Mystery in White E-Book

J. Jefferson Farjeon

• Herausgeber: Reading Essentials
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

On Christmas Eve, heavy snowfall brings a train to a halt near the village of Hemmersby. Several passengers take shelter in a deserted country house, where the fire has been lit and the table laid for tea - but no one is at home. Trapped together for Christmas, the passengers are seeking to unravel the secrets of the empty house when a murderer strikes in their midst.

Leseprobe

Mystery in White

by J. Jefferson Farjeon

First published in 1937

This edition published by Reading Essentials

Victoria, BC Canada with branch offices in the Czech Republic and Germany

[email protected]

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except in the case of excerpts by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

Mystery in White

by

 J. Jefferson Farjeon

CHAPTER I:THE SNOWBOUND TRAIN

The Great Snow began on the evening of December 19th. Shoppers smiled as they hurried home, speculating on the chances of a White Christmas. Their hopes were dampened when they turned on their wireless to learn from the smooth impersonal voice of the B.B.C. announcer that an anti-cyclone was callously wending its way from the North-West of Ireland; and on the 20th the warmth arrived, turning the snow to drizzle and the thin white crust to muddy brown.

“Not this year!” sighed the disappointed sentimentalists as they slipped sadly through the slush.

But on the 21st the snow returned, this time in earnest. Brown became white again. The sounds of traffic were deadened. Wheel marks, foot marks, all marks, were blotted out as soon as they were made. The sentimentalists rejoiced.

It snowed all day and all night. On the 22nd it was still snowing. Snowballs flew, snowmen grew. Sceptical children regained their belief in fairyland, and sour adults felt like Santa Claus, buying more presents than they had ever intended. In the evening the voice of the announcer, travelling through endless white ether, informed the millions that more snow was coming. The anti-cyclone from the North-West of Ireland had got lost in it.

More snow came. It floated down from its limitless source like a vast extinguisher. Sweepers, eager for their harvest, waited in vain for the snow to stop. People wondered whether it would ever stop.

It grew beyond the boundaries of local interest. By the 23rd it was news. By the 24th it was a nuisance. Practical folk cursed. Even the sentimentalists wondered how they were going to carry out their programmes. Traffic was dislocated. Cars and motor-coaches lost themselves. Railway gangs fought snowdrifts. The thought of the thaw, with its stupendous task of conversion, became increasingly alarming.

The elderly bore, however, who formed one of half a dozen inmates of a third-class compartment on the 11.37 from Euston, refused to be alarmed. In fact, although the train had come to an unofficial halt that appeared to be permanent, he pooh-poohed the whole thing as insignificant with the irritating superiority of a world-traveller.

“If you want to know what snow’s really like,” he remarked to the young lady next to him, “you ought to try the Yukon.”

“Ought I?” murmured the young lady obediently.

She was a chorus girl, and her own globe-trotting had been limited to the provincial towns. Her present destination was Manchester, which in this weather seemed quite far enough off.

“I remember once, in Dawson City, we had a month of snow,” the bore went on, while the young man on his other side thought, “My God, is he starting off again?” “It was in ‘99. No, ‘98. Well, one or the other. I was a kid at the time. We got sick of the damn stuff!”

“Well, I’m sick of this damn stuff,” answered the chorus girl, twisting her head towards the window. All she saw was a curtain of white flakes. “How much longer are we going to wait here, does anybody think? We must have stopped an hour.”

“Thirty-four minutes,” corrected the tall, pale youth opposite, with a glance at his wrist-watch. He did not have spots, but looked as though he ought to have had. His unhealthy complexion was due partly to the atmosphere of the basement office in which he worked, and partly to a rising temperature. He ought to have been in bed.

“Thank you,” smiled the chorus girl. “I see one’s got to be careful when you’re around!”

The clerk smiled faintly. He was impressed by the chorus girl’s beauty. A real, die-hard platinum blonde. Marvellous person to take out to supper, if one had the courage for that sort of thing. He believed the bore would have had the courage and had noted the man’s quick little, half-sly glances between his egotistical statements. He even believed the chorus girl might accept an invitation. There was something vulnerable about her which her assurance attempted to cloak. But the clerk was even more impressed by the other young lady in the compartment, the one who was sitting on the other side of the bore. To take her out to supper would provide more than a momentary thrill; it would entirely upset one’s work. She was dark. She had a tall, supple figure. (The chorus girl was rather small.) He felt sure she played a good game of tennis, swam and rode. He visualised her cantering over moors and sailing over five-barred gates, with her brother trying vainly to catch her up. Her brother was sitting in the corner opposite her. You knew it was her brother from their conversation, and you could also see it from their resemblance. They called each other David and Lydia.

