XIII

Once the environs of London were left behind, the night was dark and sometimes a little misty. Most of the time I could see no stars. The headlights of the car rushed ahead cleaving the blackness, seeming to cut a swath through hedgerows and trees and fields. Eventually there were hills, and the roads grew even more winding. Sometimes we caught the shine of water as we swept past ponds or lakes. When we could we skirted the larger towns, and slowed for crooked village streets.

For a while we drove in silence and Justin held the wheel as though he would urge his own desire for speed upon the car. He drove well and never recklessly, but we were pushing to the limit of what these winding English roads would take. I did not know what it was he so feared that lay ahead. There was no chance of our overhauling Marc, who always drove as though he bore a charmed life—and tonight was in no condition for such driving. In the back seat Maggie hardly stirred, and I did not look at her during that first hour.

But we could not go on like that, endlessly bound by tension. We could not, by hurling ourselves at the road, stop whatever might be happening on ahead. Unexpectedly, it was Maggie who broke the strain of that long silence.

“Isn’t it time you stopped feeling guilty about Alicia?” she asked Justin. “You’ve held yourself responsible for steps she has taken deliberately with her eyes open.”

“I am responsible,” Justin said. “I made what has happened possible.”

“Nonsense!” Maggie cried. “It’s the chess game all over again—your taking the blame when the rook was destroyed, though you weren’t at fault and we all guessed as much.”

“Marc has always been too much protected,” I put in bitterly.

“Marc? Who’s talking about Marc?” Maggie challenged.

“But it was Marc who destroyed the rook, and—”

“Of course it wasn’t!” Justin snapped.

I moved my hands despairingly. “Why can’t you say what you mean? Why can’t we speak the truth for once—all of us?”

Justin reached out to clasp his hand about my own tense fingers. “Hush, darling. Not now. Be patient for a little while longer, Eve. The game isn’t over and I’m worried about the next play.”

After that there was silence again, with only the wind rushing past through the night. Sometimes the stars came from behind the clouds, but there was no moon. Neither Justin nor I spoke again. It was Maggie who once more broke the silence, miles later.

“Why are you in such a desperate hurry, Justin? What does it matter now if Marc and Alicia have gone home? What are you worried about?”

He answered her coolly. “I’m concerned about two things. One of them is leaving Alicia with Marc. He’ll undoubtedly blame her for what happened to the club. The other is my concern for my car and my workshop back at Athmore, if Marc gets home ahead of me, as he’s certain to—”

Maggie laughed unpleasantly. “You’ve never been fair to Marc. Do you really think he’d touch your car?”

“I don’t know,” said Justin, his tone grim.

I remembered Marc’s words—that Justin had always won, so far.

After a while the headlights and the rushing wind made me sleepy and I tried to curl sideways with my cheek against the back of the seat so I might doze a little. But every now and then I’d jerk awake and find that I’d been drowsing with my head against Justin’s arm. I wanted to stay that way and I knew he wanted me there. But I could not stay—not yet. After a while I sat up very straight, making myself as uncomfortable as I could in order to keep starkly awake. But that was even worse because of the turns and twists my thoughts could take, the unanswerable questions that kept rising in my mind.

Alicia, wealthy and secure, able to fend for herself, was one thing. Alicia, cheated of all she had, or losing it disastrously, was something else. Justin would not walk out completely on an Alicia who needed him in her desperation, and somehow I would not have loved him as much if he had been willing to. But how far must he go in helping her—how far?

Once we stopped at a hotel in a good-sized town and found someone to make us tea, bring us a bit of stale cake, permit us to break the strain of urgent night driving. But even then we drank quickly, scalding our throats, choking on dry crumbs—and were back in the car as quickly as possible.

At least we were awake now, and Maggie was talking again, harking back to what Justin had said at the club.

“Whatever happens, you can’t lose Athmore, Justin. You can’t go down such a foolish road!”

“Athmore won’t be lost,” Justin said. “The house is a piece of England. It will go on for a long while, in any case. Does it matter, really, who lives there now?”

I heard my own voice, objecting. “It matters to you!”

