CHAPTER   24.

THONE PUT THE GLASS OF LIQUEUR on the table. Let it stand there, ready to accuse her when the time came.

Right now, in the next few minutes, was the time to watch. This was the crucial time. She must act. She must complete the pattern.

What would Ione do? Would she remember some letters to mail? Would she go for a handkerchief? Would she excuse herself and state no reason and let them assume it was unmentionable?

She was still out beyond the kitchen. Or was she?

He wished he could go to the arch and peer across. He could not move from the chair, of course. His foot … No reason. He sent Fanny a grin but he scarcely saw her.

Mandy was on her way down through the gardens now. Right now. He thought, That chemist of hers better be there. Minutes beat past.

Where was Ione? What was she doing? Had she slipped out of the house already? Was it going to be as simple as that?

He had to know. He got out of the chair.

In the service porch, Ione strained with her cheek on the pane to see past the bulge of the dining room, looking down. That brief flash of the red skirt, crossing the slope there. That was she! How lucky that color! There, it crossed again, zigzagging the other way. She was moving down steadily. She was drawing near.…

All that was necessary, now, was that she go through that door, that first door.

All that was necessary, now. And it flew on the rim of the wheel of chance. The wheel would soon settle to a stop. Would the drug pull her down too soon? Or would she first reach and go through that door? Ah, let there be one last bit of smooth going, one last acquiescence of fate, and then …

She saw the red of the skirt, far down. She saw it vanish. She did not draw breath until she thought she could discern, across the back of the workshop, a pale gleam outlining and squaring the corners of the band of glass brick, from inside.

She put a towel over her hand, and then the hand on the valve for gas. It turned hard. But it turned.

Then she tossed the towel down the laundry chute, where it would sail to the washroom in the basement.

She worked her fingers. She touched her amethyst earrings. Ah, poor Toby, she thought sadly. Ah, poor dear Toby. I must be strong for him. He will need me so desperately.

She heard the crutch thud on the linoleum floor of the kitchen behind her. Her hand went to the switch for the floodlights. She turned her head, easily, to look at him in mild surprise, over her shoulder. He came on, in his limping rhythm. “A glass of water,” he said glumly.

“Dear, you should have called,” she chided. She pushed the switch and the glow beyond the windows faded instantly. Light still shone from the workshop wall. All had gone well. She wrenched her attention, all of it, inside the house. She bustled from the service porch to the kitchen water cooler.

“I can wait on myself,” said Thone irritably. “I’m not a cripple.” He came to the cooler.

Ione withdrew, delicately. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m afraid I just like to fuss, you know.” He was so tall. She had to arch her neck. “It’s the way I am,” she sighed. Her fingers played with the amethysts around her throat.

Thone, looking down, thought, What way are you?

He couldn’t understand. He began to feel a strange declining, falling feeling, a definite letdown.

Mandy tucked her purse under her arm and fumbled with the key case. She found a key of the proper size by its feel. Before she could try it, the door moved inward under the light pressure of her other hand on the knob. She had forgotten. She juggled the flashlight and found the button on it. If there was a light switch here in the workshop she didn’t know where. The beam came on and trembled over the floor.

She stepped in and the door, pressed by its own spring as she stepped around it and let it go, fell softly and yet heavily shut behind her.

She realized that the strange weakening terror in her veins had not departed. It was on her now. It was in her throat. It blurred her vision. She could not deepen her breath. It seemed to hiss in her ears.

Her nostrils quivered. Surely there was a faint odor of gas in this place.

The light wavered to the middle door. She went, weakly, shuffling like someone very old, across the small space. Her fear was, as yet, fixed on a point beyond that middle door. But it would not open. She put both hands on the knob and turned and tugged. It would not open. It must be locked. She worked at the key case. Her hands were shaking so that she almost could not hold it at all. She tried the key.

She felt very queer. Something was hissing behind her. It was not in her head. The key wouldn’t fit. Nor would the only other key of the right size. There was no key!

Go back! Get out!

Fear, like a goblin, fear, like a ghost, seeped through the wall, oozed through the tight brick to this side of it. The fear was right here in the workshop. It was all around her.

The hissing sound was gas escaping.

Go back! Get out!

She stumbled to the garden door. It had shut. It had locked.

The keys chattered in her hand. She pulled herself together, sternly, with a surge of desperate courage.

But there was no key. Among these keys, there was no right key. The keys in her hand were of no use at all.

Locked in? Turn off that gas, then! Quickly! She followed sound to the corner. At the last she was crawling. But there was nothing to turn. The leak was not from a tap. Her hands were of no use. No way to stop it.

She reached up to beat on the glass bricks with the flashlight. They were not window panes. They would not break under her feeble blows. No use.

She screamed. She had little breath to scream.

She tried to get to the garden door again to beat at it, to rouse the world, to make a noise. Something flooded up from within her body and overwhelmed her in a dark swift tide. She whimpered, once, softly, pitifully, like a tired baby.

The flash lay on the floor beside her. It broke as it fell. So there was darkness, and no noise. Only the gentle continuing whisper of the gas.