light note.
“What’s the prescription—Palm Beach, or a round trip in the Queen Elizabeth?”
Camille paused, but didn’t look back.
“I’m afraid—I have forgotten,” she replied.
She went into her room.
Craig scratched his chin, looking at her closed door. Certainly something was quite wrong. Could he have offended her? Was she laboring under a sense of grievance? Or was she really ill?
He took out a crushed packet of cigarettes from his hip pocket, smoothed one into roughly cylindrical form and lighted it; all the while staring at that closed door.
Very slowly, resuming his glasses, he returned to his work. But an image of Camille, wide-eyed, distrait, persistently intruded. He recalled that she had been in such a mood once before, and that he had made her go home. On the former occasion, too, she had been out but gave no account of where she had gone.
Something resembling a physical chill crept around his heart.
There was a man in her life. And he must have let her down . . .
Craig picked up a scribbling block and wrote a note in pencil. He was surprised, and angry, to find how shaky his hand had become. He must know the truth. But he would give her time. With a little tact, perhaps Camille could be induced to tell him.
He had never kissed her fingers, much less her lips, yet the thought of her in another man’s arms drove him mad. He remembered that he had recently considered her place in the scheme of things, and had decided to dismiss such considerations until his work was completed.
Now he was almost afraid to press the button which would call her.
But he did.
He was back at his drawing board when he heard her come in. She moved so quietly that he sensed, rather than knew, when she stood behind him. He tore off the top sheet and held it over his shoulder.
“Just type this out for me, d’you mind? It’s a note for Regan. He can’t read my writing.”
“Of course. Dr. Craig.”
Her soft voice soothed him, as always. How he loved it! He had just a peep of her delicate fingers as she took the page.
Then she was gone again.
Craig crushed out his cigarette in an ash-tray and sat staring at the complicated formula pinned to his drawing board. Of course, it probably meant something—something very important. It might even mean, as Nayland Smith seemed to think, a new era in the troubled history of man.
But why should he care what it meant if he must loose Camille?
He could hear her machine tapping . . .
Very soon, her door opened, and Camille came out. She carried a typed page and duplicates. The pencilled note was clipped to them. Craig didn’t look up when she laid them beside the drawing board, and Camille turned to go. At the same moment, she glanced up at the clock.
Nine-fifteen . . .
Could Morris Craig have seen, he would have witnessed an eerie thing.
Camille’s vacant expression became effaced; instantly, magically. She clenched her hands, fixing her eyes upward, upon the clock. For a moment she stood so, as if transfixed, as if listening intently. She symbolized vital awareness.
She relaxed, and, looking down, rested her left hand on the desk beside Craig. She spoke slowly.
“I am sorry—if I have made any mistakes. Please tell me if this is correct.”
Craig, who was not wearing his glasses, glanced over the typed page. He was trying desperately to think of some excuse to detain her.
“There was one word,” the musical voice continued.
Camille raised her hands, and deliberately released her hair so that it swept down, a fiery, a molten torrent, brushing Craig’s cheek as he pretended to read the message.
“Oh! Forgive me!”
She was bending over him when Craig twisted about and looked up into her eyes. Meeting his glance, she straightened and began to rearrange her hair.
He stood up.
“No—don’t! Don’t bother to do that.”
He spoke breathlessly.
Camille, hands still lifted, paused, watching him. They were very close.
“But—”
“Your hair is—so wonderful.” He clasped her wrists to restrain her. “It’s a crime to hide it.”
“I am glad you think so,” she said rather tremulously.
He was holding her hands now. “Camille—would you think me a really fearful cad if I told you you are completely lovely?”
His heart seemed to falter when he saw that tiny curl of Camille’s lip—like the stirring of a rose petal, he thought of it—heralding a smile. It was a new smile, a smile he had never seen before. She raised her lashes and looked into his eyes . . .
When he released her: “Camille,” he whispered, “How very lovely you are!”
“Morris!”
He kissed her again.
“You darling! I suppose I have been waiting for this moment ever since you first walked into the office.”
“Have you?”
This was a different woman he held in his arms—a woman who had disguised herself; this was the hidden, the secret Camille, seductive, wildly desirable—and his!
“Yes. Did you know?”
“Perhaps I did,” she whispered.
Presently she disengaged herself and stood back, smiling provocatively.
“Camille—”
“Shall I take the message to Mr. Regan?”
Morris Craig inhaled deeply, and turned away. He was delirious with happiness, knew it, yet (such is the scientific mind) resented it. Camille had swept solid earth from beneath his feet. He was in the grip of a power which he couldn’t analyze, a power not reducible to equations, inexpressible in a diagram. He had, perhaps, probed the secret of perpetual motion, exalting himself to a throne not far below the knees of the gods—but he had met a goddess in whose slender hands he was a thing of clay.