Justin kept his eyes on the road. “Who am I? How long does any one man last? I’m already older than John Edmond Athmore was when he died, and his death had no effect on Athmore Hall. It did not burn down till long after, and out of the ashes sprang the present Athmore.”

Maggie answered him quietly. “If this house ends, no one will build it up again. Those times are gone forever.”

“I know,” Justin said, and we drove on in silence.

He was Athmore now. No one else would preserve it with such love and care. But this talk of burning houses disturbed me, made me anxious and uneasy. There were often flames when I dreamed of Athmore.

I began to strain my eyes to watch for the place from which we could see the house long before it was reached.

A lopsided moon was up by this time, and it appeared intermittently through scattered clouds. The roads grew more familiar. We could see out across fields, and there was no glow of anything burning. At last the distant outlines of Athmore rose in a dark hump on the horizon, briefly glimpsed before woods closed about it. The house was there and I breathed more easily. One dread could be dismissed.

To my surprise, Justin did not turn down the road that led toward the house. Instead he chose a side road that wound off in another direction. In a moment I realized that our detour would take us to Grovesend.

Maggie stirred in the back seat and sat up to look around. She must have noted our change of course, but she said nothing. Her angry impulse to prick at Justin and make him equally angry had died away. Once when I looked back at her I saw her face, white and strained in the moonlight, and knew that she was now every bit as tense as Justin. It was not a burning of the house either of them feared, but something more ominous, and even more dreadful because it concerned someone near to them both. Marc, who was brother and foster son.

Alicia’s woods and rhododendron hedges grew high, blocking out any sight of her house from afar. We were upon it suddenly and Justin drove around the end of the hedge and stopped before her door. Marc’s car stood at the curb and lights glowed at lower windows.

Justin got out at once. “Take it,” he said to me. “Drive back to Athmore with Maggie.”

I did not want him to go into that house. All my doubts of Marc, and of Alicia too, rose up to shatter my control.

“No, please!” I begged him. “If you must go in there, let us wait for you here.”

“I don’t want you to wait,” he said flatly. “I can get home on foot if I have to. I’ll watch you out of sight, but don’t come back—either of you.”

“Do as he says,” Maggie ordered me.

We were out of sight of the small hidden house all too quickly. There was no use in looking back. The car was unfamiliar to me and I drove slowly, unused to the righthand drive. Behind me Maggie said nothing at all. Raw nerves had been exposed between us, and we could not pretend to be at ease with each other.

Like Grovesend, Athmore was lighted, despite the hour. The outdoor dogs came barking, and we saw that the windows of the Hall of Armor were bright, though it was nearly four in the morning. More lights burned above in the great library, but the wings were dark except for the usual dim hall lights. No lamp burned in Justin’s room, or in Dacia’s above.

I braked the car beside the garage and saw with relief the guard posted on duty. While Maggie quieted the dogs, I jumped out and spoke to the man. He told me that there had been no disturbances, that all was well. I had to see Justin’s special car for myself. The small garage was locked, but the guard had a key and I asked him to open the door and turn on a light inside. The gray car stood untouched and safe, as Justin had left it. No one had meddled with it tonight while he was away. Or perhaps that was only because Marc had not reached home as yet. He had stopped first at Alicia’s, not knowing that we would follow soon after.

“Come along, Eve,” Maggie said wearily, all her animosity gone. “Let’s go inside. I want to talk to Nigel. He must be reading in the library. Justin’s no use to us now.”

We left the guard to put the car we’d arrived in away, and went toward the house. Morton met us at the door, looking sleepy, as though he had been napping on a couch downstairs.

“You’ve been up all night?” Maggie asked, considerate as always of those who worked for her.

“I thought it best, Mrs. Graham,” he said. “Mr. Barrow is also waiting up in the library. Mr. Marc phoned on his way home, but he has not appeared.”

She thanked him and went toward the stairs. I came with her, having no desire to go off alone to my cold, dark room. I would wait up until Justin returned from Grovesend. I cared about nothing else.

