Chapter XI: The Eyes Behind the Glass

Lady Barnysdale’s tongue clicked against the roof of her mouth; her dry lips shaped the words she could not say. She sprang to the bell and a hand drew hers from the bell-rope.

“Don’t be so mad!” said Magdalen quietly. “Sit down.”

Dolly looked at her.

“But if Stratharden’s here--oh, you don’t understand; he was more than kind to me--all I have to do is to tell him about Keith. But--he can’t be here! He wouldn’t arrive and I not know. You couldn’t have seen him.”

“Be quiet,” said her stepsister with a sudden, hushed force.

She stood a second listening; then, as if she heard what she expected, pushed Dolly back into her chair. She pulled a note-book from her pocket and wrote furiously, thankful that Dolly had sense enough to sit silent, and presently pointed imperiously at the page.

The penciled lines swam before Dolly Barnysdale’s eyes.

“Don’t speak,” she read. “I hear some one in the corridor. I saw the man I told you of to-night when we were at dinner. I was looking in the glass, and that curtained window leading into the hall was reflected there. Some one lifted a corner of the curtain outside and I saw a man’s face--a gentleman’s. He must be living in the house, for I saw the collar of his smoking-jacket. If it was Stratharden what is he doing here secretly? Why does he spy at what you do?”

“You mean----” said Dolly huskily.

Magdalen took the book and wrote again.

“I mean we can’t get away, and I found out--never mind how--that Ronald’s milk was being drugged. Is Stratharden poor because of him and you?”

“Yes.”

“Very poor? In difficulties?”

“I don’t know.”

“You knew his brother!” wrote the girl cruelly. “You were married to him.”

“My God!” said Dolly exactly as if she were praying in church. “But Stratharden could not be like him.”

The words were not over her breath--a queer thing for Dolly; her lips parted as if she were going to faint.

Magdalen owned no smelling-bottle. She moved sharply into Dolly’s room to get hers, and something made her glance at the door she had bolted and then go into Ronald’s empty nursery. When she came back no one could have suspected the awful terror in her soul.

“Do you bolt your doors at night?” she said softly, for Dolly at that minute could not have read another line to save her life.

Dolly nodded dumbly, and Magdalen waited patiently till the color came back to her sister’s lips. Then she wrote something she dared not say, wondering all the time if she were a fool to let Dolly know it.

“Then lock them,” she scowled; “there’s only one screw in each bolt socket--and leave the keys crossways in the keyholes.”

Slowly, like an uneducated woman, Lady Barnysdale wrote a sentence that was barely readable.

“There are no keys. You knew that. There’s nothing to help me.”

Magdalen gave her a queer look.

“There’s me!” she wrote with a half laugh. And if she were Dolly’s sister there must have been good blood in her somewhere, for a sudden courage shone in her face; while Dolly sat more dead than alive, her lower lip drawn away from her teeth. Magdalen could not think looking at Dolly, and think she must. She moved noiselessly into her sister’s room and stood there checking off her thoughts on her fingers.

“First, there’s Ronald! He looks just like Mrs. Malone’s boy there was all the fuss about--and a Chinaman was at the bottom of that! Then here’s a house miles from anywhere, Scotch servants who believe some lie--no matter what--about Dolly; a footman and a Chinaman”--once more that horrid thrill of fear came over her--“who belong to a man who’s supposed to be abroad and is in this house! I wonder how long he’s been here! I’ll go bail Mrs. Keith had excellent reasons for not letting Dolly explore! If I know anything about faces he is clever, but he was frightened, too, because we so nearly got off to-day. A frightened man does things in a hurry.”

She drew a long breath. With three men and an old woman against her it was long odds against Magdalen Clyde; but even so she would be harder to handle than Dolly.

“One good thing, he can’t know I saw him. I covered my eyes too quickly,” she ended and turned to go back to Dolly as quietly as if she did not hear in the corridor outside a step that crept foot by foot with hers. Half-way in her own room she stopped and looked behind her.

There was a little click, a gleam, as the polished brass handle of the door leading into the corridor slipped--evidently from the hold of some one outside--back into its place, then turned again slowly, noiselessly, evilly.

