A dead silence ensued. Diana remained flattened against the panels beside the open safe, her blue dressing-gown clutched across her chest. Blundell still blocked the stairs, while the lower exit was filled by the white shirt-fronts and rigid faces of Lord Limpsfield and Sir Norbury Penge. The eyes of the latter pair were directed not at Diana, not at their host, but at some indefinite point between. Blundell watched them narrowly, but with a pretence of not doing so. His choked breathing came more naturally, the swollen veins at his temples resumed normal size. At last he spoke, tentatively, as it were, throwing out a feeler.
“She’s unstrung. Most understandable. Suppose we get her in there, and see how we stand.”
Neither guest answered, but with one accord, slightly hesitating, they moved back into the room. Immediately Blundell shot his right hand into the safe, slid some object into his pocket, and touching Diana’s arm jerked his big head towards the doorway.
“Come,” he said, and smiled.
She knew then that she would have to obey. Marshalled from the rear she moved into the smoke-wreathed library, where a red fire burned on the hearth and a strong reading-lamp cast a cone of light on the central table.
“Sit down, won’t you?”
She did so, on an ugly carved chair backed against the bookcases, and drew her dressing-gown over her knees. Again pregnant silence. The two guests glanced furtively at her, then down at the Turkey carpet. She saw that Lord Limpsfield’s face-muscles twitched, while his rubicund colour was mottled in patches. The younger man’s sallowness showed a sickly, greenish tinge, his throat moved spasmodically, and one well-manicured hand fidgeted with his careful bow tie.
Presently Lord Limpsfield said raspingly:
“It’s a pity you never told us about that communication with the upper floors.”
Blundell shrugged, his leathery cheeks still creased in their travesty smile; but he made no reply. Sir Norbury jerked at him:
“This girl—who is she?”
“The daughter of an old friend. I must apologise for her. The fact is,” he paused, moistening his lips, “she’s Somervell’s fiancée.”
“Somervell’s . . . but her name?”
The three-cornered eyes flickered a glance at the questioner.
“Lake,” was the mumbled reply.
The two men started violently, then their faces became stone masks, behind which Diana believed she could read every reaction. Both Limpsfield and Penge had heard Blundell’s incautious outburst to her, and her accusation. Now they knew who she was they were, without doubt, recalling many things, foremost of which was that in the conference just past no attempt had been made to moderate voices. Almost literally Diana could see them putting two and two together and weighing the result. Within three minutes they were realising that their colleague was an assassin, and that whatever his crimes he must be shielded. A moment ago the trapped girl had been saying to herself that it was impossible anything could happen to her. Here she was in a house close-built against other houses, in the heart of a handsome, prosperous district—not alone with a murderer, but in the company of two influential, prominent citizens, each of high standing, each with a reputation to protect. Now she saw the sickening fallacy of her argument. In the very fact of there being reputations to protect lay the absurdity of her expecting the least mercy.
She was doomed.
It did not astonish her, therefore, when Lord Limpsfield let a considering eye travel upward as far as her chin, only to veer away. He was more terrified than she. When he drew in a long breath and slowly expelled it she read his meaning. There would be no good bargaining with her. Talk was waste of time.
“Well,” he said with dry pointedness, “and the next move?”
“Take the papers,” answered Blundell softly. “You’ll find them scattered on the floor, in there. Go home. I’ll handle this.”
“You can manage?”
“Oh, easily!” The solicitor paused, adding in a lower tone: “Haven’t I managed well enough so far? I promise you there won’t be another—accident.”
For the one and only time during this strange scene Limpsfield stared straight into the opposite pair of eyes. As if what he saw convinced him he tightened his lips and motioned curtly to the third confederate.
“Penge, get the documents.”
The Minister of Arterial Highways feebly shook his head. Diana thought he was going to be sick. He contrived to pour himself a full tumbler of whisky, the tantalus playing its snatch of a tune till he set it down. When he drank, his teeth clattered against the glass. Limpsfield let him be, strode heavily behind the bookcases, and returned with a burden of papers which he fitted into the brief-case Blundell held ready for him. No one looked at his neighbour. Diana, hemmed in their midst, might have been a chess-pawn for all the notice taken of her; and yet the unobtrusive approach of Blundell showed her that the least move on her part would be instantly dealt with. She was at liberty to scream—once. Should she try it? She remembered that it was about two in the morning, that the caretakers, sleeping in the rear of the basement, would not be likely to hear, or if they did would listen for the sound to be repeated and then turn over, not giving it another thought. It was wiser, she decided, to wait, on the remote chance of something occurring.
