The Second Latchkey Part 7

To Annesley, however, for the first time, this room was neither hideous nor depressing. It seemed years since she had seen it. She was a different girl from the spiritless slave who had crept out after luncheon, in the wake of her mistress: that short, shapeless form with a large head set on a short neck, and a trailing, old-fashioned dress of black.

Now, with a man holding her hands and calling her an angel--a "dear, brave angel!"--it looked to the girl a beautiful room. There was glamour upon it, and upon the rest of the world. Surely life could never seem commonplace again!

"Ssh!" Annesley whispered. "We mustn't wake Mrs. Ellsworth, or she'll run to the front door in her dressing gown and call 'Police!' She's old, but her ears are sharp as a cat's. She can almost hear one _thinking_. But I'm glad she can't quite. How frightful if she could!"

"Nothing about her need be frightful to you any more," said the man. "You have saved me. Soon it will be my turn to rescue you."

"I haven't saved you yet," the girl reminded him. "_They_ are sure to be waiting to see whether you come out. But I've thought of one more thing to make them believe that you live here. I can steal softly upstairs to the front room on the second floor, above the drawing room--the one we call 'Mr. Smith's'--to turn on the lights, and then those hateful creatures will think----". She hesitated, and the colour sprang to her cheeks.

"That Mr. and Mrs. Nelson Smith have gone to their room," the man finished her sentence. His eyes beamed love and grat.i.tude, a glorious reward. "You're wonderful! You forget nothing that can help. Do you know, your trust, your faith in me, in spite of appearances, are the best things that have come into my life? You call those fellows 'hateful creatures,' because they're my enemies. Yet, for all you know, _they_ may be injured innocents and I the 'hateful' one. This may be my way of getting into a rich old woman's house to steal her jewels and money--making you a cat's paw."

"Don't!" Annesley cut him short. "I can't bear to hear you say such things. I trust you because--surely a woman can tell by instinct which men to trust. I don't need proof."

"By Jove!" he exclaimed, his eyes fixed upon her face. "You are the kind of girl whose faith could turn Lucifer back from devil into archangel.

I--you're a million times too good for me. I didn't even _want_ to meet a white saint like you. But now I have met you, nothing on earth is going to make me give you up, if you'll stand by me. I'm unworthy, and I don't expect to be much better. But there's one thing: I can give you a gayer life than here. Perhaps I can even make you happy, if you don't ask for a saint to match yourself. You shall have my love and worship, and I'll be true as steel----"

"Oh, listen!" Annesley broke in. "Don't you hear a sound?"

"Yes," he said. "A door creaked somewhere."

"Mrs. Ellsworth's bedroom door. What shall we do? There's just the short pa.s.sage at the back, and then she'll be at the baize door that opens into the front corridor. Quick! You, not I, must go upstairs--to that second-floor front room I spoke of. Hurry! Before she gets to the swing door----"

Without a word he obeyed, remembering his hat, which he had laid on the table. One step took him out of the lighted dining room into the dimness beyond. Another step and he was on the stairs. There, for the moment at least, he was safe from detection; for the staircase faced the front door, and Mrs. Ellsworth must approach from the back. She would come to the door of the dining room, and, expecting only the girl, would not think of spying at the foot of the stairs.

Besides, there was no light in the corridor except that which streamed through the reddish globes of the chandelier above the dining table. If only the man did not stumble on his way up, the situation might be saved.

He was alert, deft, quick-witted, and light of foot as a panther. Who but he would have remembered at such a moment to s.n.a.t.c.h up a compromising hat and take it with him?

Annesley stood still, rigid in every muscle, fighting to control her heart-throbs, that she might be ready to answer a flood of questions. She dared not even let her thoughts rush ahead. It was all she could do to face the present. The rest must take care of itself.

_He_ had said that she would "make a good actress." Now was the moment to prove that he had judged her truly! She began to unfasten one of her long gray gloves. A b.u.t.ton was loose. She must give it a few st.i.tches to-morrow. Strange that there should be room for such a thought in her mind. But she caught at it gladly.

It calmed her as she heard a shuffling tread of slippered feet along the corridor; and she forced herself not to look up until she was conscious that a shapeless figure in a dressing gown filled the doorway, like a badly painted portrait too large for its frame.

"A nice time of night for you to be back!" barked the bronchitic voice hoa.r.s.ened by years of shut windows. "Give you an inch and you take an ell! I told you half-past ten. Here it is eleven!"

Annesley looked up as if surprised. "Oh, Mrs. Ellsworth, you frightened me!" she exclaimed. "I was delayed. But it won't be eleven for ten minutes. This dining-room clock keeps such good time, you know. And I've been in the house for a few moments. I thought I came so softly! I'm sorry I waked you up."

"Waked me up!" repeated Mrs. Ellsworth. "I have not been to sleep. I never can close my eyes when I know anybody is out and has got to come back, especially a careless creature as likely as not to leave the front door unlatched. That's why I said half-past ten at _latest_! If I don't fall asleep before eleven I get nervous and lose my night's rest. You've heard me say that twenty times, yet you have _no_ consideration!"

"This is the first time I've been out late," Annesley defended herself.

As she spoke she looked at Mrs. Ellsworth as she might have looked at a stranger.