In the library Nigel sat before a table, amusing himself with a game of solitaire. He looked up as Maggie and I hurried in, and she went toward him at once—though not into his arms as a woman might, returning to the man she loved. He rose to greet her, nodded to me, and watched as she dropped into a chair.

Her blurted account of what had happened at the club seemed almost incoherent, and when Nigel turned to me in bewilderment, I supplemented her story. He heard us out, and when Maggie came to a faltering halt he chided her gently.

“What has upset you so? How is anything different from what it was before? Of course it’s quixotic of Justin to take on Marc’s debts under the changed circumstances, but fairly typical, wouldn’t you say? What is worrying you, Maggie?”

“I’m not sure,” Maggie admitted. “Marc came back to Grovesend with Alicia, and I don’t know what he means to do. He’s been drinking and—and—” She broke off, distraught and unlike herself.

Nigel remained unperturbed. “Look, my dear, you’ve been up all night and you’re weary to the point of making no sense. I’m fagged too. That telephone call of Marc’s sounded a bit reckless, so I stayed up. But since he’s made it home safely, I think we can all turn in.”

“No, no! You don’t understand!” Maggie grew frantic again. “I’m afraid of what Alicia may incite him to do. Everything has gone against her and she’ll place the blame wildly. I’ve seen in the past how she can stir Marc up when she chooses. You don’t know him as I do, Nigel. He can take terrible chances! He can be dangerous when he’s angry.”

“Dangerous to whom?” Nigel asked, still quiet and reasonable.

Maggie almost snapped at him. “To Justin, of course. Marc is going to blame what has happened on Justin. He has always been jealous of his brother, and if Alicia suspects that Justin still loves Eve in spite of everything, she may—”

Nigel threw a quietly amused look in my direction. “Do you mean that our plan to bring Eve back and recall Justin to his senses is working out?”

“Nigel, be serious!” Maggie cried. “You should have seen Justin’s face tonight whenever he looked at Eve. I’ll never again doubt his feeling for her. But he’s still driven by this sense of responsibility toward Alicia.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Nigel said.

“Of course it’s ridiculous. But I can’t expect you to understand how Justin feels.”

“Thank you,” Nigel said dryly. “I fancy Justin can take care of himself and of Marc as well. Though I believe you’re right to distrust Alicia. In any event, there’s absolutely nothing we can do at the moment. Aren’t you willing to grant that, at least?”

Maggie moaned and twisted her hands together, and I stared at her in growing dismay. What she had said made increasing sense to me. Nigel might be calm about this, since it was not really his affair. Now he was the outsider—while I was not. I was involved all the way down the line as far as Justin was concerned. I belonged to Athmore. And I could see what Alicia might do with Marc.

In that moment of helpless silence we heard the approach of a car, heard the dogs barking again.

“There’s Justin now!” I cried and ran toward the north wing where I could find a window.

Nigel and Maggie came after me as I hurried through the door of Justin’s room and toward a side window, flinging the draperies apart to look out upon the garage area.

A car drove onto the concrete apron and switched off its headlights. The dogs stopped barking at a word from the driver, but this was Marc’s red Mercedes, and Marc was alone in the car. Maggie leaned on the windowsill beside me, with Nigel just behind us, and as we watched, Marc got out and spoke to the guard. The man came with him to the small garage, and opened it for him just as he had done for me. I told myself that all Marc wanted was to see that Justin’s car was safe, but I watched tensely and I heard Maggie’s quiet intake of breath as she saw what he was about.

Marc disappeared into the garage and the guard returned to his post. A moment later Justin’s gray car backed out upon the apron. There was no engine roar and its brakes did not squeal. Nevertheless, Marc was backing, stopping, turning at a furious rate. The guard swung about and shouted something at him, but Marc paid no attention. He pointed the car in the direction he wanted and picked up speed so swiftly that he was off along the test course before we knew what he was about.

Maggie spoke desperately in my ear. “That’s the direction of the quarry! I was right. He’s going to smash up Justin’s car.”

