Lila Dryden did not undress. She had no settled plan in her head, she was just waiting. Presently, when everyone was in bed and asleep, she would have to think what she was going to do. Of course the easiest thing would be not to do anything at all. That was what she had been doing all this time-the easiest thing, the easiest way. It was like being in a car when someone else was driving-you didn’t have to think, you just let yourself be carried along. Sybil Dryden was an extremely capable driver. She knew just where she was going, and how to get there. But tonight Lila had had a sudden horrifying glimpse of her destination. It was like seeing something in the flare of a lightning flash, and it had frightened her so much that she was almost ready to jump out of the car.

Lucy Ashton’s crazed eyes, and the ivory dagger red with blood.

The picture rose, and there was no Adrian to send it back to its own horrible place. Her heart failed and her breath fluttered.

She got up shaking from head to foot, went over to the hearth, and kneeled there. The fire had died down. But wood ash holds the heat for a long time. A comfortable warmth came from it, it helped her to stop shivering.

But she had not come there to warm herself. When Sybil Dryden tried the handle of her door before dinner, she had slipped Bill’s letter under the wooden kerb which guarded the hearth. She had read it, she had hidden it, and she had lied about it. Now she lifted the kerb and pulled it out, a little dusty and crumpled. Bill never wrote long letters. He got on with what he had to say, and when he had said it he stopped. This was almost too short to be called a letter at all. She knelt there in front of the pile of wood ash with the glow at its heart and read what he had written.

Lila-I’ve got to see you. If you want to marry Whitall you can marry him. If you don’t want to, I’ll take you to Ray tonight. I’ll be outside the window of the room on the left of the hall as you come in from half past eleven onwards. Show a light and I’ll knock three times so you’ll know it’s me.

Bill.

It was a way out. She could pack a suit-case. She could put on a dark coat and skirt and her fur coat, and when the big clock on the landing struck the half hour after eleven she could slip downstairs and get out of the window in the Blue Room, and Bill would take her away. She always wondered why it was called the Blue Room. Perhaps it was blue once, long ago. It wasn’t now. There was some very dull tapestry work on the chairs, and an ugly modern picture of a girl with a green face which Herbert said was very clever.

These things were in the confusion of her mind, all mixed up with listening for the clock to strike, showing a light in the Blue Room, and waiting for Bill to knock on the window. Bill would take her away, and she need never see Herbert again…

Aunt Sybil would make her. Herbert would make her. She couldn’t really get away from them.

Bill would take her away. He would take her to Ray. Then she would have to marry him. He would make her. Ray would make her. She didn’t want to marry him.

She knelt there for a long time. She didn’t know what to do. She went on kneeling until she began to feel giddy. Then she got up and huddled on the couch at the foot of the bed with the eiderdown pulled round her, because she was dreadfully cold, and you can’t really think when you are cold. She tried very hard to think, but it wasn’t any use. Bill said, ‘Come down and show a light, and I’ll take you away.’ Just for a moment she thought she could do it, but she couldn’t really. Sybil Dryden would never let her do it. However softly she opened her door, however softly she crept, Sybil would hear her. Sybil would come out of her room. Or Herbert. She had a most awful picture of being trapped in the dark, with no one to hear if she cried out. The room rocked and filled with mist. She couldn’t do it.

And then quite suddenly it came to her that she needn’t do it. Bill would wait, and then he would go away. And he would come back in the morning, because if Bill said he had got to see her, he would go on till he did. And it wouldn’t be nearly so frightening in the daytime. And she could tell Adrian and ask him-and ask him-

She drifted into an exhausted sleep. At first it was very deep. Then it began to be shot with dreams, like vague terrifying shadows-passing, fading, coming again. She did not know what they were, she only knew that they were dreadful. She moved among them like someone groping in a fog. She didn’t know where she was going or why. Something drove her. The dreams went too. They all drove together without any power to stop, like leaves driving in the wind-weak, fluttering leaves in a bleak and dreadful wind.

Suddenly the wind stopped. There was a stillness. Lucy Ashton’s eyes looked into hers.

She woke under a blaze of light. She was in the study. The overhead light was on, the room was as bright as day. Herbert Whitall was lying sprawled across the carpet. He was dead. She had never seen a dead person before, but she was very sure that he was dead. There was blood on his shirt-front. She drew a long sighing breath. Then she saw the blood on her white dress-a bright splash of it all down the front. Blood on her dress, and blood on her hand. It was her right hand, and it was dreadfully stained. On the floor at her feet lay the ivory dagger.

CHAPTER XIV

Bill Waring heard the half-hour strike from the village clock, two single notes so faint that if his ears had not been on the stretch he would not have heard them. The wind was setting that way, or he would not have heard them at all-a soft wind, rather high up. It drove the low cloud which darkened the face of the sky, and it moved and rustled the tree-tops, but down on the level of the drive, under the shadow of the pillared portico which screened the front door, the air scarcely stirred.

Bill stood in the shadow of the portico. He could see the front door, the windows of the rooms on either side of it, and the windows of the flanking wings to the east and to the west. None of these windows showed any light at all. If he crossed the wide sweep of the drive and stood back from the portico he could see the whole front of the house. There was not a light in any of the rooms, nor had there been since he came. He had left his car outside the gate because turning it on the gravel was going to make too much noise, and if he left it in the drive it wouldn’t be facing the right way.

He had been waiting a bare ten minutes, when the clock struck. It was a bit early for everyone to be asleep in a house like this, so he didn’t really expect Lila to be punctual.

His will was set to see her. It was a tough and obstinate will. It was set. But against it, and not for the first time, there moved a small, cold breath of doubt. It would not affect what he did, but quite insensibly it changed his thought about what he was doing. Adrian Grey’s sister Marian had said to him a year ago, speaking of Lila, ‘She’s very lovely, and she’s very sweet, but the man who marries her will have to be her father, and her brother, and her nursemaid, as well as her husband.’ He hadn’t cared then, but he wasn’t so sure that he didn’t care now. A vague daunted feeling of what life with Lila would be like had begun to tinge his thoughts. He had not been two months out of the country before she had let herself be pushed into saying she would marry Herbert Whitall. Well, he was here to see that she had fair play. If she wanted to marry the man she could marry him. If she didn’t want to marry him, he would take her to Ray. After that he supposed they would be married. The thought did not raise his spirits at all. They remained dark and clouded. He began to think about Ray, and found it a relief. She would know what to do, and she would look after Lila. He found himself wishing strongly that she was here.