This fat old woman, with hard eyes, low, unintelligent forehead, and sneering yet self-indulgent mouth, had been for five years the mistress of her fate. The slave had feared to speak lest she should say the wrong thing, had hesitated before taking the most insignificant step, knowing that Mrs. Ellsworth's sharp tongue would accuse her of foolishness or worse. But now Annesley wondered at her bondage. If only the man upstairs could escape, never again would she be afraid of this old tyrant.

"You don't need to tell me how long you have been in," said Mrs.

Ellsworth, blissfully ignorant that the iron chain was broken, and enjoying her power to wound. "I've been sitting up watching the clock. My fire's nearly out, and no more coals in the scuttle, the servants all three snoring while I am kept up. If I'm in bed with a cold to-morrow I shall have you to thank, Miss Grayle."

"I'll get you some more coal if you want it," said Annesley. "Hadn't you better go to bed now I am back?"

"Not till I've made you understand that this must never occur again,"

insisted the old woman. (Annesley was shocked at herself for daring to think that the unwieldy bulk in the gray flannel dressing gown looked like a hippopotamus.) "You don't seem to realize that you've done anything out of the way. You're as calm as if it was eight o'clock. Not a word of regret! Not a question as to _my_ evening, you're so taken up with yourself and your smart clothes--clothes I gave you."

"I haven't had much chance to ask questions, have I?" Annesley ventured to remind her mistress. "Won't you tell me about your evening when you are in bed and I have made up your fire? You say it is bad for you to stand."

"I say so because it is the truth, and doctor's orders," rapped out Mrs.

Ellsworth. "I thought I had been upset enough for one evening, but this last straw had to be added to my burden."

"Why, what can have upset you?" Annesley inquired, more for the sake of appearing interested than because she was so. But the look on her mistress's face told her that something really had happened.

"I don't care to be kept out of my bed, to be catechized by you,"

returned Mrs. Ellsworth, pleased that she had aroused curiosity and determined not to gratify it. "Turn on the light in the corridor and give me your arm. My rheumatism is very bad, owing to the chill I have caught, and if I stumble I may be laid up for a week."

The girl proffered a slender arm, hoping that the pounding of her heart might not be detected by Mrs. Ellsworth's hand. She wished that she could have slipped it under her right arm instead of the left, but owing to Mrs. Ellsworth's position in the doorway it was impossible to do so, except by pushing her aside.

She rejoiced, however, in the order to put on the light in the corridor, for this meant that after settling her mistress in bed and transferring the dining-room coal scuttle to the bedroom she must return to switch the electricity off. Then, with Mrs. Ellsworth out of the way, she could help the man upstairs to escape, if the watchers had abandoned the game.

The tyrant, shuffling along in heelless woollen slippers, made the most of her infirmity, and hung on the arm of her tall companion. In silence they pa.s.sed through the baize door at the end of the corridor, so into the addition at the back of the house, which contained Mrs. Ellsworth's room and bath, with another small room suitable for a maid, and occupied by Annesley. This addition had been built a year or two before Annesley's arrival, and saved Mrs. Ellsworth the necessity of mounting and descending the stairs, as she used the dining room to sit in and seldom went into the drawing room on the floor above. Annesley was not surprised to see that the fire in her mistress's room was still a bank of glowing coals, for one of Mrs. Ellsworth's pleasures was to represent herself in the light of a martyr. The girl made no remark, however: she was far too experienced for such mistakes in tact.

Still in silence, she peeled the stout figure of its dressing gown and helped it into a short, knitted bed-jacket.

"When you get the dining-room scuttle, put out the light there and in the corridor," Mrs. Ellsworth said. "If you leave this door open you can see your way with the coals. No use your creaking back and forth just as I've settled down to rest. Besides, there's somebody else to think of. I hope he hasn't been disturbed already!"

"Somebody else?" echoed the girl with a gasp. There was no longer any fear that her curiosity had not caught fire. Mrs. Ellsworth was satisfied.

"Yes, somebody else," she condescended to repeat. "A certain person has come since you went out. I suppose, _in the circ.u.mstances_, you do not need to be told _who_."

"I--I don't know what you mean by 'in the circ.u.mstances'," Annesley stammered.

"That's not intelligent of you, considering where you have spent the evening," sneered Mrs. Ellsworth.

Annesley's ears tingled as if they had been boxed. Could it be that Mrs.

Ellsworth knew of the trick played on her--knew that her companion had not been to the Smiths'?

"I'm afraid I don't understand," she deprecated.

Mrs. Ellsworth sat in bed staring up at her. "Either you are a fool," she said, "or else I have caught you or _him_ in a lie. I don't know which yet. But I soon shall. Perhaps you were not the only person in this house who went out to-night with a latchkey. Now do you guess?"

"No, I don't," the girl had to answer, though a dreadful idea was whirring an alarm in her brain.

"I dare say he is back before this, being more considerate of my feelings than you, and less noisy," went on the old woman, anxious to prove that Annesley Grayle and n.o.body else was responsible for keeping her from rest. "Anyhow, what a man does is not my business. What you do, is. Now, did or did _not_ a certain person walk in and surprise you at the Archdeacon's? Don't stand there blinking like an owl. Speak out. Yes or no?"

"No," Annesley breathed.

"Then you haven't been to the Smiths'. I can more easily believe you are lying than _he_. Hark! There he comes. Isn't that a latchkey in the front door?"

"It--sounds like it. But--perhaps it's a mouse in the wall. Mice--make such strange noises."