The Spiral Staircase (26 page)

“For your own good. I’ve had pros, like you, their heads filled with nothing but men, men, men. I had to teach you not to open the door to the first Dick, Tom, or Harry.… Now, I’m going to bed, and you are not to disturb me again. Understand?”

She was turning away, when Helen caught her sleeve. “Wait. Why did you think I was with Dr. Parry?” she asked.

“Because he was outside, just now. But he’s gone, for good.”

In spite of the triumphant gleam in her eyes, as she slammed the door, Helen felt suddenly revived. For the first time for many hours, she was free from fear. After the creepy gloom. of the basement, the hall, glowing in the midst of lighted rooms, seemed the civilized family mansion of any auctioneer’s catalogue. She realized that she had just received a valuable object-lesson in the destructive property of uncurbed imagination..

“Everything that happened was myself,” she thought. “It’s like frightening yourself, by making faces in the glass, when you’re a child.”

She called to the ginger cat, who was playing around the door which led. to the back-stairs. But, although he preserved his character for civility, by purring and arching his back, he explained that he wished to go down to the kitchen.

Helen dutifully opened the door, when he changed his mind. Instead of descending to the basement, he pounced on a small object on the coconut-matting strip, at the foot of the flight.

Helen left him to his game of pretending he had found a mouse. Had she the curiosity to examine what he was. throwing in the air, her new-born confidence would have been shattered.

It was a small tassel of larch, from the plantation. Someone had brought it into the house, stuck on to the sole of a muddy shoe and had thoughtlessly scraped it off, on the mat.

She was the only one—on the day’s official return—who had passed through the plantation. And she had reached her bedroom by way of the front stairs.

Happily unconscious that the ginger cat had turned detective, and discovered a valuable clue, she went down to the drawingroom, The divan invited her to rest, but she was too excited to follow Nurse Barker’s advice. She forgot her anger over the woman’s interference, in happiness at the knowledge that Dr. Parry had made a second journey through the storm, for her sake.

“I’ve got a lover, at last,” she thought triumphantly, as she crossed to the piano. She could only play by ear, but she managed to pick out a fairly accurate reproduction of the Wedding March. Up in the blue room Lady Warren sat up in bed.

“Who’s playing the ‘Wedding March’?” she asked.

“No one,” said Nurse Barker, not opening her eyes.

“Shut up.”

“No,” muttered the old woman maliciously, “you didn’t hear it. And you never will.”

She listened again, but the music had ceased. Helen had realized that her performance might disturb the remnant of the household. She closed the piano, and opened a novel, only to discover that she could not concentrate on what she read.

She found that she was listening to the noises of the night, as though she expected. to hear some unfamiliar sound.

Presently she got up and turned on the Wireless, in the vain hope of hearing the announcer’s voice. But the London Stations had closed down, and all she got, from the air, was an explosion of atmospherics.

They reminded her of amateur stage effects, and the only time she had ever appeared in a dramatic performance. It had been a modest business, at the Prize-giving of the Belgian Convent, where she had received most of her brief education.

The English pupils had played the Witches’ Scene from Macbeth, and she had been unhappily cast as Hecate. Not only was she inaudible, through stage-fright, but she forgot the end of her speech, and rushed from the stage. The lines swam back, now, to her memory, as an unpleasant and ill-timed warning..

“And, you all know, security Is mortal’s chiefest enemy.”

Helen started, as though the great voice in the chimney were actually roaring the words. She looked at the old-fashioned comfort of the room-the white skin rug, the pleated pink silk lamp-shade-which were mute witnesses, against the violence of murder.

“Of course, I feel safe,” she thought. “I’m not left alone. Nurse Barker is my ally, even if she’s got a temper. I haven’t got to sleep in the blue room. Oates will soon be back. And-nothing’s happened.”

Yet, in spite of the reassurance of her review, she real ized that she was keyed up to a pitch of unnatural expectancy. She was listening so intently that she believed she could almost catch the high squeak of a bat.

Something had twanged on her ear, like the vibration of a drawn wire. She heard it again-slightly louderfaint and wailing as the mew of a sea-gull.

It was a cry in the night.

THE LION—OR THE TIGER?

Helen raised her head to listen—a great fear at her heart. What she most dreaded had actually happened—the need to make a perilous decision.

