Very softly she answered him: "Yes, I understand."
"You will be restless, and you will seek to get out into the air. But all the doors will be bolted, and the windows fastened. So you will turn to the eastern corridor and will pa.s.s along there to the end wall. Do you understand?"
And again she murmured: "Yes, I understand."
"And then you will walk on--into the air. You will do this at midnight."
She murmured, "At midnight"; and on a sudden he snapped his fingers violently three times before her eyes, and she sprang up, wide awake, and stared at him, looking at him in perplexity.
"You"ve been asleep for ever so long," he said, with a smile. "You must be tired; go to your room."
She looked at him in a dazed fashion, and pa.s.sed her hand across her forehead. "What were we speaking of?" she asked him, as though referring to the conversation they had had before he had sent her into that species of trance.
"Nothing--nothing that matters now," he said, moving towards the door.
Fearing that he might come in my direction after he had sent her from the room, I vaulted over the railing of the verandah, which was only raised a few feet above the level of the ground. And so presently came round by the side entrance into the house, and, as was my custom, went up to the doctor"s study to smoke with him.
I found him pacing up and down, chewing the b.u.t.t of a cigar that had long gone out. He glanced up quickly when I entered, and jerked his head towards the open drawer in the desk where the cigars were.
"I must ask you to take your cigar and smoke it elsewhere to-night," he said. "I have work to do, and I am very busy. Good-night."
I longed to stop and talk with him--cursed my own impotent position, which gave me no chance of trying conclusions with him and befriending the girl. I remembered bitterly the words she had said to me at the foot of the staircase on the previous night, when she had begged me not to leave her alone in that house. So I went away, reluctantly enough, to smoke my cigar elsewhere.
I wandered down into the dining-room, and dropped into a chair, and closed my eyes. Suddenly I remembered that it was that chair into which the girl had dropped when the doctor had said those words I did not understand. I sat up, very wide awake, remembering.
She was to walk along the eastern corridor, and was to come to a wall at the end. And yet she was to walk out into the air! What did it all mean?
What trick was the man about to play upon her? What devilry was afoot?
I got up at once, and threw away my cigar, and set off to explore the house. I wanted to know where this eastern corridor was, if such a place existed, and what was meant by the doctor"s words. I went up to my own room first, and made out, as well as I could, by remembering which way the sun rose, and other matters, in what direction the house was situated; and so came to the conclusion that the room to which I had been a.s.signed was at the end of the eastern corridor, nearest to the great bulk of the house. Which is to say, that if I stood in the doorway of my room, and faced the corridor, the other rooms of the house would be on my right hand, while on my left the corridor stretched away into darkness, past rooms that, so far as I knew, were unoccupied.
Lest by any chance my windows should be watched, I lit the lamp in my room and left it; then I came out into the corridor, and closed the door. I looked over the head of the great staircase; the house was in complete silence, though not yet in darkness. Listening carefully, I moved away swiftly into the gathering darkness to the left, until at last, at the end of the corridor, my outstretched hand touched the wall.
This was exactly as it should be, according to the doctor"s words. I now turned my attention to the wall itself, and found that it was recessed--much as though at some time or other it had been a window that had been bricked up. I could make nothing of it, and I went back to my room, sorely puzzled.
I must have a torpid brain, for I was ever given to much sleeping. On this occasion I sank down into a chair, intending to sit there for a few minutes and think the matter out. In less than five, I was asleep.
When I awoke I felt chilled and stiff, and I blamed myself heartily for not having gone to bed. While I yawned and stretched my arms, I became aware of a curious noise going on in the house. With my arms still raised above my head, I stopped to listen.
Whatever noise it was came from the end of the corridor where I had found that blank wall. Some instinct made me put out the light; then in the darkness I stole towards the door, and cautiously opened it. Outside the corridor was dark, or seemed to be at my first glance; I dropped to my knees, and peered round the edge of the door, looking to right and left.
To the right all was in darkness; the servants had gone to bed, after extinguishing the lights and locking up. To the left, strangely enough, a faint light shone; and as I turned my eyes in that direction I saw that a small hand-lamp was standing on the floor, and that above it loomed the figure of a man, casting a grotesque shadow on the walls and ceiling above him. I made enough of the figure to know that it was the doctor, and that he was working hard at that end wall.
I was puzzling my brains to know what he was doing, and was striving hard to connect his presence there with what he had said to the girl, when I heard a grinding and a creaking, and suddenly the lamp that stood beside him was blown out in a gust of wind that came down the corridor and touched my face softly as I knelt there. Then, to my utter amazement, I saw the night sky and the stars out beyond where that end wall had been.
I had just time to get back into my room and to close the door, when the doctor came tiptoeing back along the corridor, and vanished like a shadow into the shadows of the house. I waited for a time, and then struck a match, and looked at the little clock on the mantelpiece. It wanted four minutes of midnight.
I opened the door again, and looked out into the corridor; then, on an impulse, I stole along towards that newly-opened door, or whatever it was, and, coming to it, looked out into the night. It was at a greater height from the ground than I had thought possible, because on that side of the house the ground shelved away sharply, and there was in addition a deep, moat-like trough, into which the bas.e.m.e.nt windows looked. More than ever puzzled, I was retracing my steps, when I heard a slight sound at the further end, like the light rustle of a garment mingled with the swift patter of feet.