She stared at the moving convex of shining brass, and stepping quietly into her own room bolted the door behind her. With herself, Dolly and Ronald inside and a good door at her back it was not worth while to worry.

“You’re done up, Dolly,” she said softly. “Get into bed beside Ronald and I’ll take the sofa. I don’t want to sleep alone to-night.”

Dolly shuddered; nothing would have made her go into her own room.

“If you’re right, and he’s here,” she said, “what shall I say?”

“I don’t imagine for one second that he’ll show up. If he does I’d hold my tongue, except to inform him that we’re going at once. You mustn’t tell him about Ronald.”

Dolly was shivering as she lay down by the boy.

“Surely he’ll explain,” she said.

Magdalen gasped. If she had been a man she would have had fists first and explanations afterward in the police court. As she sat wearily on the sofa the incongruity of the whole thing came over her. The homelike room with the candle-light on Ronald’s waxen face; down-stairs the evil, scarred Chinaman; the man peering through the window. She dared think no longer, remembering the look in those pale eyes behind the glass; except that with daylight they must get away from this evil house, over the swirling firth where the tide raced like death incarnate, back to the safety of the packed streets of London town.

She had meant to keep awake, but her tired bones were too much for her. When she started up, at a loud knocking at the door of Dolly’s vacant room, it was half-past eight and broad daylight.

“What is it?” she cried, half awake.

“Mrs. Keith,” said Dolly, utterly astounded. She jumped up and hurried into her own room at the woman’s call.

Magdalen tumbled off her sofa and peered through the crack of the door.

A gaunt old woman in a white cap and print gown stood in the middle of Dolly’s room staring at the unused bed; a terrible old woman, but, as Magdalen had all along felt certain, an honest one.

“What capers are these?” she cried harshly. “What for did ye no’ sleep in your own bed? No wonder Sophy could na wake ye. His lordship’s here. I’m to tell you; and he’d like to see ye at once.”

“Stratharden!” cried Dolly. “Then he----” She pulled herself together viciously. “When did he come?” she asked.

“I did no’ let him in,” returned Mrs. Keith calmly, and Magdalen saw she meant to say no more. “But ye’d do well to make haste.”

“That’s for me to say,” said Dolly valiantly.

“You can send Miss Clyde’s breakfast up here. She’s tired,” for Ronald could neither breakfast with Stratharden and spill egg on his pinafore, nor be left alone.

“I’ll do no such a thing,” announced the retainer. “There’s breakfast in the dining-room and she can go there. It seems to me ye’ll have queer ways when ye’ll eat alone and sleep three in a bed!” and she marched out.

“What on earth shall I do?” said Dolly.

“Don’t do anything. Just say we’re going away to-day. Brace up, Doll; you’re clever enough! I never saw you like this.”

“Sometimes I think I used up all my strength in London,” Dolly muttered with an odd flatness.

“Shall I come?”

“No! I get on better alone with men, even with a brother-in-law,” and at last there was something of the old Dolly in the way she said it.

“I want my breakfast,” Ronald announced when she was gone and he was dressed.

“So do I,” said his aunt. But as she glanced at the boy’s pallor and the unnatural circles round his eyes she had no desire to get that meal as served by Ah Lee. A quiet idea took her.

“Come,” she cried; “you and I, your lordship, will go and look for breakfast! Do you know the way to the kitchen?”

“Yes, but Mrs. Keith’s cross, Aunt Magdalen.”

“We’re not afraid of her,” said the aunt cheerfully, and hand-in-hand with the small person who had been unwise enough to succeed to an earldom, Miss Clyde made her way through deserted passages to an enormous kitchen, where one woman sat at her breakfast, her back turned to the door, neither hearing nor seeing the intruders.

For one moment Magdalen surveyed her in silence. She was alone, and so much the better.

“Good morning, Mrs. Keith!” she cried maliciously. “I want some breakfast.”

The housekeeper bounced in her chair, turned round with an ungainly wrench, then sat gaping open-mouthed, her lean, knotted hands flung out.

“Who are ye?” she said in a kind of shriek. “My woman, who are ye?”