To begin with, that wretched woman was not my only visitor."
Then the rest of the tale was told--and this time the whole of it.
Ella heard of the stranger who had intruded on the pretence of seeking music lessons: of his fear of the seedy loafer in the street; of his undignified exit through the back door; and the whole of his singular behaviour.
"And you say he could play?"
"Play! He played like an--I was going to say an angel, but I"ll subst.i.tute artist."
"And he looked like a gentleman?"
"Certainly, and spoke like one."
"But he didn"t behave like one?"
"I won"t go so far as to say that. He said or did nothing that was positively offensive when he was once inside the house."
"But you called him a thief?"
"Yes; but, mind you, I didn"t think he was one. I felt so angry."
"I should think you did. I should have felt murderous. And you don"t think the man in the road was a policeman?"
"Not he. He was as evil-looking a vagabond as ever I saw."
"It doesn"t follow merely on that account, my dear, that he wasn"t a policeman."
There was malice in the lady"s tones.
"Not at all; but even a policeman of that type would hardly have jumped out of his skin with fright at the sight of that horrible woman. He knew her, and she knew him. There"s a mystery somewhere."
"How nice!"
"Nice? You think so? I wish you had interviewed her instead of me. My dear Ella, she--she was--beyond expression."
Ella came and seated herself on a stool at Madge"s feet. Leaning her arms on her knees she looked up at her face.
"Poor old chap! It wasn"t an agreeable experience."
Madge"s answer was as significant as it was curt.
"It wasn"t."
She gave further details of what the woman had said and done, and of how she had said and done it--details which she had omitted, for reasons of her own, in Mr. Martyn"s presence. By the time she had finished the listener was as serious as the narrator.
"It makes me feel creepy to hear you."
"It would have made you creepy to have heard her. I felt as if the house was peopled with ghosts."
"Madge, don"t! You"ll make me want to sleep with you if you go on like that. Poor old chap! I"m sorry if I seemed to chaff you." She reflected before she spoke again. "I can see that it can"t be nice for you to be alone in the house while I"m away in town all day, earning my daily bread--especially now that the days are drawing in. If you like, we"ll clear out of this, this week--we could do it at a pinch-- and we"ll return to the seething ma.s.ses."
Madge reflected, in her turn, before she answered.
"Nothing of the sort has happened before, and nothing may happen again. But I tell you frankly, that, if my experiences of to-day do recur, it won"t take much to persuade me that I have an inclination towards the society of my fellows, and that I prefer even the crushes of Petticoat Lane to the solitudes of Wandsworth Common."
"Well, in that case, it shall be Petticoat Lane."
There was silence. Presently Madge stretched herself--and yawned.
"In the meantime," suggested Ella, putting her hand up to her own lips, "what do you say to bed?" And it was bed. "Would you like me to sleep with you," inquired Ella as they went upstairs; "because if you would like me to very much, I would."
"No," said Madge, "I wouldn"t. I never did like to share my bed with any one, and I never shall. I like to kick about, and I like to have plenty of room to do it in."
"Very good--have plenty of room to do it in. Ungrateful creature! If you"re haunted, don"t call to me for aid."
As it happened, Madge did call to her for aid, after a fashion; though it was not exactly because she was haunted.
CHAPTER IV
IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT
Madge was asleep almost as soon as she was between the sheets, and it seemed to her that as soon as she was asleep she was awake again--waking with that sudden shock of consciousness which is not the most agreeable way of being roused from slumber, since it causes us to realise too acutely the fact that we have been sleeping. Something had woke her; what, she could not tell. She lay motionless, listening with that peculiar intensity with which one is apt to listen when woke suddenly in the middle of the night. The room was dark. There was the sound of distant rumbling: they were at work upon the line, where they would sometimes continue shunting from dusk to dawn. She could hear, faintly, the crashing of trucks as they collided the one with the other. A breeze was murmuring across the common. It came from Clapham Junction way--which was how she came to hear the noise of the shunting. All else was still. She must have been mistaken. Nothing had roused her. She must have woke of her own accord.
Stay!--what was that? Her keen set ears caught some scarcely uttered sound. Was it the creaking of a board? Well, boards will creak at night, when they have a trick of being as audible as if they were exploding guns. It came again--and again. It was unmistakably a board that creaked--downstairs. Why should a board creak like that downstairs, unless--it was being stepped upon? As Madge strained her hearing, she became convinced that there were footsteps down below--stealthy, m.u.f.fled footsteps, which would have been inaudible had it not been for the tell-tale boards. Some one was creeping along the pa.s.sage. Suddenly there was a noise as if a coin, or a key, or some small object, had fallen to the floor. Possibly it was something of the kind which had roused her. It was followed by silence--as if the person who had caused the noise was waiting to learn if it had been overheard. Then once more the footsteps--she heard the door of the sitting-room beneath her open, and shut, and knew that some one had entered the room.
In an instant she was out of bed. She hurried on a pair of bedroom slippers which she kept beside her on the floor, and an old dressing-gown which was handy on a chair, moving as quickly and as noiselessly as the darkness would permit. s.n.a.t.c.hing up her candlestick, with its box of matches, she pa.s.sed, without a moment"s hesitation, as noiselessly as possible from the room. On the landing without she stood, for a second or two, listening. There could be no doubt about it--some one was in the sitting-room. Someone who wished to make himself or herself as little conspicuous as possible; but whose presence was still sufficiently obvious to the keen-eared auditor.
Madge went to Ella"s room, and, turning the handle, entered. As she did so, she could hear Ella start up in bed.
"Who"s there?" she cried.
"Hush! It"s I. There"s some one in the sitting-room."
Lighting a match, Madge applied it to the candle. Ella was sitting up in bed, staring at her, with tumbled hair and sleepy eyes, apparently only half awake.
"Madge!--what do you mean?"
"What I say. We"re about to experience another of the drawbacks of rural residence. There"s some one in the sitting-room--another uninvited guest."
"Are you sure?"
"Quite. If you care to go downstairs and look, you"ll be sure."
"Whatever shall we do?"
"Do!--I"ll show you what we"ll do. Where"s that revolver of Jack Martyn"s, which he lent you?"