I will confess that my nerves were unstrung, and they were therefore scarcely prepared for the shock they had now to endure. For coming down the corridor, straight towards where I stood drawn up against the wall, was a little figure in a white garment, and with fair flowing hair over its shoulders; and that figure came swiftly straight towards that new door which opened to the floor. While I stood there, paralysed by the sight, certain words floated back to my mind.
"You will be restless, and you will seek to get out into the air. But all the doors will be bolted, and the windows fastened. So you will turn to the eastern corridor, and will pa.s.s along there to the end wall ...
and then you will walk on into the air.... You will do this at midnight!"
With a great horror upon me, I leapt in a moment, though dimly, to what was meant. The girl was walking to her death, and walking in her sleep.
In what devilish fashion Bardolph Just had contrived the thing, or what ascendency he had gained over her that he could suggest the very hour at which she should rise from her bed and do it, I did not understand; but here was the thing nearly accomplished. She was within a couple of feet of the opening, and was walking straight out into the air at that giddy height, when I sprang forward and caught her in my arms.
She shrieked once--a shriek that seemed to echo through the night; then, with a long sobbing cry, she sank into my arms, and hid her face on my shoulder. And at the same moment I heard a door open down below in the house, and heard running footsteps coming towards me. I knew it was the doctor, and I knew for what he had waited.
CHAPTER V.
I AM DRAWN FROM THE GRAVE.
You are to picture me, then, standing in that wind-swept corridor, open at one end to the stars, and holding in my arms the sobbing form of Debora Matchwick, and waiting the coming of Dr. Bardolph Just. I awaited that coming with no trepidation, for now it seemed as though I stood an equal match for the man, by reason of this night"s work; for if someone had shouted "Murder!" in the silence of the house, the thing could not have been proclaimed more clearly. I saw now that in that trance into which he had thrown her he had by some devilish art suggested to the girl what she should do, and at what hour, and then had thrown open the end of the corridor, that she might step out to her death.
Exactly how much she suspected herself, or how much she had had time to grasp, since the moment when I had so roughly awakened her, I could not tell; but she clung to me, and begged me incoherently not to let her go, and not to let the man come near her. Feeling that the thing must be met bravely, I got my arm about her, and advanced with her down the corridor to meet the doctor.
He came with a light held above his head; he was panting from excitement and hurry. I know that he expected to run to the end of that corridor, and to look out, and to see what should have lain far below him; but he came upon us advancing towards him instead, and he stopped dead and lowered his light.
"What"s the matter?" he stammered.
"You should know that best," I answered him boldly. "Death might have been the matter. With your leave, I"ll take this lady to her room."
He stood back against the wall, and watched us as we went past him. His brows were drawn down, and his eyes were glittering, and the faint white line of his teeth showed between his lips. In that att.i.tude he remained, like some figure turned to stone, while I drew the girl along, and down the stairs; I had to ask her the way to her room, for, of course, I did not know it. Coming to it at last, I took her cold hands in mine and held them for a moment, and smiled as cheerfully as I could.
"This is not the time for explanations," I said; "leave all that till the morning. Go to bed, and try not to remember anything that has happened; and lock your door."
I heard the key turn in the lock before I came away; not till then did I retrace my steps back to the corridor. I was scarcely surprised to find the man standing almost in the same att.i.tude--only now his head had lowered a little, and he seemed to be musing. Without moving he looked up at me, and a queer sort of grin spread over his features.
"Smart man!" he whispered, with a sneer. "How did it happen? How much do you know?"
"More than you would have me know?" I replied. "Would it not be well to fasten up that door again?" I jerked my head in the direction of the end of the corridor.
Without a word he handed the lamp to me, and started towards the opening. He went so quickly that I thought for the moment he meant to hurl himself upon that death he had intended for the girl; but he stopped at the end, and seemed to be fumbling with the doors.
By that time I had reached him, and, with the aid of the lamp, I could see that there were two heavy doors opening inwards and fastened with a great bar that dropped across them, and with bolts at the top and at the bottom. Quite as though he had forgotten the incidents of the night, he turned to me, and gave an explanation of the doors.
"There used to be an iron staircase against the wall of the house, leading down from here at one time," he said. "It was the whim of some former owner. I found these doors by accident."
"And opened them with a purpose," I reminded him.
He said nothing in reply. Having secured the doors, he motioned to me to go in front, which I did, carrying the light, and in that order we came to my room. I would have handed him the lamp at the door, but he motioned to me to go in, and, following himself, closed the door. I set down the lamp, and waited for what he had to say. He was a long time coming to it; he wandered about the room for a time, stopping now and then, with his back to me, and with his finger tracing out the pattern of the wall paper. When at last he spoke he was still tracing that pattern, and he did not look round.
"You have done me a service to-night, and one I"m not likely to forget,"
he said.
"A service?" I asked in amazement. "I should scarcely have thought you"d call it that."