As no food appeared to be forthcoming, Astley, like many heavy drinkers, being a very scanty feeder, Murchison, who was feeling pretty hungry by now, took his leave.
‘Find your way out?’ said Astley, who seemed to find it an effort to stir when once he got into his deep armchair.
Murchison nodded and took his departure.
No one was about in the dusty hall, and he marvelled at the thoughtlessness of Astley, who could give a perfect stranger the run of the house in this casual fashion.
He opened the hall door and stepped outside, nearly kicking over a bucket of dirty water as he did so, and there, at his feet, was Ursula Brangwyn on her knees, cleaning the steps.
‘My God!’ he said, incapable of any other form of greeting. If he had found her lying dead he could hardly have been more taken aback. The fastidious Miss Brangwyn cleaning Astley's filthy steps!
She scrambled to her feet when she saw him, and they stood facing each other.
‘What are you doing here?’ she asked in level tones, looking him straight in the face with angry eyes.
Murchison was nonplussed. He did not know what to say. If he confessed he was spying on Astley she might betray him and so put a stop to his activities. But if he did not, what conclusion would she draw, and what would her attitude be towards him?
She settled the matter for him.
‘I have seen your letter to Astley,’ she said.
‘Have you?’ said Murchison, whose wits worked slowly when it came to words.
‘And I think you are a thorough cad to treat my brother like that when he trusts you.’
Murchison flushed scarlet at her accusation, but did not know what to reply. Was she speaking in good faith, or was she trying to draw him?
‘May I ask you a question?’ he said, turning the tables on her as the best way of escape from his dilemma. ‘What are you doing here yourself.’
‘I will tell you what I am doing here, and then you can tell my brother. I have made up my mind. If you had been different it might have been different, but as it is, I am better off with Frank, and any way,’ she said with a bitter laugh, ‘I do not think there is very much to choose between you.’
‘I would do anything in the world to get you out of here, Miss Brangwyn. Won't you come back to your brother with me? Come just as you are, and we'll get a taxi.’
Ursula laughed again. ‘Are you going to fling me into a taxi as you did into the car at Llandudno?’
‘No,’ said Murchison quietly, ‘I shall never make that mistake again.’
Ursula looked at him with a puzzled expression. ‘What do you mean?’
‘It would be no use. You would only run back again. If you will take one step, I will take you the rest of the way, but you have got to do that, this time.’
‘Do you imagine I would take one single step towards you after the way you have behaved towards me?’
‘God knows. Is it any use saying how frightfully sorry I am?’
‘No, none. There are some things that cannot be apologized for.’
‘Well, I suppose we'll have to leave it at that. But, If there is anything I can do to help you, I will, gladly.’
‘The best thing you can do is to go away and leave me alone.’
‘I shan't do that. While there's life there's hope. I shall hope to get you out of this place as long as you're above ground.’
‘It's not the slightest use. I shan't come. I've made up my mind.’
‘You may change it before Astley's finished with you. I shouldn't care to be in your shoes after the way he looked as he spoke of you.’
‘What do you mean? Has he been discussing me with you?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He told me what he intended to do with you. I asked him if you were willing. He said you would be by the time he wanted you.’
‘What did he say he intended to do with me?’
‘I gathered it was the Black Mass.’
‘No, it isn't.’
‘Well, it's as near as makes no matter.’
‘Whatever it is, it is not your business.’
‘It's any decent man's business when a thing like this is afoot!’
‘What do you propose to do about it then?’
‘Wait and see.’
‘Mr. Murchison, you had better be careful what you do. I know of three men who died in this house.’
‘Is that a threat?’
‘No. It isn't. Honestly it isn't. It's a warning.’
‘What do you want to warn me for? I thought you wanted to be rid of me?’
‘So I do, but I don't want to see you murdered. Do go away and leave things alone. You can do no good. My mind is made up.’
‘So is mine.’
‘I don't think it is any use discussing it any longer. Good-bye.’
Ursula Brangwyn turned in at the door and slammed it behind her.
Murchison stood looking at the door for quite a long time. Then he looked down at the bucket at his feet.
‘Good Lord, what a girl!’ he said, shaking his head sadly. ‘She's left her bucket outside!’
He picked up the bucket and the swab, and Astley's steps had such a sluicing as they had never had in their lives.