Lydia was the next to speak.

“This is getting the limit!” she exclaimed. Her voice had a low, rich quality. “What about interviewing the guard again and asking if there’s any hope of moving before next June?”

“I asked him ten minutes ago,” said the bore. “I won’t repeat what he said!”

“Not necessary,” yawned David. “We have imaginations.”

“Yes, and it seems we’ll need our imaginations to-night!” chimed in the chorus girl. “I’ll have to imagine I’m in Manchester!”

“Will you? We shall have to imagine we are at a Christmas house-party,” smiled Lydia, “sleeping on downy beds. By the way, if we’re in for an all-night session I hope the railway company will supply hot-water bottles!” Suddenly she caught the clerk’s eye. She surprised the admiration in it, and was kind. “What will you have to imagine?” she asked. The catastrophe of the snowdrift and the camaraderie of Christmas were loosening tongues. The bore alone had needed no encouragement.

The clerk coloured, though his cheeks were already flushed with fever.

“Eh? Oh! An aunt,” he jerked.

“If she’s like mine, she’s best left to the imagination!” laughed Lydia. “But then she probably isn’t.”

The clerk’s aunt was not like Lydia’s aunt. She was even more trying. But her dutiful nephew visited her periodically, partly for the sake of his financial future, and partly because he had a secret weakness for lonely people.

A little silence fell upon the party. The only one who thought it mattered was the chorus girl. A nervous restlessness possessed her soul, and she declared afterwards that she was sure she had been the first to move unconsciously into the shadow of coming events. “Because, goodness, I was all on edge,” she said, “and why should I have been, I mean nothing had happened yet, and so far the old man in the corner hadn’t opened his mouth. I don’t believe he’d even opened his eyes, he might have been dead. And then, don’t forget, he was right opposite me! And they say I’m psychic.”

But her vague anticipations were not centred solely in the old man in the corner. She, too, had noticed the quick little, half-sly glances of the elderly bore, who, as she knew, was not too elderly to think about her in a certain way. She had also noticed the clerk’s eyes upon her leg, and the rather studious avoidance of any such vulgar interest on the part of the other young man. If Jessie Noyes was very conscious of her physical attractions she claimed it was her business to be. She was well aware of both her power and the limitation of her power, and while the power, despite its small thrills, gave her a secret dread, the limitation was a secret sorrow. How wonderful to be able to conquer a man wholly and eternally, instead of being just an ephemeral taste! Still, she was not bitter. She was anxious and nervous and warm. Life was life....

Driven now by her restlessness, and finding the silence unendurable, she broke it by suddenly exclaiming:

“Well, let’s go on! That’s only four of us! What will you have to imagine?”

The question was addressed, not too wisely, to the bore.

“Me? Imagine?” he answered. “I don’t know it’s my habit to imagine. Take things as they come—good, bad, or indifferent—that’s my motto. You learn that when you’ve knocked around as I have.”

“Perhaps I can be more interesting,” said the old man in the corner, opening his eyes suddenly.

He was neither dead nor asleep. As a matter of fact, he had heard every word that had been uttered since the train had steamed out of Euston at 11.37, and the probability of this made more than one of the five people who now turned to him feel a little uncanny. Not that he had heard anything he should not have heard; but a man who listens with his eyes closed, and whose eyes themselves become so peculiarly alive when they are opened—these eyes were like little lamps illuminating things invisible to others—is not the best tonic for frayed nerves.

“Please do, sir,” answered David, after a short pause. “And invent a really good story for us—ours have been most definitely dull.”

“Oh, mine is interesting without any invention,” replied the old man, “and also, incidentally, rather appropriate to the season. I am on my way to interview King Charles the First.”

“Really! With head, or without?” inquired David politely.

“With, I trust,” the old man responded. “I am informed he is quite complete. We are to meet in an old house at Naseby. Frankly I am not very confident that the interview will occur. Charles the First may be bashful, or he may turn out to be just some ordinary cavalier hiding from Cromwell and Fairfax. After three hundred years, identity becomes a trifle confused.” He smiled with cynical humour. “Or, again, he may be—non est. Simply the imagination of certain nervous people who think they have seen him about. But, of course,” he added, after pursing his thin lips, “there is some possibility that he really is about. Yes, yes; if that over-maligned and over-glorified monarch did visit the house on the day of his defeat, and if the house’s walls have stored up any emotional incidents that I can set free, we may add an interesting page to our history.”