What anyone said after that, I don’t know. I simply started running. I tore down the stairs, holding onto the banister, taking several steps at a time. As I crossed the hall below, Deirdre bounded toward me, came with me as I went out the front door. Together we dashed for the embankment, and down it to the garage area. The startled guard said something to me, but I paid no attention. I climbed into Marc’s red car and Deirdre jumped in beside me in the front seat. For a moment I was afraid the unfamiliar dashboard would defeat me, but I had ridden in this car with Dacia and I managed to start the motor and switch on the headlights.

I did not attempt the turns Marc had made. Instead, I drove straight off across Athmore’s wide lawns, past the topiary garden, bumping over the turf, heading for the place on the test road where I knew I could cut Marc off. If anyone shouted behind me, I caught no more than a whisper on the wind that whipped my hair into a flowing mass behind my head. Deirdre had caught my urgency, and she sat beside me on the slippery seat, whimpering her excitement. I was glad of her company. I might need her now.

The test road cut suddenly across between me and the woods. I turned the wheel hard left and drove the car at a diagonal across the road, blocking the way. At some distance beyond, the dirt road to the quarry began, but in this narrow place, there was no way for Marc to get past. He could turn around and reach the quarry by a roundabout course, but by that time someone else would surely stop him.

Almost at once I saw the lights of his car coming around a curve, slashing yellow into the straightaway as he headed toward me. I opened the car door and pushed Deirdre out. She would be of no use to me against Marc, but she might be able to bring help.

“Go get Justin!” I ordered. She pricked up her ears and looked at me questioningly. “Go, Deirdre!” I shouted to her, and then paid her no more attention.

I did not think Marc would crash into the Mercedes which he prized so highly, but I did not want him to find me here alone. Trusting my own headlights to blind him, I let myself out on the side of the woods and pressed myself against the remnants of an old stone wall.

Marc came on in Justin’s car, his lights striking the Mercedes to a blaze of red. To my dismay, there seemed no break in the wall bordering the edge of the road, no way to let myself through to a safe hiding place in, the woods. I must cross the road somehow and run for the immediate grounds behind Athmore.

Justin’s gray car slammed to a stop as Marc put on the brakes. I crept behind the Mercedes and peered out behind its far side under cover of my own flaring headlights. I could hear Marc get out of the car though I could not see him, blinded by the duel of lights. I could hear him coming toward me through the brush at the side of the road, and I ran across an edging of lawn and flung myself into the shadow of a huge bush, fearfully conscious of my light-colored coat, and hampered by my long dress. From this new shelter I looked back at the two cars—the Mercedes placed at a diagonal, with Justin’s car only a foot or two from it, the headlight beams of the two crossing and entangled.

I could see Marc now. He stood at the side of the road, looking about him. His right hand moved, and in the glare of light before he sprang aside into darkness, I saw the gleam of a gun barrel. Marc had a revolver in his hand. He was searching for me with a gun.

There was an open space across which I must run. I had no other choice. I bent low and dashed across the space. If he could not see me from where he stood, he must have heard me, for he shouted for me to stop. Again I crouched low and ran, grateful for clouds across the moon, and for the black shapes of the topiary garden rising between me and Athmore. In a moment I was in the garden, darting behind the black queen on the edge of the vast chessboard.

I could hear Marc running across the road, and then silence as turf hid the sound of his steps. Swiftly I darted behind another chessman, and then another, until I had run across the intervening space between the opposing lines and could crouch behind the figure of a knight on the far side of the board. Behind me the narrow, sloping lawn led upward to the house.

But now Marc too had reached the chessboard, and it was as if we were engaged in a dreadful game of our own. I could no longer be sure of anything. Each eerie figure of yew menaced me, and I no longer knew whether Marc was between me and the house—or from which side he threatened me. He had not shouted again. He moved silently now, stalking me, with his gun ready, and only an occasional rustle of sound to betray his presence.

Sudden movement near by startled me, and I almost gasped aloud in fright. A dark figure dived from behind a bishop and crouched beside me. Nigel’s voice said, “Get down! Get down!”

The sound of the shot from Marc’s gun was deafening. The bullet clipped the very nose of my sheltering knight, but his horse’s body hid us and Nigel and I huddled low behind the yew.

