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- Herausgeber: Musaicum Books
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Sprache: Englisch
Step In the Dark by Ethel Lina White is a thrilling mystery novel set in post-World War II England. With its captivating plot twists and suspenseful narrative, White seamlessly weaves together the elements of mystery and psychological tension, keeping readers on the edge of their seats. The book is written in a clear and concise style, making it accessible to both casual readers and literary enthusiasts alike. White's attention to detail and well-developed characters add depth to the story, creating a rich literary experience for readers. Step In the Dark is a timeless classic that continues to captivate readers with its intriguing storyline and expertly crafted prose. Ethel Lina White, known for her mastery of the mystery genre, brings her unique perspective to Step In the Dark. Her own experiences living through the tumultuous post-war era likely influenced her writing and her ability to capture the mood and atmosphere of the time. White's expertise in crafting suspenseful narratives shines through in this novel, making it a standout work in her impressive oeuvre. I highly recommend Step In the Dark to readers who enjoy a gripping mystery with well-developed characters and a compelling storyline. Ethel Lina White's skillful storytelling and attention to detail make this novel a must-read for fans of the mystery genre. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017
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STEP IN THE DARK
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Table of Contents
Introduction
When desire promises rescue from loneliness yet demands the surrender of caution, a single unexamined step across a warmly lit threshold can turn the bright contours of romance into corridors of doubt, where every soft-spoken assurance echoes like a warning and the ordinary furnishings of a new life—keys, doors, letters, glances—arrange themselves into a maze that tests not only the heroine’s nerve but the reader’s trust, inviting us to measure how far affection can be trusted, how quickly security curdles into peril, and how difficult it is to distinguish welcome from trap before the lights go out and the path back closes behind us.
Ethel Lina White’s Step in the Dark is a psychological suspense novel from the interwar era, written by a British master of anxiety-rich crime fiction associated with the Golden Age yet drawn more to menace than puzzle. Published in the late 1930s, it locates fear not in elaborate whodunits but in the everyday social arrangements of the time—courtship, travel, hospitality, and domestic propriety—where danger gathers quietly at the edges of civility. The book unfolds within recognizably modern spaces of that period and uses their conventions to isolate its protagonist, creating a taut atmosphere in which appearances and safety are never securely aligned.
At the outset, a capable woman accustomed to managing her own affairs accepts an alluring change that promises companionship and ease, only to find that unfamiliar rooms, unfamiliar faces, and unfamiliar rules can transform opportunity into uncertainty. Removed from her usual supports, she must weigh every kindness against the possibility of design, and every coincidence against the logic of a plan. White restricts the reader’s knowledge to the heroine’s vantage, so that each apparent refuge contains a fresh question, and each explanation arrives with a shadow attached, inviting careful attention to the small frictions that disturb an otherwise polished surface.
The reading experience is immersive and steadily pressurized rather than explosive, marked by White’s economical description, quick shifts in perspective within a tightly limited field, and a cadence that alternates breathless momentum with pauses of apprehension. Dialogue is sharpened to suggestion, minor details carry weight, and the setting’s ordinary routines produce a drumbeat of unease. Without recourse to the supernatural, the novel achieves a distinctly modern form of dread: the feeling that danger can be arranged through politeness, paperwork, and plausible stories. The tone remains lucid and cool, even as the emotional temperature rises toward the claustrophobia of entrapment.
Central themes assemble around trust, financial and emotional dependence, gendered vulnerability, and the power of social expectation to mute alarm. White examines how isolation operates not only geographically but psychologically, how a cultivated image can convert skepticism into self-doubt, and how risk hides within favors that are difficult to refuse. She is particularly acute on the uneasy trade between freedom and comfort: what autonomy costs, what security demands in return, and how deception can be masked by care. The book’s title becomes an ethical test, asking when prudence is courage, when courage is denial, and who profits from confusion.
For contemporary readers, Step in the Dark anticipates the dynamics of modern domestic suspense and the language now used to describe coercive control. Its attention to red flags—control of information, engineered dependence, strategic charm—feels current, as does its recognition that danger often arrives with a smile and paperwork in order. The novel also dramatizes the difficulty of seeking help when one fears disbelief, a problem no less relevant in an era of curated images and social performance. Reading it provides both the taut pleasures of a thriller and a reflective space to consider boundaries, consent, and self-preservation.