“Don’t think me rude,” exclaimed Lydia, “but do you really and truly believe in that sort of thing?”

“Exactly what do you mean by ‘that sort of thing’?” asked the old man.

His tone was disapproving. The elderly bore took up the battle.

“Spooks and ghosts!” he grunted. “Pooh, I say! Stuff and nonsense! I’ve seen the Indian rope trick—yes, and exploded it! In Rangoon. ‘23.”

“Spooks and ghosts,” repeated the old man, his disapproval now diverted to the bore. The guard’s voice sounded from a corridor in the distance. Though faint, the source of that was solid enough. “H’m—terms are deceptive. The only true language has no words, which explains, sir, why some people who speak too many words have no understanding.”

“Eh?”

“Now if, by your expression spooks and ghosts, you imply conscious emanations, aftermaths of physical existence capable of independent functioning of a semi-earthly character, well, then I probably do not believe in that sort of thing. There are others, of course, whose opinions I respect, who disagree with me. They consider that you, sir, are doomed to exist perpetually in some form or other. That is, perhaps, a depressing thought. But if, by spooks and ghosts, you imply emanations recreated by acute living sensitiveness or intelligence from the inexhaustible store-houses of the past, then I do believe in that sort of thing. Inevitably.”

The elderly bore was temporarily crushed. So was the chorus girl. But the brother and sister, anxious to be au fait with every phase of progressive thought, if only to discard it, and equipped with sufficient fortitude to withstand its shocks, were intrigued.

“Reduced to words of not more than two syllables,” said David, “you mean we can conjure up the past?”

“Conjure up is not a happy term,” answered the old man. “It suggests magic, and there is nothing magical in the process. We can reveal—expose—the past. The past is ineradicable.”

“Bosh!” exclaimed the bore.

He did not like being crushed. The old man who had crushed him bent forward to repeat the operation.

“What is a simple gramophone record but a record of the past?” he demanded, tapping the bore on the knee. “Caruso is dead, but we can hear his voice to-day. This is not due to invention, but to discovery, and if the discovery had occurred three hundred years ago I should not have to travel to Naseby to hear Charles the First’s voice—if, that is, I am to hear it. But Nature does not wait upon our discoveries. That is a thing so many ignoramuses forget. Her sound-waves, light-waves, thought-waves, emotional-waves—to mention a few of those which come within the limited range of our particular senses and perceptions—all travel ceaselessly, some without interruption, some to find temporary prisons in the obstructions where they embed themselves. Here they may diminish into negligible influences, or—mark this—they may be freed again. The captured waves, of course, are merely a fragment from the original source. Potentially everything that has ever existed, everything born of the senses, can be recovered by the senses. Fortunately, sir, there will be no gramophone record of your recent expletive; nevertheless, in addition to its mere mark on memory, your ‘Bosh’ will go on for ever.”

The bore, rather surprisingly, put up a fight, though it was something in the nature of a death struggle.

“Then here is another Bosh to keep it company!” he snapped.

“You need never fear for the loneliness of your words,” replied the old man.

“And what about your words?”

“They will go on, too. But it is unlikely that any future generation will recapture our present conversation. In spite of our obvious distaste for each other, our emotions are hardly virile enough. They will soon fade even from our own memories. But suppose—yes, sir, suppose they suddenly grow explosive? Suppose you leap upon me with a knife, plunging it into the heart of Mr. Edward Maltby, of the Royal Psychical Society, then indeed some future person sitting in this corner may become uncomfortably aware of a very unpleasant emotion.”

He closed his eyes again; but his five travelling-companions all received the impression that he was still seeing them through his lids. The solid guard, passing along the corridor at that moment, was turned to with relief, although he had no comfort to offer.

“I’m afraid I can’t say anything,” he replied to inquiries, repeating a formula of which he was weary. “We’re doing all we can, but with the line blocked before and behind, well, there it is.”

“I call it disgraceful!” muttered the bore. “Where’s the damned breakdown gang or whatever they call themselves?”

“We’re trying to get assistance, we can’t do more,” retorted the guard.