“Marc means to kill me!” I mouthed the words to Nigel.

“Keep down,” he whispered, “and I’ll get you out of this.”

I crouched on my hands and knees, noting with dread that the moon had begun to emerge from behind a cloud. I was reminded frighteningly of that night of moonlight and shadow on the roofs of Athmore. But this was far worse. Now I knew my enemy. Now I knew for certain who it was that stalked me.

Nigel pressed my arm to indicate that I was to stay where I was, and crept away, to rise in the shadow of a nearby rook. I dared not look for Marc, and I watched the dark shape that was Nigel instead. He had put on a dark-green jacket and a cap that blended into the darkness and made him far less a target than I in my lime-colored dress. The moon came slowly from behind a gilt-edged cloud, and the garden was eerily quiet. Where Marc was I did not know, but I sensed that Nigel had him in view between his own concealing yew branches. In the brightening moonlight only Nigel’s face and hands were visible to me.

“Come,” he whispered urgently. “Come here! Marc can see you there.”

I moved toward him keeping close to the earth, creeping into the shelter of the tall green rook. Marc did not fire again. Nigel reached out to pull me to the safety of black shadow and I crouched behind him, shielded by his body. When I looked up he smiled grimly and nodded to me.

“The rook has been useful again,” he whispered. “This is the very one that replaced the rook that was destroyed years ago.”

My mouth was dry, my hands clammy with fear. I could just make out the peak of his hunting cap as I stared up at him. The silhouette was frighteningly familiar. This was the outline that had begun to haunt my dreams. I had seen it in a snapshot—a figure in hunting cap and jacket, who watched from a shelter of shrubbery—watched a man who stood beside a crumbling wall.

As I stared up at him in dawning horror, Nigel raised one hand and I saw that he too held a gun. He was taking careful aim. Somehow I found my voice.

“Marc!” I shouted. “Marc, take care!”

The second shot crashed across the garden and Marc cried out. I heard the thud of his fall. There were other sounds now—sounds from the house. But when I would have flung myself into the open to run toward Marc, Nigel caught me by the arm.

“That was very foolish of you,” he said softly. “Now you’ll have to come with me.”

I could feel the hard nose of the gun in my side, and Nigel’s fingers pressing cruelly into my arm. The face of the enemy had changed so swiftly that I could not right my thinking in this weird game, but I knew the rook was moving to checkmate.

We went together, running behind the bushes, while I prayed for the moon to stay out, so they could see us from the house and come after us quickly. But this was a night of uncertainty, of rolling clouds and fitful moonlight. Even as we ran, darkness swept the garden again. Under its cover we crossed the open stretch of lawn, returned to the road. Once I stumbled and almost fell, but Nigel pulled me up and dragged me with him. He pushed me into the front seat of Marc’s open car, making it very clear that he would not hesitate to shoot if I tried to get away. Then he backed the Mercedes from the vicinity of Justin’s gray car, turned it around and set off along the road, driving quietly, without acceleration.

Behind us in the topiary garden I heard someone shout and knew that Marc had been found. But all that was receding into the background. Already house and garden seemed remote and far in the past. As he drove Nigel rested his automatic on the wheel and I knew he watched me sidelong, so that I dared not move.

I expected him to head for the highway in an effort to escape, but when we came to the bumpy, winding course that led to the quarry he turned the car onto it, driving easily and without haste. I did not like our taking this road. They would not reach us quickly now.

“This is a dead end,” I said. “The road doesn’t go anywhere.” He knew that well enough, but I had to learn what he meant to do.

“Yes, the road is exactly that,” he said dryly, “though I’m sure I meant no pun.”

I shivered at the ugly joke. “I can’t believe—” I began.

He stopped me with a sound of irritation. “Believe—believe! What could you expect when you told Maggie you knew who was in that picture, and then later told me the same thing? Didn’t you guess you were playing with fire to taunt me like that? You had to be stopped from further chatter. I managed to get the print out of your handbag when I heard that it existed, but I couldn’t find the negative. What did you do with it? I tore your room apart that second time, looking for it.”

