My Little Sister Part 37

I was following, when the man who had taken me in to dinner said: "This is a comfortable chair." So I sat down.

He said something about the strangeness of London "just at first." It would pa.s.s away.

I told him I hoped Bettina would find it so. As for me, I was only staying till to-morrow.

He looked so surprised that I explained I had to go back and take care of my mother.

"You have never been to London since you were a child--and you come all this way just for a few hours?"

"I came to take care of Betty," I said. "She has never travelled alone."

He looked at me: "And you?"

"Oh, I haven't either. To-morrow will be the first time. But then, I am older."

He said nothing for several moments. I looked across the room to where I could see the back of Bettina's head, between the bare crown of the Colonel and The Tartar's black bullet. The Tartar was bending over towards Bettina. Aunt Josephine sat near them, facing the door, and us.

My man looked up suddenly and saw the eyes of the Grey Hawk on us.

"We must talk!" he said, with a laugh, "or they will think we aren't getting on. That isn't a comfortable chair after all." He stood up. I said it was quite comfortable. While he was insisting, a servant came in to speak to my aunt. I caught a glimpse through the door of a footman going upstairs with a short, fattish young man. Too young, I thought, to be another doctor.

We went to the end of the room, and we sat on a sofa near the fireplace--one of those sofas you sink down in till you feel half buried. I didn't like to say I hated it, for he was taking so much trouble. He put a great down cushion at my back, as if I were an invalid.

"There! Now, can you sit quite still for a few minutes? As still as if I were taking your picture?" I said I supposed I could. "And must I look pleasant?" I laughed. He hesitated and then: "How good are your nerves?"

he asked.

"Very good," I boasted.

But he was grave.

"Have you ever fainted?"

"Never!" I said, a little indignantly.

"Could you hear something very unexpected, even horrible, and not cry out?"

"You know something!" I thought of an accident to my mother. "You have news for me...."

"Careful," he said in a sharp whisper. "You told me you could keep perfectly still. If you can't I won't go on." I begged him to go on, and I kept my face a blank. He turned his head slightly and took in the group at the other end of the room. He sat so a moment, with his eyes still turned away, while he said: "Everything--more than life, depends on your self-control during the next few minutes."

I sat staring at him.

"Have you any idea where you are?"--and still he looked not at me but towards the others.

My first bewilderment was giving way to fear. No fear now of anything he could tell me. Fear of the man himself. I saw it all. Not that iron-grey woman who had left the room with the servant, not the brilliant lady upstairs, but the person who had set me thinking wild thoughts at dinner about barred windows and private lunatic asylums.

The man sitting not three feet way from me--was mad.

I calculated the distance between me and the other group, while I answered him: "I am at my aunt's--Mrs. Harborough's."

"Where does your aunt live?"

"At 160 Lowndes Square."

"You are twenty minutes from Lowndes Square. You are in one of the most infamous houses in Europe."

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE GREY HAWK

Minutes seemed to go by. Vague hints from servants, things I had read in the papers--and still I sat there, not moving by so much as a hair.

He was looking at me now and telling me to "keep cool." And then: "I suppose you know there _are_ such places----" He interrupted himself to say: "Remember! A careless look or move would mean--well, it would mean ruin. _Now_ do you understand?"

Beyond a doubt I did. If I moved or cried for help, he would kill me before my aunt could get back; before I could cross the room. Though why he should wish to kill me I could form no idea.

"You must have time to recover," he said, in that muted, uneven voice.

"I will shield you while you pull yourself together." He had bent forward till his shoulders shut out my view of the group at the other end of the room.

I shrank further back into the cushions. But: "I have myself in hand, now," I said; for I remembered you must never let the insane know you are afraid.

Betty's laughter sounded far away.

"Take your time," he said. "They're enjoying themselves. They haven't even rung for the cognac and liqueurs yet." They would make Bettina and me drink a liqueur, he said. Or if they failed in that, they'd say, "'a thimble-full of coffee, then.'" And our coffee would be "doctored."

"But we've had coffee," I said, in a new access of terror. Was it drugged coffee that made me feel so lamed?

"That was all right," he said. "That was to steady _us_."

He did not look as if he needed steadying. What if he were not mad?

"Be careful," he said again. "Remember I am running a ghastly risk in telling you. But you are facing a ghastly certainty if I don't."

I sat in that stillness of stark terror--staring at him.

And as I stared I found myself clinging to the thought that had been horror's height a little while before. "Pray G.o.d he's mad," I kept saying inwardly.

If I could keep my head, he said, I had no cause to be so frightened. It would be some little time before he could give me up without rousing suspicion.

"Before you give me up!" I imagined the Grey Hawk swooping to s.n.a.t.c.h me.

"Before I help you to get out of this," he explained. "And when I do, you will perhaps remember it is at a sacrifice. Greater than I supposed I could feel."

I moved at that--but like a sleep-walker on the edge of waking.