“How long do you expect we’ll stick here?”

“I’d like to know that myself, sir.”

“All night?” asked Lydia.

“Maybe, miss.”

“Can one walk along the line?”

“Only for a bit. It’s worse beyond.”

“Oh, dear!” murmured the chorus girl. “I must get to Manchester!”

“I asked because I was wondering whether there was another line or station near here,” said Lydia.

“Well, there’s Hemmersby,” answered the guard. “That’s a branch line that joins this at Swayton; but I wouldn’t care to try it, not this weather.”

“It’s this weather that gives us the incentive,” David pointed out. “How far is Hemmersby?”

“I shouldn’t care to say. Five or six miles, p’r’aps.”

“Which way?”

The guard pointed out of the corridor window.

“Yes, but we couldn’t carry our trunks!” said Lydia. “What would happen to them?”

The guard gave a little shrug. Madness was not his concern, and he came across plenty.

“They would go on to their destination,” he replied, “but I couldn’t say when they’d turn up.”

“According to you,” smiled David, “they’d turn up before we would.”

“Well, there you are,” said the guard.

Then he continued on his way, dead sick of it.

There was a little silence. Lydia turned her head from the corridor and stared out of the window next to her.

“Almost stopped,” she announced. “Well, people, what about it.”

“Almost is not quite,” answered her brother cautiously.

A second little silence followed. Jessie Noyes gazed at the tip of her shoe, fearful to commit herself. The flushed clerk seemed in the same condition. The bore’s expression, on the other hand, was definitely unfavourable.

“Asking for trouble,” he declared, when no one else spoke. “If none of you have been lost in a snowstorm, I have.”

“Ah, but that was in Dawson City,” murmured David, “where snow is snow.”

Then a startling thing happened. The old man in the corner suddenly opened his eyes and sat upright. He stared straight ahead of him, but Jessie, who was in his line of vision, was convinced that he was not seeing her. A moment later he swerved round towards the corridor. Beyond the corridor window something moved; a dim white smudge that faded out into the all-embracing snow as they all watched it.

“The other line—yes, yes, quite a good idea,” said the old man. “A merry Christmas to you all!”

He seized his bag from the rack, leapt across the corridor, jumped from the train, and in a few seconds he, too, had faded out.

“There goes a lunatic,” commented the elderly bore, “if there ever was one!”

CHAPTER II:THE INVISIBLE TRACK

“Well, what do we all make of it?” inquired David after a pause.

“I’ve already given you my opinion,” responded the bore, and repeated it by tapping his forehead.

“Yes, but I’m afraid I daren’t agree with the opinion, in case others follow the alleged lunatic’s example,” answered David. “You’ll remember, we were just discussing what he has now done.”

“Only we wouldn’t do it quite so violently,” interposed Lydia. “I almost thought for a moment that he’d spotted Charles the First!”

She spoke lightly, but she was watching to see how the others took her remark.

“Charles the Fiddlesticks!” muttered the bore.

“Didn’t Nero use the fiddlesticks?” said David. “Anyhow, somebody was outside there before he hopped on to the line, so even if the going isn’t good it can’t be impossible.” He turned to Jessie Noyes. “How do you feel about it?”

Jessie looked out of the window. The snow had ceased falling, and the motionless white scene was like a film that had suddenly stopped.

“I don’t know,” she replied. “I—I can’t think what’ll happen if I don’t get to Manchester.”

“It’s important, is it?”

“Oh, yes!”

David glanced at his sister, and she nodded.

“We’ll go, if you go,” he said.

“But you mustn’t go for me!” exclaimed Jessie quickly.

“It would only be partly for you,” explained Lydia. “I really think we’d be using you as an excuse. You see, we want those nice downy beds! And then,” she added, half-hesitatingly, “there’s another thing. It least—it occurred to me.”

“What?” asked David.

“I dare say it’s quite ridiculous,” she answered, “but somehow or other I can’t help feeling just a bit worried about that Mr.—what was it? Maltby?”

“Edward Maltby, of the Royal Psychical Society,” nodded David.

“He was such an old man! What’d we feel like if we read in to-morrow’s papers that he’d been found buried in snow!”

“To-morrow’s Christmas, and there won’t be any papers,” her brother pointed out.

“That doesn’t reduce his chance of being buried in the snow, my darling,” Lydia retorted.