“How could you, when you were on the far side of the roof—?” I broke off, knowing that it would have been simple enough for him to come down through his own tower and search my room while I was away from it. But why? Why?

“Dacia almost caught me,” he remembered grimly.

“So it wasn’t Marc who carried me to the parapet, after all?” I said. “You went up there again when you finished with my room.”

“Do you think I’d miss the opportunity you offered me?” He spoke carelessly, as though it no longer mattered what he said. “It was good luck for me when you tripped over a guy wire and knocked yourself out. Then Marc had to spoil it when he kept you from rolling off that ledge. When you woke up you were fighting Marc, though he’d saved your life. Which of course only meant I had to try again.”

Nothing, I realized, had occurred as quickly as Nigel had originally claimed.

His manner now was quiet, almost conversational, as if we discussed a trifling matter. He was giving me the true answers only because there was nowhere I could go with them.

“Marc believed it was you he was shooting at—not me,” I said. “But why has all this happened? You had everything to lose and nothing to gain.”

He laughed and the sound was chilling. “I’ll still gain what I want most. Of course it was Alicia who sent Marc after me tonight. Maggie often wears blinkers. She thought Marc meant to injure Justin. I knew better. I should have known from the first that Alicia would try something of the sort, once she was cornered.”

I shook my head, still bewildered, and he went on in that even, deadly tone.

“I was useful to Alicia after you went away, and Justin behaved so despondently that she thought she had lost him for good. She came out to the Bahamas, knowing very well how I had felt about her in the old days at Athmore. She thought she was too good for me then. This time I found her less untouchable. This time she was ready to bargain. I put the Club Casella in her hands—for goods delivered, as you might say. But I wanted to marry her, while Justin didn’t.”

His voice hardened and he breathed more heavily as he went on. “At the end of a year she returned to England, supposedly for a brief visit to look after her interests at the club. A visit which dragged on in time. I had Leo Casella working there, reporting to me. Leo used to be with me and he owes me a lot. So I knew what she was up to and that she was after Justin again. I suppose it frightened her badly when I returned knowing all about her plans with Justin.”

So it had been Alicia he had wanted. This was why he’d induced Maggie to send for me.

“What about Maggie?” I said. “How could you treat her so—”

He broke in sharply. “Maggie was trying to use me—you know that perfectly well. So I had no hesitation in using her to lull Alicia’s suspicions until I had her where I wanted her. Had them all, by that time!”

“How could you—when Justin and Marc and Maggie were good to you when you were young! Giving you a home, making you welcome! When Justin—”

He would not let me continue. “Never mind all that. You don’t know what it was like. Being a zero—a nothing. Being patronized and lifted up from what they regarded as dirt. When all along I knew I was superior in brains to any of them! But I’d have let them alone if it hadn’t been for Alicia and her cunning little tricks. Now they’ve all ranged themselves into one target so I can bring the lot of them down with one blow!” He turned his head to look at me. “Once I hoped to show up Justin through my hold over Alicia, but now I’ve found it was only you he cares about. So you go with me, Eve.”

I sat silent as we continued to follow the bumpy road without urgency on Nigel’s part. This in itself was frightening. I knew now that he would never let me go. I was the weapon he held over them all—especially over Justin, whom he hated.

About us the night seemed filled with blowing winds and intermittent moonlight, and the scent of blossoms was sweet on the air. Unbearably sweet, since I might never smell that scent again. Our headlights cut the dark road as it curved into a steeper grade, dipping toward the quarry.

“It’s a pity, in a way,” he said conversational again and as reasonable as ever. “You know, Eve, I rather liked you. You weren’t one of them. You were a nobody—like me. I had hoped we were two of a kind. But you began to make me too much trouble. I’d have succeeded in bringing them all down and getting Athmore for myself—if it hadn’t been for you.”

“And Old” Daniel?” I said bitterly. “What happened to him was your doing too?”

