Some Must Watch - Ethel Lina White (best book club books .TXT) 📗

know it really is I, and not some trick.

But, for Heaven’s sake, let me in. I’ll explain everything to the

Professor, afterwards.”

 

From the moment she had first set eyes on Helen, Nurse Barker had been

frantically envious of her. She was just the type which she, herself,

would have chosen to be quick as a needle and smart as paint. While she

was able to help herself, she was of fairy fragility, which appealed to

the protective instincts of men.

 

She swallowed convulsively, as she tore the paper into tiny fragments

and dropped them inside the drain-pipe unbrella-stand.

 

“Dead Letter Office,” she murmured grimly.

 

Meanwhile, Helen was busy in the blue room, unconscious of the

destruction of her vital mail. She straightened disarranged furniture,

shook up cushions, and put away articles of clothing; presently she came

out on the landing laden with a big basin of soapy water and an armful

of crumpled towels.

 

As she did so, she was vaguely aware of some stir in the atmosphere, as

though someone had come that way, a few seconds before her. The door

leading to the back-stairs, quivered faintly, as though it would swing

open, at a touch.

 

Her small white face swam up in the dim depths of the mirror in the old

familiar way; but, as she drew nearer, she noticed something which was

both mysterious and disturbing. A faint mist blurred the glass, about

the height of a man’s mouth.

 

“Someone stood here, a few seconds ago,” she thought fearfully, as she

watched the patch become bright again. Gripping her basin with stiff

fingers, she stared at the closed doors. She was afraid to take her eyes

off them, lest one should open—afraid to move, lest she precipitated

the attack.

 

Suddenly her nerve crashed. Putting her basin down on the carpet, she

turned, and hurled herself down the stairs. Nurse Barker watched her as

she sank down, panting, on the lowest step.

 

“Well?” she asked with cool unconcern.

 

Ashamed of her unfounded terror, Helen rapidly became composed.

 

“Lady Warren is asleep,” she said. “We didn’t hear her.”

 

“Then where have you been all this time?”

 

“Tidying the room.”

 

“You’ve not been up in your own room?” Nurse Barker asked.

 

“No.”

 

“Well, I wouldn’t, if I was you. It’s a long way up, in case you met

someone.”

 

Again the dull thud banged in the distance.

 

“There it is again,” said Nurse Barker. “I wish it would stop. It gets

on my nerves.”

 

As she listened, Helen suddenly located the sound.

 

“It’s down in the basement. It must be the window I tied up. It’s blown

open again.”

 

She hastened to add quickly, “It’s all right. There’s a shutter up, so

no one can get in.”

 

“It’s criminal carelessness, all the same,” declared Nurse Barker, with

an elaborate yawn.

 

“Are you sleepy?” asked Helen sharply.

 

“My eyes are just dropping,” declared Nurse Barker, with another yawn.

“It’s all I can do to keep them open. I came straight off night-duty I

ought to have had a night in bed, between my cases.”

 

With a chill at her heart, Helen recognized the toofamiliar signals of

the landslide. While she had been afraid of Nurse Barker succumbing to

some treacherously-administered drug, she was, in reality, nearly

overpowered by natural sleep.

 

As she watched her, Helen realized that her failure to stay awake was

inevitable. Nurse Barker was due for a good night’s rest. She had made a

journey in an open car;… since then she had eaten and smoked heavily,

and had taken a fair quantity of brandy. The air, of the shuttered

house, too, was close.

 

There seemed no connection between this latest example of cause and

effect, and the mysterious conspiracy which threatened Helen’s safety;

yet her fear of being left alone, to watch, was real, because the

incident was timed with such horrible accuracy.

 

Suddenly, Nurse Barker’s head dropped forward with a jerk, which

awakened her. She staggered as she rose slowly to her feet.

 

“Where are you going?” asked Helen anxiously.

 

“Bed.”

 

“Where?”

 

“Patient’s room.”

 

“But you can’t do that. You can’t leave me here, alone.”

 

“The house is locked up,” Nurse Barker said. “You’re safe, as long as

you remember not to open the door. If you, forget again it’s your own

funeral.”

 

“But it’s worse than that,” wailed Helen. “I wouldn’t tell you before,

because I wasn’t sure.”

 

“Sure of what?” repeated Nurse Barker.

 

“I’ve a terrible fear that someone is in the house, locked in with us.”

 

Nurse Barker listened skeptically to the story of the rustle on the back

stairs and the blur of breath on the mirror.

 

“Wind,” she said. “Or mice. I’m going to bed. You can come up too, if

you’re going to throw a fit.”

 

Helen hesitated, swayed by temptation to accept the offer. If they

locked the Professor’s door, as well as the blue room, they would be

secured in an inner citadel, together with the vulnerable members of the

household.

 

But Mrs. Oates would be left outside, in the trenches. In spite of the

special Providence which was supposedly detailed, to guard her, Helen

felt she could not risk leaving her there. “Could we, possibly get

Mrs. Oates up to the blue room?” she asked.

 

“Drag a drunken log up two flights of stairs?” Nurse Barker shook her

head. “I’m not taking any.”

 

“But we can’t leave her there. Remember, we should be held responsible,

tomorrow morning.” Fortunately Helen struck the right note, for Nurse

Barker was caught by the argument.

 

“Oh, well, I’ll have to make do with a lay-down in the drawingroom.”