Jessie chimed in, now seeking her own excuse:

“Yes, one does almost feel as if one almost ought to go after him, doesn’t one?”

“This one doesn’t,” replied the bore, unconsciously adding a point in favour of departure.

Jessie’s real excuse was that on the morrow a theatrical manager would have left Manchester, taking the chance of an engagement with him, and the possibility of missing both was emphasised by the voice of the guard when he returned along the corridor, answering questions that were flung at him as he went: “I’m sorry, sir, I can’t say.” “No, madam, nothing yet.” “Yes, sir, it may be all night.”

“Oh, let’s!” cried Lydia.

“I’ll—I’ll join you, if I might,” added the clerk with stammering boldness. “Make up a party, you know.”

The tide of adventure was flowing fast. Lydia was already on her feet, bringing down her small suitcase. Had she known the suitcase’s destination she would have hesitated. Only the elderly bore frowned.

“You’re not really going, are you?” he asked the chorus girl.

“Why not, if they are?” she replied.

“Well, you take my advice, and stay here—with me?”

With the blindness of egotism, he was quite unconscious that his remark settled the matter.

Glad to be rid of his company, and armed with their small luggage, the four adventurers lowered themselves to the thick carpet of snow. Then David reached up and banged the door to—the corridor was fast filling with interested spectators—and the journey through strange fairyland began.

It began with disarming ease. Had difficulties arisen at once they might have returned, although pride would have rebelled against retreat at this early stage, and the vision of the bore’s triumphant expression was another deterrent factor. Following Mr. Maltby’s deep footprints for a few yards along the track, they came to a path bearing away from the line into the white distance. The line of the path was almost obliterated, but they identified it by a fence and a signpost: “Footpath to Hemmersby.” This was evidently a point at which, in normal times, pedestrians crossed the railway.

The fence soon came to an end. The path lost its identifying boundary, and presumably continued diagonally across a field. Maltby’s footprints and something that looked like a road beyond a distant hedge maintained the party’s hope, but when they reached the thing that looked like a road to find that it belied its appearance, hope grew a little less.

“I—I suppose we’re right?” queried Jessie.

“We must be,” replied David cheerfully. “Follow the footprints!”

“The footprints mightn’t be right,” said the clerk.

“What depressing logic!” exclaimed David. “By the way, I suppose you’ve all noticed that we’re following more than one set?”

“Yes, so the other man couldn’t have been Charles the First,” added Lydia, “because ghosts don’t have footprints. Come on! I want to get somewhere!”

They continued on their uncertain way. While crossing a second field the snow began again. Each of the four travellers wondered whether to suggest going back, and each lacked the moral courage to put the wonder into words.

The second field sloped down into a small valley. Suddenly David gave a shout. He had ploughed a little way ahead.

“The road, people, the road!” he called.

They overtook him to find him staring disconsolately at a long, narrow ditch. Camouflaged by the snow, it had continued the story of deception.

“When you and I are all alone, David,” said Lydia, “I’ll tell you what I think of you!”

“Which way now?” asked Jessie, struggling against panic.

They stared around. The increasing snow had almost obliterated the marks of their predecessors. Just beyond the ditch they were being rapidly wiped out.

“What about back?” proposed David, voicing sense at last.

They turned. The slope they had descended was scarcely visible through the curtain of whirling white, and while they stood hesitating their own footprints became lost in the new covering.

“Yes, back!” cried Lydia. “That beastly bore was right!”

She began running. A voice hailed her immediately.

“Hey! Not that way!” called David.

Then they started arguing about the direction, while the thickening flakes blotted out all but themselves.

In the end they decided that it was as hopeless to attempt to return as to go forward. They skirted the ditch, blundered through an area of trees, crossed another field, descended into another valley, and walked into another ditch. Three breathless figures scrambled out on the farther side unaided. The fourth, Jessie, had to be lugged out.

“I say, are you hurt?” asked David anxiously.

“No, not a bit,” answered Jessie, swaying.

He caught her unconscious form just before it slid to the ground, and a situation which had been bad enough already became suddenly worse. Lydia hurried to his side.

“What’s the matter?” she exclaimed.

“The poor thing’s conked out,” he replied. “I say, Lydia, now we’ve just got to find somewhere!”

“Can you carry her?”

“She’s light.”

“Then come along. It won’t help standing here. Where’s that other man?”

His voice sounded as she spoke. The clerk had vanished, but now a muffled shout came through the white curtain.