He slowed the car still more, the better to talk. “It’s more accurate to say it was Alicia’s doing. She set the old man to spy on me. She suspected I was behind the tricks that were being played to delay Justin’s work. Naturally I didn’t want these efforts of Justin’s to pay off before I had him where I wanted him. Leo served me well enough, until he got a bit careless.”

“Why didn’t Alicia go to Justin with what she suspected?” I cried.

“And have him find out about her little idyl with me in the islands? Find out how she came by the Club Casella? Oh no—that wasn’t likely. So she set Old Daniel watching me and reporting to her. I didn’t intend what happened. The old fool was onto the glass-smashing Leo did in Justin’s workshop, and he met me out there in the ruins for a talk to pin everything down. But he found out soon enough that he was trapped and that I didn’t mean to let him go. When you walked onstage he tried to give you a signal—about the rook’s play. Only you didn’t catch on, did you? I had to take care of him—shut him up for good. Then you came up with that beastly picture and threw the odds against me. If Alicia recognized me in that snapshot, she’d have proof that I’d fixed the old man and she could have turned matters her way by threatening to expose me.”

“You’ll never have Athmore now,” I said, snatching at any straw, “but you still have your life.”

He flashed me a look of triumph. “I’ll have something even better—the winning shot. There’s one big mistake I’ve made in all this. I never truly believed that Justin could prefer you to Alicia. I thought you might come back and fight the divorce, prove yourself one more thorn in his side. That was my mistake; to believe that what he felt for you was an infatuation which had died out long ago. In a way you’ve been the worst nuisance of all. Even to tricking me that day when you let poor little Dacia take your coat. You don’t think I meant to harm her, do you? It was your silly American chatter that had to be stopped. Now the whole thing will come out—everything. And I don’t mean to be around for it. Tonight Maggie gave me the answer and put the best weapon of all in my hands—you! I know now that the best way to destroy Justin is through you. Don’t worry—our trip will be over soon.”

Terror is a strange thing. Once it is yours there is a point above which it can rise no higher. The mind flings about wildly, seeking an escape, while the deadly goal draws steadily closer. The heart pounds, the eyes stare, and breathing turns labored. Yet if there is time, a plateau is reached where terror can rise no higher. I suppose that is what was happening to me as I faced the fact of my ultimate end. Having faced it, nothing else remained, so that a deathly calm descended upon me. The calm of the hopeless.

With a curious, automatic action I slowly buckled the seat belt around me. Nigel saw me and chuckled wryly.

“You don’t think that will help you with a drop to the bottom of the quarry, down—close to a hundred feet! Hold tight now, Justin’s darling—” he mocked, “—here we go!”

Our headlights picked up the bluebells blowing in the wind. The lights rose and dipped, dipped again—and fell upon an obstruction which slanted suddenly across the road ahead of us.

It was Justin’s gray car, with Justin at the wheel. I screamed—a high, thin sound lost on the wind. I saw Justin’s staring face in the glare of our headlights and knew that the lip of the quarry lay only a little way beyond.

This was not what Nigel planned, but he accepted what was there. He pressed his foot upon the gas pedal, and the red Mercedes leaped ahead like a rocket toward the gray obstacle in its path. I flung my arms over my face and prayed with all my might.

I can remember the terrible impact of the crash, the jerk of the seat belt, the rending explosion of sound—and nothing more.

A distant roaring awakened me. My eyes opened to a darkness that was slashed with flame. I must be lying very close to the fire because warmth from the flames burned my face. A dark figure moved in the flickering light. With one hand I felt about me and found grassy earth. Consciousness swept back as something wet licked at my face. Deirdre was there.

I remembered now. It was Marc’s red car that was burning! And what had happened to Justin—to Justin’s car after being struck broadside?

I found I could move my legs, my arms. I could even stumble shakily to my feet. The tall figure silhouetted against the flames knelt beside something on the grass, then straightened and looked toward me.

“Justin?” I said in disbelief.

A car door slammed and I heard someone shout, heard Justin call an answer. Then he came to me quickly.

“You’re all right, Eve? I got you out split seconds before the car caught fire. Then I went back for Nigel.”

I could not speak my question—I only looked at him.

“He went through the windshield,” Justin said. “He’s dead.”

