Miss Silver stepped into the passage and began to feel her way along the wall. Since she was wearing the felt slippers which had been a kind gift from her niece by marriage, Dorothy Silver, she could count on making no sound. She reached the landing and feeling her way by the balustrade leaned over it and listened.

Chapter 35

THERE was no sound, and the darkness was unbroken. Yet someone had turned out the light, and it had been turned out from below. There was someone down there in the darkness, and the purpose which requires darkness for its pursuit is an evil purpose. Somewhere down there, out of sight and hidden in thought, this evil purpose moved to a premeditated end.

Miss Silver pondered gravely upon what her course should be. As she stood here she was in the very middle of the house. There lay beneath her the hall with its panelling and its portraits, and the rooms which opened from it. On either side of her stretched the two main corridors with the bedrooms which they served. To her left her own room and Miss Bray’s, Wilfrid Gaunt’s, two bathrooms, and the rooms occupied by Annabel Scott and Arnold Bray. To her right Sally Foster, David Moray, Moira Herne, two more bathrooms, and Lucius Bellingdon. If evil was intended to anyone in the house it would be to him. He had provoked a decision between himself and the unknown danger which threatened him, and strongly upon her every sense there pressed the conviction that this decision was at hand. She could wake him, acquaint him with her conviction, and very likely fail to induce him to believe in it. The light on the landing had gone out-she had no more to go on than that. If he did not believe her, she would have achieved nothing and the danger would merely be postponed. At the same time her decision must be swift. The main staircase was not the only means of communication between the ground floor and the one on which she stood. Towards the end of each of the bedroom corridors was a flight of stairs used by the staff. The threat to Mr. Bellingdon might come by either of these ways, the most likely being that which was nearest to his bedroom.

She felt her way to the stair-head, passed across it, and along the corresponding length of balustrade upon the other side. When she reached the entrance to the corridor she began to feel her way along the wall. One door, two doors, three doors were passed, and the next door on the right would be that of Lucius Bellingdon’s room. There was no thread of light beneath the door, no sound when she laid her ear against the panel. With the most meticulous caution she tried the door and found it was not locked. This was what she had both suspected and feared. She had urged the precaution upon him, and he had laughed and said that no one could enter his room without waking him, adding that anyone who tried would get the surprise of his life. The apprehension which she had been feeling for the last few hours increased upon her. Anyone in his household would know that he was a light sleeper. Anyone in his household might have taken steps to ensure that he would not sleep so lightly tonight. And there were others besides Miss Silver who could walk soft-foot in the darkness and turn the handle of a door without making any sound.

Standing there unseen and unregarded she made a swift decision. She did not know, she had no means of knowing, what margin of time she could count upon. If the threat impended it might fall at any moment, or linger out an interminable hour. It might not even fall at all. In which case Miss Maud Silver would have exposed herself to some derisive comment. There are other risks than those of a physical nature. She dismissed this one as firmly as she would have dismissed the chance of a bullet or a blow and, turning, made her way back to the room occupied by David Moray.

He slept the sleep of the young and healthy, the curtains drawn back, the cold spring air pouring into the room. Neither the opening nor the closing of the door disturbed the dream in which he walked. It was an odd dream, and when Miss Silver’s hand on his shoulder wakened him it vanished and left nothing that he could remember. He started up upon his elbow, saw her like a shadow between him and the window, and heard her say, “Hush, Mr. Moray.” The dream feeling had come with him out of the dream. It made it less strange that a decorous elderly lady should be standing at his bedside in the night and telling him not to make a noise. He sat up blinking, and she said “Hush” again. He found himself whispering too.

“What is it?”

Her answer convinced him that he must still be asleep and dreaming.

“I believe that an attempt is about to be made on Mr. Bellingdon’s life.”

“An attempt-”

“Pray do not raise your voice or make any sound. I want you to come with me. I think it advisable to have a witness.”

“To an attempt upon Mr. Bellingdon’s life?”

There was a tinge of severity in her voice as she replied,

“That is what I said, Mr. Moray.”

She was gratified to observe that he could move as silently as she did herself. She had had occasion before this to remark that large young men often possessed this characteristic. They came out into the corridor, and he closed the door with a most praiseworthy absence of sound.

To David Moray the whole thing had an unreal quality. He had come up out of deep sleep and found himself moving in the darkness with no volition of his own. That someone was attempting or was about to attempt Mr. Bellingdon’s life was the sort of statement which could only seem natural in a dream. His mind boggled and refused to deal with it. Meanwhile Miss Silver’s hand was on his arm, her touch impelled him. Somewhere on their left she opened a door, drew him across the threshold, and partially closed the door again. The dampness on the air and the smell of scented soap informed him that they were standing in the bathroom immediately opposite Lucius Bellingdon’s room. He bent to what he supposed to be the approximate neighbourhood of Miss Silver’s ear and said on the lowest possible level of sound,

“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.