“Hi! A gate!”

Lifting the unconscious figure in his arms, and telling his sister to take the suitcase she had dropped, David hastened towards the voice. He searched in vain for the origin.

“Where’ve you got to?” he called. “Shout again!”

The next instant the clerk loomed before him, and they almost collided.

“Good Lord!” gasped the clerk, staring at David’s burden. “Is she bad?”

“Hope not; she just went off,” answered David. “Where’s this gate?”

“Just behind me. I think it leads somewhere.”

At another time David would have commented that gates generally did lead somewhere, but he was not in a mood now for sarcasm or badinage.

“Shove it open,” he said.

“It won’t open,” returned the clerk. “The snow’s half-way to the top.”

“Damn! Well, we’ll have to climb it. Get over first, will you, and I’ll pass her over to you. Think you can manage?”

“Yes, of course.”

“You hop over, too, Lydia, and help him.”

They managed somehow. Beyond the gate, David took the chorus girl again, with the snow almost up to his knees. The snow was rising like a tide, and every yard seemed more difficult than the last.

“If you ask me,” murmured Lydia, dragging a sopping leg out of a small white pit, “I think the unconscious lady is having the best of it!”

“She won’t when she comes to,” answered David.

“All correct to instruct me,” smiled Lydia.

“Did she fall down?” inquired the clerk.

“We all fell down,” David reminded him, “but she seems to have fallen the hardest.”

Round a bend—the lane was full of bends—an incident occurred that brought both alarm and hope. A mass of snow nearly enveloped them. It was like a miniature avalanche, and it came sweeping down from nowhere. Warned by the preliminary swishing sound David and Lydia managed to evade it, but the clerk was less lucky. For a second he disappeared, and then emerged from an untidy white mound, spluttering.

“Where did that come from?” cried David.

“A roof, I should think,” answered Lydia.

“Let’s hope so!” replied David devoutly. “Have a look round, you two, will you? I’m afraid the pack horse isn’t quite so mobile. But prenez garde!”

He stood still while they searched, holding his burden close to him to give it warmth. In a few moments they reported a barn.

“Splendid!” exclaimed David. “That’s first-class news! Barns don’t grow all by themselves! We’ll strike a house now before we know it.”

“A house!” repeated Lydia, with almost delirious ecstasy. “I’d forgotten there were such things! A house—with a fire—and a bath! Oh, a bath!”

“Sounds good,” chattered the clerk.

With renewed hope they resumed their difficult way. They twisted round another bend. On either side of them great white trees rose, and the foliage increased. Once they walked into the foliage. Then the lane dipped. This was unwelcome, for it appeared to increase the depth of the snow and to augment the sense that they were enclosed in it. With their retreat cut off, they were advancing into a white prison.

The atmosphere became momentarily stifling. Then, suddenly, the clerk gave a shout.

“What? Where?” cried David.

“Here; the house!” gulped the clerk.

Almost blinded by the whirling snowflakes, he had lowered his head; and when the building loomed abruptly in his path he only just saved himself from colliding with the front door.

CHAPTER III:STRANGE SANCTUARY

The ringing of the bell brought no response. Knocking proved equally fruitless. For a short while it seemed as though they were doomed to further disappointment, although David was in a mood to break windows if the necessity arose. Then Lydia took the bull by the horns and tried the doorhandle. It turned, and she shoved the door open with a little sigh of relief. A roof, even without the invitation to stay beneath it, had become an urgent necessity.

They looked into a comfortable, spacious hall. It was early afternoon, and the light had not yet begun to fade noticeably, but the hall glowed with a queer white dimness, reflecting the imprisoning snow outside the windows. It glowed also with something more welcome, a large wood fire. The logs stacked by the grate had a pleasantly seasonable aspect, and the quiet peace of the hall was a comforting contrast to the wild white whirligig from which they had just escaped. The only thing absent to complete the welcome was their host.

But in his absence a large picture on the wall above the fireplace seemed to be doing the honours. It was an oil painting, in a heavy gilt frame, of an erect old man, whose eyes appeared to be watching them with a challenging cynical light. His eyes and his erect figure were not the only notable things about him. He possessed, for a man of his years, a remarkably fine head of black hair.

Other paintings were on the walls and climbed beside a curving staircase, but the uninvited guests were only conscious of the painting of the old man because of the subject’s dominating presence.