White’s achievement lies in building a sustained, plausible anxiety that neither flatters nor scolds the reader, but trains perception toward the everyday mechanisms of peril. As a work of interwar psychological crime fiction, it bridges the ornate puzzles of its age and the intimate, character-driven thrillers that followed, making it an ideal entry point for readers exploring the period today. Its craft—clean lines, humane focus, and disciplined escalation—still feels fresh. Step in the Dark endures because it transforms ordinary choices into suspense, urging us to look again at the thresholds we cross and to choose our footing with care.
Synopsis
Step in the Dark, by British suspense writer Ethel Lina White, is an interwar thriller that places an ordinary, capable woman at the threshold of a perilous choice. The novel opens in familiar, modern surroundings, where comfort and routine are offset by financial and emotional pressures. Into this environment comes an unexpected promise of romance and security, centered on an elegant, enigmatic suitor with ties beyond England. The heroine’s decision to accept his invitation—to cross borders and customs as well as private scruples—functions as the book’s title in action: a measured but momentous step from daylight certainty into an unfamiliar, possibly treacherous twilight.
Early chapters emphasize conflicting counsel, as friends and acquaintances voice prudence while the suitor offers speed, glamour, and protection. White traces the heroine’s reasoning with clarity: practical motives coincide with a genuine desire for companionship, and caution gives way to hope. The courtship is swift and strategically framed, relying on charm, status, and the promise of a simpler life. Contracts, letters, and travel documents lend an aura of legitimacy. Yet faint dissonances—misread signals, odd evasions, and a sense of being hurried—create a low pulse of unease that the protagonist repeatedly, and understandably, explains away.
The journey abroad deepens this unease. White uses borders, languages, and officialdom to show how a traveler’s agency can narrow without any single overt threat. Hospitality is correct but watchful; local customs seem courteous yet coded. The heroine’s papers are scrutinized and retained for practical reasons that never feel entirely neutral. She is installed in an imposing residence whose grand scale reduces rather than expands her freedom, and the household’s routines are opaque to an outsider. Small scenes—a misplaced key, a corridor that ends in a locked door, a letter that goes astray—accrue weight, hinting at control masked as consideration.
Once settled, the heroine confronts an intimate geography that is subtly constricting. Invitations are issued on her behalf; outings are rearranged; her communications home encounter unfortunate delays. The people around her—staff members, relatives, and well-dressed guests—appear attentive but curiously incurious about her wishes. White keeps motives ambiguous, encouraging readers to share the protagonist’s dilemma: to insist and seem ungracious, or to acquiesce and risk invisibility. One or two figures emerge as possible allies, including a person with outsider status of their own, but their reliability remains uncertain. The social surface gleams; underneath, it hardens into protocol that does not bend.
Tension escalates through a pattern of incidents that are inconvenient when isolated and alarming when combined. The heroine narrowly avoids minor mishaps, discovers rooms and records that raise questions, and begins to map the unspoken rules of her new surroundings. She notices how sentiment and legality intersect: who holds the keys, who manages money, who speaks for whom in public. Attempts to seek assistance are complicated by etiquette and jurisdiction, and appeals to authority risk being reframed as hysteria. White’s pacing keeps the danger near yet imprecise, a cloudbank approaching in silence, forcing the protagonist to strategize without announcing her fear.
Threaded through the plot is a study of trust, perception, and self-possession. White contrasts modern ideals of female independence with older structures of patronage and prestige, showing how quickly a person can be made a guest where she expected to be a partner. The heroine’s resilience emerges not as bravado but as alertness: she learns to parse gestures, to test boundaries quietly, and to value small, certain facts over grand assurances. The novel’s suspense rests as much in whether she can maintain a steady internal compass as in any single threat, and in how clear seeing becomes the prerequisite to effective action.
Without disclosing the final turns, the novel builds to a reckoning that depends on knowledge the heroine acquires about her own vulnerabilities and strengths. Step in the Dark endures as a lucid portrait of coercive charm and of the legal and social gray zones that can trap travelers and newlyweds alike. Its atmosphere—civilized, glittering, and suffocating—illustrates White’s gift for extracting dread from manners. Beyond its period setting, the book resonates as a caution against surrendering autonomy for promise, and as an affirmation that measured courage and careful attention can reopen doors that seemed, for a time, to have locked of their own accord.