Yet, the very fact that it had occurred aroused her suspicions. Someone with a knowledge of her character, was playing a trick on her, in order to draw her away from the security of the house.

This theatrical element made her tighten her lips in resolution. She had spoken, in pity, of a child crying out in the darkness and storm. And here was the child—delivered, according to schedule.

But, as the thin cry was repeated, Helen’s lips parted, in suspense. Although it was difficult to locate the sound, because of the shrieking of the wind, it seemed to come from somewhere within the house. A new dread knocking at her heart, she slowly mounted the stairs.

As she did so, the crying grew more distinct, and like the weak sobbing of someone very young, or very old.

And it came from the direction of the blue room. Once again the natural element was shaping the drama—yet the result would be the same. She was being tempted to abandon her last line of defence.

Nurse Barker was the only person left to keep her company. Helen clung to her, as a child, terrified of the dark, will hang on to a bad-tempered nurse. She had aroused her antagonism too often to risk another quarrel.

Next time, Nurse Barker might carry out her threat to leave her alone. Helen grew cold at the mere thought of desertion. She had been used to plenty of company; too much of it, in fact, so that she sometimes craved for solitude.

At this crisis, her early training left her especially susceptible to the menace of loneliness and her own imagination. She knew that she would experience all the heralds of a nervous crash; shadows would flicker over the wall—footsteps creak up the stairs.

“I must keep my head,” she resolved desperately.

She reminded herself that Lady Warren was not some gentle old soul, at the mercy of a brute. At her best, she was a cantankerous old bully; at her worst, she might be a murderess. When she was younger, she had killed hundreds of small, defenseless creatures, merely for her own amusement.

Although Helen was careful to paint Lady Warren’s portrait in darkest hues, she was drawn, imperceptibly, up the staircase, until she stood outside the blue room.

Presently she heard smothered, hopeless sobbing. It was not assumed for effect, because it was so low that she could not have known anyone was crying if she had not strained her ears.

She flinched, as though she had been struck herself, at the sound of a rough voice.

“Stop that row.”

The sobbing ceased immediately. After a pause, Lady Warren spoke appealingly.

“Nurse. Please, come to me.”

Helen heard heavy footsteps crossing the room, and

Nurse Barker’s voice raised in a shout.

“If I come to you, I’ll give you what for.”

Helen felt herself grow hot, as she rapped impulsively On the door.

“Is anything the matter?” she called.

“No,” replied Nurse Barker. “But wouldn’t you like me to sit with Lady Warren for a short time?” persisted Helen.

“No.”

Helen turned away, wiping her face.

“That was a near shave,” she murmured.

At the top of the stairs she was arrested by the sound of a high scream of mingled pain and rage.

Hot with indignation, she burst into the blue room.

Nurse Barker stood over the bed, shaking Lady Warren furiously. As Helen entered, she threw her away from her, so that she lay on her face, in a heaving crumpled heap.

“You great coward,” cried Helen; “Get out of here.”

Like David threatening Goliath, Helen looked up at the towering figure.

“The old devil went for me,” said Nurse Barker.

“You’re a thoroughly bad-tempered woman,” she de clared. “You are not fit to have control of anyone.”

Nurse Barker’s face grew dark as a storm-cloud.

“Say that again,” she shouted, “and I’ll go out of this room-and not come back.”

“You’ll certainly go, and you won’t come back,” said Helen, carried away on a wave of power.

Nurse Barker shrugged her shoulders as she turned away.

“I wish you joy of your bargain,” she sneered. “When you are alone, with her, remember you asked for it.”

Helen felt the first chill of reaction as the door slammed behind the woman. There was something ominously definite about the sound.

With a rush of pity, she turned towards the bed. Instead of the prostrate form, Lady Warren was leaning back against her pillows, a complacent smile on her lips. Helen experienced the sensation of having walked into a trap.

“You’d better lie down,” she said, anxious to justify her championship. “Do you feel weak after that awful shaking?”

“What she gave me was nothing to what I gave her,” remarked Lady Warren.

Helen stared at her-the dawn of an incredulous horror in her eyes, as she ran her finger over her lower denture.

“I grudged the money for these teeth,” she said. “But they’re very good teeth. I bit her thumb almost to the bone.”

Helen gave a