I clung to him. “That’s what he wanted. But he meant to take me with him.”

“Deirdre met me in the woods on my way back from Alicia’s and let me know by her frantic manner that something was wrong. I got to Marc in the garden after Maggie found him, and he told me Nigel had you. When I found the Mercedes gone, I took my own car and came after you, I could see your headlights now and then and guessed where you were heading. So I cut through the woods by way of the path—it was just wide enough—and I barely made it ahead of you.”

People from the house had arrived in Maggie’s car. Suddenly Marc was there, his arm in a crude sling. Maggie got out last and stood staring at the burning wreckage, a tall woman in her black dress and evening wrap, the Athmore pearls white about her throat. Justin spoke to her gently. She turned from the dark shape on the grass and came to stand beside me, her face pale in the flaring light.

“It’s better this way,” she said tonelessly. “Marc would have killed him tonight. Alicia did everything I feared, though it wasn’t Justin she wanted to pay off, but Nigel. She had guessed that he was the one who took her car when Dacia was struck down. And he’d ruined her through the club. I’ve been stupid all along. I truly believed Nigel was fond of me and that he would help me get Marc out of trouble. I never knew it was Alicia he cared about all along—or how he hated Justin. Marc has told me everything. Marc has been their captive, but tonight he meant to free himself.”

I put my hand upon her arm to stop her painfully blurted words. There was nothing I could say in answer. One day perhaps we would be friends again.

Marc came over to us. “Thank you, Evie,” he said, calling me by Dacia’s name. “If you hadn’t shouted I’d have bought it. As it was, I ducked in time and only got winged. I’d taken Justin’s car out to hide it from Nigel because Alicia said he meant to destroy it tonight. I wanted it at a safe distance from the house before I settled with him. When I saw my car blocking the road I thought it was Nigel who had come to stop me. With those headlights blazing I couldn’t see you. Not till later in the topiary garden.”

He bent and kissed me lightly on the cheek. “That’s from Dacia. I don’t think I can fit her into Athmore, but I mean to fit her into my life—my own life away from here.”

He turned to Maggie, drew her toward her waiting car, while I stayed behind.

After a time Justin left one of the men from the house to guard the burning Mercedes and came to me. The flames had dropped to smoldering spurts, and beyond I saw Justin’s gray car where it had rolled, almost to the edge of the quarry. The sight seemed to rouse me as nothing else had done. All the years of work he had spent on this car—and now this!

“Is it hopelessly damaged?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Not essentially. The car bounced away from the impact as it was meant to do. Its inner padding protected me, and the new fuel doesn’t explode, of course, or cause a car to burn. I’d not have chosen this way to test it, but the car came through! Are you able to walk now, Eve?”

My knees were still rubbery, but I could manage. We went together, but not along the road the others had followed. We found the path through the woods along which Justin had come on his wild ride, barely scraping between the trees in some places, leaving the marks of his passage in others. The moon had gone behind another cloud, yet the sky was not dark as it had been.

Among the stones of Athmore Hall the grass was wet and my slippers were quickly damp with dew. I did not care. I went to stand before the arch of the chapel window, afraid to look at Justin, afraid to be too close to him. I could not ask about Alicia, though her name burned in my mind.

He answered without my asking.

“Alicia gave Marc the gun he would have killed Nigel with. That’s what he wanted. Then she held me at Grovesend talking—held me there deliberately, so Marc would get away before I could stop him. She was too angry to care about caution and she told me everything. About her affair with Nigel and what he’d done for her, what he was up to now. If Marc had killed Nigel, it would have been as though she pulled the trigger.”

There was a sickness of disillusionment, of shock in his words. He had lost his belief in her forever tonight, and in Nigel he had lost someone he had believed his friend.

We stood in troubled silence, and I knew that the echoes of what had happened would sound down all the years ahead of us.

Through the arch of the great window pale rose stained the morning, and I moved to where I could look through and watch dawn light the sky. There was hope in light. Tomorrow did come—for some of us.

“Let’s go home,” Justin said.

Through the woods we walked together—back to Athmore.