“Stiffen up, Penge!” Lord Limpsfield jogged the Minister’s arm. “Look alive, now. We’re going.”
Sir Norbury lurched towards the hall. His companion followed stodgily, not looking behind. The flat door banged, and as the reverberation shook the standard-lamp another noise became audible. From afar off it sounded, the faint, clear trilling of a telephone. Hers, or was it next door? Colin, perhaps. . . .
She sat listening. Blundell, close by her, did the same, one eye cocked aloft. For a minute or longer the ringing continued, then stopped. If it was Colin, he had given up trying to get her. Now he would wait till morning, by which time she would be dead. She found she could view her end with remarkable detachment, speculating on the method to be used, and hoping it would be so inexpertly brought about that it would be recognised as murder. In that case, although she had made a botch of things, Adrian might yet be saved. When she saw Blundell remove the heavy service revolver from his pocket and heft it thoughtfully, she spoke at last.
“You won’t shoot me,” she said. “You might get rid of my body, but what about the blood?”
He smiled at her.
“It’s been done before,” he replied, “with a clear verdict of suicide. Why should they question it in your case?”
In a flash she saw the Indian lying shot in a ditch. It was true, if her fingers were found closed round a revolver, no matter whose, if she had access to it, there would be little argument. Blundell would ring up the police, give details of her state of mind. If any one had reason for suicide, it was herself. . . .
“Still, it’s not my choice,” said her godfather amicably. “I’ll make use of it only if you force me. Don’t move, now, will you?”
Transferring the revolver to his left hand he walked crabwise, keeping his eyes on her, towards the brass-bound cellarette. On the far side of it he stooped over, still watching her, and removed something—she could not see what—from its interior. When he came back all she noticed was a small bulge in the right-hand pocket of his dinner coat, and a clumsily-carved teak-wood box which she knew usually stood on the table. This he extended to her, open.
“Have a cigarette?”
She refused.
“No?” He raised his odious brows till the furrows of yellowed skin ran into his low-growing mane, the creases in his cheeks deepened, and he began to chuckle. “Perhaps it’s as well. I will, though.”
He selected a cigar from his case, lit it, and drawing forward an arm-chair, lowered his thick body into it and leant forward, his knees almost touching hers, his eyes gloating over her with a sort of troll-like enjoyment infinitely revolting.
“Now, then, before doing anything hasty,” he said, “let’s clear up a few wrong notions, shall we? For a start, you think you’ve got the best of old Nick, don’t you? If you were free, that is. You believe you’d only have to walk out of here, tell the first policeman I poisoned Rose Somervell and sandbagged your mother, and have a warrant out for my arrest. Not much!”
With arrogant contempt he spat out a bit of tobacco leaf and with his cigar more firmly clamped, continued.
“The truth is, you don’t know anything, you couldn’t prove anything, not if you swore on a stack of Bibles. I tell you this: Nothing can be proved against Nick Blundell—not in that line it can’t. If I’m sending you out, it’s for a different reason—the same reason I sent her out, and the other three. To-morrow morning, when you’re found, Nick’ll be as safe as houses. The execution will go forward per schedule, and not a human soul will ever know you were fool enough to spring a trap on me, except those two who’ve just gone out, and they won’t split! No bloody fear!” He laughed till it was necessary to wipe the moisture from his eyes. “Not even when I tell them the little joke I played on ’em a short time back. They won’t think it’s funny, but they’ll keep their mouths shut. Wouldn’t be healthy not to. Well, then, that’s one little matter disposed of. Now for the second.”
He leant forward still closer, so that the smoke of his cigar puffed nauseously in his victim’s white face. Some of his repulsive ease had gone. His old face had sharpened, there was a gleam in his three-cornered eyes Diana had never seen in them before.
“Rose,” he said gruffly. “You’re thinking she meant to hold this business over my head, blackmail me, or put me in quod. Nothing like it! You’re miles out. Rose wouldn’t have harmed a hair of my head. I wouldn’t have harmed her, if she’d not been the woman she was. I want you to get this straight, so listen. It happened like this . . .”