David, after his first hurried glance, walked quickly to a couch near the fire and gently deposited his burden upon it. Jessie was just beginning to stir, but the comfort of the couch and the warmth of the fire seemed to delay the return to consciousness through a new, effort-combatting repose. He watched her for a moment or two, while the others stood about uncertainly.

“I suppose this is all right?” said the clerk, breaking the silence.

“It’s got to be,” answered Lydia. “I’m going to look in the rooms.”

“Yes, there must be somebody,” remarked David, glancing at the fire. “Try the kitchen. Perhaps they’re hard of hearing.”

Lydia vanished towards the back of the hall. In a minute she had returned, looking rather puzzled.

“No one,” she reported. “But a kettle’s boiling.”

“Then somebody must be about,” replied David.

“Certainly, but where about? There’s a teapot on the kitchen table waiting to be filled, and a thingummy full of tea beside it. And the larder’s stocked with provisions.”

“You’ve been busy!”

“I’m going to continue being busy!”

She knocked on a door to the right of the hall. Receiving no response, she opened it cautiously and poked her head in.

“Jolly nice dining-room,” she said. “Oak beams. And another fire going.”

As she closed the door the clerk, struggling with an inferiority complex, decided to make himself useful. He darted to another door on the opposite side of the hall, and in his eagerness opened it without knocking. Fortunately for him this room was empty, also, but he received a surprise.

“I say! This is a drawing-room,” he exclaimed, “and tea’s laid!”

He became acutely conscious of Lydia’s head peering over his shoulder and almost touching it. Accustomed to a dull, uneventful life, he was finding it difficult to keep steady amid his present emotions. The emotions were many and varied, including fear of illness, anxiety as to legal rights, and a nasty chilliness which might be due to the illness he feared or to a less definable cause.... This house, for all its fires, rather gave one the creeps ... But his dominant emotion at this particular instant was produced by the head that almost touched his shoulder.

“Funny!” said the owner of the head. “Tea all dressed up and nowhere to go! I say, David, what do you make of it?”

David turned from the couch.

“There’s still upstairs,” he replied. “I’ll tackle that, if you’ll stand by here.”

“Wait a moment!” exclaimed Lydia.

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Yes, I do. What I meant was, be careful.”

“That doesn’t explain anything.”

“Nothing explains anything! If it were a fine day it might be quite natural to run out of a house for a few moments while a kettle’s boiling, but in this weather—can you explain that? Where have they gone? Not to post a letter or to cut a lettuce! Why don’t they come back? I didn’t tell you, the kettle wasn’t boiling in a nice quiet respectable manner, it was boiling over. Oh, and there was a bread-knife on the floor.”

David looked at his sister rather hard.

“Are you getting morbid?” he inquired.

“No, darling,” she retorted. “Just immensely interested!”

Then David went upstairs. While they heard him moving about Lydia walked to the couch and developed a practical streak.

“You know, we ought to do something about this,” she said.

“What about dashing cold water into her face?” suggested the clerk. “I think that’s what they do.”

“A whiff of smelling-salts under her nose might be better,” she answered. “I’ve got some in my bag. Where is my bag? Oh, here!” As she turned to it, she asked, “By the way, what’s your name? Ours is Carrington.”

“Mine’s Thomson,” replied the clerk. “Without a ‘p.’?”

He always mentioned that, believing it improved it.

“Well, Mr. Thomson without a p—by the way, you don’t look too blooming yourself!—would you mind facing the kitchen and bringing a little cold water and a towel? Perhaps we might try your method before mine. Only we won’t dash it at her, we’ll just—No, whoa! Wait a moment!”

As she bent down the unconscious form fluttered, and suddenly Jessie opened her eyes.

“Take it easy,” said Lydia, laying her hand gently on Jessie’s shoulder and restraining a movement to rise. “Everything’s all right, and we’ve plenty of time.”

Jessie stared back at her muzzily, closed her eyes again, and opened them again.

“Did I go off?” she murmured.

“Right off,” answered Lydia. “And then we found this house.”

“But how——?”

“My brother carried you. I wouldn’t talk for a bit.”

“No, it was my foot——”

“Your foot?” Lydia stooped and examined it.

Then she turned to Thomson. “Yes, get some water, please, but hot, not cold. No, both. There’s hot water in the kettle, and damn the tea!”

As she spoke, David came down the stairs. He shook his head in response to her quick, inquiring glance.