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

CHAPTER XXVII

“SECURITY IS MORTAL’S CHIEFEST ENEMY”

 

At first, Nurse Barker could not credit the fact that Helen was gone.

She looked around her, searching, in vain, for a small blue figure amid

the crowded confusion of settees and chairs. Only the ginger cat—aroused

by her noisy movements—jumped off an old-fashioned Prince of Wales

divan, and stalked from the room.

 

Thoroughly aroused, she followed him into the hall, where she raised her

voice in a shout.

 

“Miss Capel.”

 

There was no reply—no soft scurry of felt shoes. She drew her brows

together, in displeasure, while her eyes glowed green with jealousy.

 

She had no fear of misfortune to Helen. In her opinion the Summit was

impregnable. She had been playing on. The girl’s fear, from a double

motive—to urge her to super-caution, and also, in revenge for fancied

insult.

 

She told herself that Dr. Parry had managed to get in touch with Helen

in spite of his intercepted note.

 

“She’s let him in.” she thought. “Well, it’s none of my business.”

 

With professional caution, she always avoided contact with scandal. If

there was suspicion of irregular conduct in any house where she nursed,

she knew nothing about it.

 

When, on the following morning, the Professor or Miss Warren questioned

her about Dr. Parry’s presence at the Summit, she would be able to

assure them that she had kept to her proper place—the patient’s room.

 

With a twisted virtuous smile, she went upstairs to the blue room. As

she entered Lady Warren stirred in bed.

 

“Girl,” she called.

 

“Now, that’s not the way to speak to your nurse,” remarked Nurse Barker.

 

Lady Warren struggled to a sitting posture.

 

“Go away,” she said. “I want the girl”

 

“Shut your eyes and go to sleep. It’s very late.”

 

Lady Warren, however, looked wakeful as an owl, as she stared at Nurse

Barker.

 

“It’s very quiet,” she said. “Where’s everybody?”

 

“Everybody’s in bed, and asleep.”

 

“Tell the Professor I want him. You can go through the dressingroom.”

 

The remark reminded Nurse Barker of a grievance. “Do you know the

connecting-door won’t lock?” she asked.

 

“You needn’t worry.” The old woman chuckled. “He won’t come in after

you. Your day’s over.”

 

Nurse Barker disdained to notice the insult. She had no warning of the

peril which actually would steal through that door, or the shock of

unseen attack—the grip of choking fingers around her throat—the roar of

a sea in her ears—the rush of darkness…

 

In her security, all she wanted was to settle down for the night. She

was growing sleepy again. As she had no intention of explaining the

sleeping draught fiasco to Lady Warren, she made a pretense of awakening

the Professor. Passing through the dressingroom, she entered his

bedroom.

 

His chair was placed directly under the high light, so that a pool of

shadow was thrown over his face, which looked unnatural, as though

composed of yellow wax. To increase the resemblance, his seated figure

had the rigid fixity of a mechanical chess-player. “Is the Professor

coming?” asked Lady Warren eagerly, as Nurse Barker returned to the blue

room.

 

“No, he’s fast asleep.”

 

Lady Warren watched her as she crossed the room and locked the door.

 

“That’ll keep her out,” she thought with a smile of grim satisfaction.

 

“Why did you do that?” asked Lady Warren.

 

“I always lock my door in a strange house,” replied Nurse Barker.

 

“I always kept mine open, so that I could get out quicker. When you lock

out, you never know what you’re locking in.”

 

“Now, I don’t want to hear anything more from you,” said Nurse Barker,

kicking off her shoes. “I’m going to lie down.”

 

But before she dropped down upon the small bed, she crossed to the other

door, which led into his dressingroom, and turned the key, as though for

extra security. In spite of the precaution, she did not go to sleep. Her

thoughts circled enviously around Helen and her lover.

 

She wondered where they were—what they did.

 

At that moment, Dr. Parry was suffering solitary torment, while Helen

endured her self-imposed ordeal—alone. Down in the basement, a

flickering candle in her hand, she groped amid the mice, the spiders,

and the shadows.

 

These shadows held possession of the passage—tenants of the night. They

shifted before her, sliding along the pale-washed wall, as though to

lead the way. Whenever she entered an office, they crouched on the other

side of the door, waiting for her.

 

She was nerved up to meet an attack which did not come, but which lurked

just around the corner. It was perpetual postponement, which drew her

on, deeper and deeper, into the labyrinth.

 

Footsteps dogged her all the way; they stopped after she halted, with

the perfect mimicry of an echo. Whenever she slanted a startled glance

behind her, she could see no one; yet she could not be assured that she

was alone.

 

Just as she turned round the bend of the passage and entered the pitchy

alley of Murder Lane, someone blew out her candle.

 

She was left in the darkness, trapped between the window and the place

where a girl had met with death. In that moment of horror, she heard the

window burst open and the pelt of leaping footsteps.

 

Suddenly, fingers stole around her throat and tightened to a grip. A

heavy breathing gasped through the air, like a broken pump. She felt the

frantic hammering of her heart as she was swept away on a tidal-wave of

horror.

 

Presently, the pressure on her neck lessened, as her petrified muscles

relaxed to elastic tissue. In sudden realization of her own involuntary

action, she released her throat from the clutch of her hand.

 

The draught which had blown out her candle, still beat on her cheek and

neck. Yet, even while she knew that she was the victim of imagination,

her nerve had crashed completely. Breaking free from the spell which

paralyzed her legs, she rushed along the passage, through the kitchen,

where Mrs. Oates snored in her chair, up the stairs, and back to the

dining-room.

 

The ginger cat occupied Nurse Barker’s vacant place on the settee, his

head resting upon the satin cushion. As she stared at him, he jumped

down and followed her up to the first landing.

 

Still quivering with panic, Helen turned the handle of the door

desperately. When she realized that Nurse Barker had locked her out of

the blue room, she was filled with a healing glow of indignation.

 

Nurse Barker took no notice of her knocks, until they grew so frantic

that she was forced to get off her bed.

 

“Go away,” she called. “You’re disturbing the patient”

 

“Let me in,” cried Helen.

 

Nurse Barker unlocked the door, but did not open it.

 

“Go back to your doctor,” she said.

 

“My—what? I’m alone.”

 

“Alone, now, maybe. But you’ve been talking to Dr. Parry.”

 

“I don’t know what you mean.”

 

When Nurse Barker sudden threw open the door, Helen had a shock of

wonder at her altered appearance. She had removed her veil, as well as

her shoes. Instead of the cropped head of Helen’s imagination, her

masculine features were crowned with permanently waved hair.

 

“Where have you been?” she asked.

 

“Down in the basement,” Helen gulped guiltily. “I—I remembered that

I’d left a window open. So I went down to see if anyone had got in.”

 

The girl looked so confused that Nurse Barker realized that her

suspicions had been baseless. She turned back to the blue room.

 

“I’m going to rest,” she said, “even if I can’t sleep.”

 

“May I come in with you?” pleaded Helen.

 

“No. Go to bed, or lie down in the drawingroom.”

 

Her advice seemed sound, yet Helen still clung to company.

 

“But I ought to stay with you,” she said, using Nurse Barker’s own

argument. “You see, if anyone’s after me, he’ll have to dispose of you,

first”

 

“Who’s after you?” asked Nurse Barker scornfully; whirling round, like a

weathercock in a gale.

 

“The maniac, according to you.”

 

“Don’t be a fool. How could he get in, through locked doors?”

 

Helen felt as though she were standing on solid ground, after struggling

for foothold in a quicksand.

 

“Then why have you been frightening me?” she asked reproachfully. “It’s

cruel”

 

“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.