Ursula Brangwyn went into the inner hall, feeling as if her knees would give way under her. She was trembling all over with excitement after her passage of arms with Murchison. Why was it that he was always able to affect her so powerfully? She sat down in one of the broken-down chairs to recover. What an utter rotter the man was. How completely Alick had been taken in over him. It was too bad. First Monks, and now Murchison, and he had been so good to both of them. Alick would be heartbroken when he found out about Murchison, for he had thought such worlds of him. For some unaccountable reason Ursula Brangwyn found herself very near tears.
To pull herself together she went out to finish her task on the steps. Astley had set it her as a test, saying it would be very good for her, and she knew he was right, for anything more alien to her nature and experience than to clean steps could hardly be imagined.
She opened the door and stepped out, and was amazed to find that the bucket was empty, the steps all neatly cleaned, and the filthy swab wrung out and hung on the bucket. Who had done the job? It could only have been one person. Ursula looked down the street to see if he were still in sight, but he was not. Was the man who had cleaned those steps for her the same one who proposed to rob her brother who trusted him? Yet she could not get away from that letter. There, in Murchison's own handwriting, was the statement. She knew his handwriting, for she had seen his other letter.
She went slowly up to her room, locked the door to safeguard herself from intrusion, and sat down on the narrow camp-bed with its army blankets. Astley believed in training souls by driving them hard along the line of greatest resistance. If they yielded, the job was done. So Ursula Brangwyn had the worst room in the house, a mean slip of a room, cut off from a larger one by a very inadequate partition, and looking into the well of the house, so that it got neither light nor air.
But the upheaval of her disillusionment over Murchison had been so great that she neither knew nor cared what her surroundings were like.
She got her handbag out of a drawer and drew from it Murchison's letter, written on the notepaper of the little Welsh hotel, and read it through again. For the first time it struck her that Murchison's two letters, the one to Astley and the one to her, were quite different. She took out the one he had written to Astley, and that Astley, with his usual carelessness, had not troubled to recover from her after giving it to her to read, and re-read that also, her blood boiling at the references to herself.
What an extraordinary man Murchison was, an absolute Jekyll and Hyde. Which was the real man? The Murchison who had cleaned the steps for her, or the one who had written this revolting letter to Astley? It was curious, comparing the two letters, to see how the essential Murchison came out in the second and longer one. It was exactly the way he spoke; she could see the man rise before her as she read it, and her eyes filled with tears for some unknown reason. The first letter was not a bit like him. Or, rather, it was like him at his worst. Like he was the day they had had lunch together in her brother's absence, and she had thought him such an appalling lout. The letters were puzzling. The handwriting was obviously identical, and he spelt faithfully with one ‘I’ in both letters, and yet the letters did not seem as if they were from the same man. What was the answer to the riddle? Who had written the second letter if Murchison had not? For her whole case turned on that letter and his perfidy. And yet Murchison, when taxed with it, had not denied that it was his letter. She read it through again. The turn of a phrase struck her as familiar. Then the answer to the riddle leapt to her mind. The letter had been written by Murchison at Alick's dictation. This was Alick trying to express Murchison, and doing it successfully. The other letter was Murchison trying to express himself, and entirely falling to do so.
Then, If that were the case, her violent reaction had been entirely groundless. The man who had shown her such kindness and understanding when she had had her nerve-storms at the flat, and the man who had cleaned the steps for her, were one and the same person. And possibly the alleged rival, in whom Astley had rubbed her nose with great gusto, might be as fictitious as the rest of Murchison's pseudo-perfidy. Though Murchison had never betrayed his feelings by word or deed, there had been times when there had been a look in his eyes - but then one could never be quite sure. But if he had been fond of her, and had overheard her unlucky words in the cottage on the night of his arrival, they must have wounded him very deeply, and the quarrel at Llandudno had been the result.
But, in any case, her feelings had undergone a revulsion. That one kindly act in doing the steps for her, an act that one could not conceive any member of Astley's entourage as even imagining, had swung her completely round. The man who had done that was someone quite out of the ordinary. She decided that even if she and Murchison could not polarize, she would not remain any longer in Astley's sordid and dangerous house. She had been an utter fool ever to enter it again after her previous experiences there, which would not bear thinking of. She took off her borrowed overall, put on her hat, powdered her nose in front of the fly-blown glass, and went downstairs.
In the hall she met the butler, who, grinning widely, leant his back against the door. ‘Will you kindly open the door?’ she said. ‘I am going out.’
Grinning still wider, he put out a hand like a Brandenburg ham and pushed her gently into the inner hall and shut the door behind her.