 

Helen followed her into the big tasteless room, which still blazed with

electric light. It held traces of its last tenants—the careless, bored

youngsters—whose pose of modern indifference had been so fatally

shattered by the split-atom of passion.

 

Coffee-cups, with sodden cigarette-ends inside, were scattered about,

together with stray sheets of newspapers, open magazines, choked

ash-trays. Nurse Barker collected a couple of satin cushions, which lay

on the carpet; tucking them under her head, she stretched herself out on

the vast blue settee.

 

Closing her eyes, she fell, almost instantly, to sleep. “Now, I’m

alone,” thought Helen. “But I can wake her up, if anything happens.”

 

As she kept vigil, she looked around her with strained eyes, dilated to

black pools. There was no danger of her being soothed, insensibly, to

unconsciousness, by the rhythmof Nurse Barker’s heavy regular breathing.

Her brain was excited to a pitch when it became a store-house of jumbled

impressions.

 

But, through the chaos and confusion, she knew that she was chasing a

memory.

 

Suddenly she remembered. The basement window. It had been left open, for

minutes at a stretch, while the bar of its shutter lay uselessly on the

kitchen table, and she and Stephen Rice had gloated over Mrs. Oates’

ancient history.

 

Her heart gave a leap, but she tried to reason herself out of her panic.

It was the hundredth chance that the criminal, with acres of lonely

countryside for shelter, would rush into a house, filled with

people—the thousandth chance, that he would find the one point of

entry.

 

“But, if he did,” thought Helen, “he could hide in any of the dark

cellars. And then, when the coast was clear, he could make a dash

through the scullery and kitchen, for the back-stairs.”

 

There was only one, way of safeguarding Mrs. Oates. She would have to

make a thorough search of the basement. When she had satisfied herself

that it was empty, she must lock the kitchen door, and take away the

key.

 

Nurse Barker did not hear her, as she went out of the room. The woman

was sleeping too heavily to be aware of the noise of the gale, which

shook the long windows, with its fury.

 

Presently she awoke with a start, and sat up rubbing her eyes. Refreshed

and alert, she looked around for Helen, who had kept vigil, by her side.

 

But the girl had disappeared.

 

Dr. Parry, too, no longer stood, like a sentinel, in the garden. Almost

directly after the head and shoulders had been shadowed on the curtain,

the light in Helen’s bedroom went out.

 

As he waited for something else to happen, he did his best to master his

uneasiness. Although he knew that Helen’s bush of hair could not assume,

the silhouette of the clean outline of a man, Miss Warren, or the

nurseminus her veil—might have passed across the blind.

 

Presently he turned away. Conscious that he had let his personal feeling

for a girl work himself up into an unreasonable panic, he was anxious to

get a second opinion on the situation.

 

Cutting across the plantation, he soon reached Captain Bean’s

whitewashed cottage.

 

The blind was undrawn, so that he could see into the lamp-lit

sitting-room. Captain Bean, in his shirt-sleeves, sat at a paper-strewn

table—a tea-pot beside him. It was evident that he was sitting up late,

to write one of his articles on travel.

 

In spite of the interruption to his work, he came, at opce, to the door,

at the sound of Dr. Parry’s knock. His clean-shaven face was a muddle of

small indeterminate features, and his original blond coloring had been

scalded by tropic suns.

 

“You’ll wonder why I’m knocking you up, this time of the night,” said

Dr. Parry. “But I’m a bit puzzled about things up at the Summit.” “Come

in,” invited Captain Bean.

 

Dr. Parry was rather astonished by the gravity with which he listened to

his story.

 

“The fact is,” he admitted, “there’s a girl in that house that. I’m not

quite easy about. She’s such a scrap. And she’s very frightened.”

 

“She’s reason to be,” snapped the Captain, “after that girl I found in

my garden this evening.”

 

Dr. Parry, who wanted the reassurance of scepticism, stared at him with

anxious eyes. He looked haggard and unkempt, while the stubble of his

chin smudged his face, as though with grime.

 

However, the Captain gave a comforting hint of personal bias in his next

sentence.

 

“I never cottoned’ to that house. And I never cottoned to the family.

I’ll walk over with you and have a look round.”

 

“N.d.g.” said Dr. Parry hopelessly. “The place is like a fortress. And

you can ring till you pull the wire out.”

 

“Police?”

 

“I’ve thought of them. But I don’t know what grounds I can give them

for forcing an entry. It’s all in order. And I’m chiefly to blame for

that—curse it.”

 

Dr. Parry got up from his chair, to pace the room ex citedly.

 

“It’s that shadow that gets me,” he said. “In her room. It didn’t look

the shape of any woman.”

 

“Still, there are young men about the house,” remarked the Captain.

 

“No, they’ve all left. There’s only the Professor—assuming he’s shaken

off the effect of quadronex.”

 

Captain Bean grunted as he rammed fresh tobacco into his pipe.

 

“I want the entire log,” he said. “I’ve knocked about all over the Globe

and seen all the ugliest sights. But that girl’s body, in my own garden,

gave me a turn. Since then, I’ve been thinking of all sorts of things.”

 

He listened, with close attention, to the story, but made no comment.

When it was finished, he rose and drew on his Wellington boots.

 

“Where are you going?” asked Dr. Parry.

 

“Bull. To ‘phone the Police-Station.”

 

“Why?”

 

“There’s some things can’t be said. You’ve got to prove