Historical Context
Step in the Dark was first published in 1938, during Britain’s interwar boom in crime and suspense fiction. Its author, Ethel Lina White (1876–1944), was a Welsh-born British novelist best known for The Wheel Spins (1936), later filmed by Alfred Hitchcock as The Lady Vanishes (1938). The novel entered a marketplace shaped by the so‑called Golden Age of crime writing, when readers favored intricate puzzles and rising psychological tension. Commercial lending libraries and mass‑market publishers expanded access to such titles across Britain. Against this backdrop, White specialized in intelligent, tightly plotted thrillers centered on female protagonists confronting mounting, plausibly engineered peril.
Interwar Europe provided the novel’s travel-inflected backdrop. After World War I, standardized passports and border controls became routine, and British tourists increasingly ventured abroad via efficient rail networks, Channel ferries, and organized tours run by firms such as Thomas Cook. Sleeping cars, grand hotels, and resort towns catered to a growing middle class, while language barriers, unfamiliar currencies, and occasional visa restrictions complicated journeys. These conditions generated credible isolation for travelers far from home, especially outside major cities. White and her contemporaries used such settings—stations, hotels, and remote properties—to exploit delays, miscommunications, and jurisdictional gaps that feed suspense without requiring far‑fetched contrivances.
Social structures of the 1930s shaped character dynamics familiar in White’s fiction. Britain retained pronounced class distinctions, and domestic service, though declining, still supported hotels and private households. On the Continent, vestiges of aristocratic prestige remained potent, with castles, manor houses, and secluded estates attracting tourists and writers alike. Such locales gave thrillers ready-made hierarchies—owners, retainers, and guests—with unequal access to information and authority. Readers recognized the plausibility of constrained movement inside grand houses governed by etiquette and gatekeepers. By situating peril within spaces coded as respectable or picturesque, interwar suspense exposed vulnerabilities hidden beneath polished hospitality and inherited privilege.
Women’s shifting status frames the novel’s focus on a capable female lead. British women gained partial suffrage in 1918 and equal voting rights in 1928, and more entered paid professions, including journalism and authorship, during the 1920s–30s. Yet cultural expectations around marriage and domesticity persisted, while legal reforms were uneven: the Matrimonial Causes Act 1923 equalized divorce grounds for adultery, and the 1937 Act broadened grounds, but social stigma and economic dependence remained concerns. Fiction of the period frequently interrogated trust, courtship, and vulnerability, especially for women traveling or relocating. White’s suspense plots explore autonomy under pressure without abandoning credible social realities.
Interwar communications and bureaucracy underpin the story’s plausibility. Telegraphs and telephones connected major European centers, but international calls were costly and often routed through operators, and reception in rural districts could be unreliable. The BBC, chartered in 1927, unified British news consumption, while foreign travel required passports, hotel registration cards, and occasional visas. For Britons abroad, recourse to consulates existed but depended on distance, office hours, and documentary proof. These ordinary frictions—missed calls, delayed telegrams, language misunderstandings, paperwork demands—are the kind of obstacles that suspense writers like White used to delay rescue, deepen uncertainty, and heighten a protagonist’s isolation.
Law-enforcement contrasts added texture for readers. In Britain, decentralized county police forces operated under the Home Office, while many continental systems were centralized or militarized, such as gendarmeries. The International Criminal Police Commission, founded in 1923, facilitated information exchange, but extradition remained dependent on treaties and divergent procedures. Britons were aware that legal protections like habeas corpus were not universal, and newspaper coverage of political policing abroad fed unease. Suspense writers could draw on this climate without specifying regimes, stressing uncertainty about jurisdiction and due process. Such ambiguity legitimized a character’s fear of being unheard, misdirected, or administratively trapped.
White wrote as the crime genre diversified beyond pure puzzles. Alongside Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Margery Allingham, a current of psychological suspense—shaped by Mary Roberts Rinehart and the so‑called “Had I But Known” device—foregrounded atmosphere, perception, and threat to a protagonist’s safety. Circulating libraries and book clubs favored brisk narratives suitable for wide readerships, while cinema amplified appetite for travel danger through films like The Lady Vanishes (1938). White’s novels deploy confined settings, ambiguous helpers, and incremental menace, exemplifying the interwar pivot toward tension and fear as ends in themselves, not merely preludes to a clever denouement.
Events in 1938 sharpened public anxiety that seeps into contemporary suspense. Germany’s Anschluss with Austria in March and the Munich Agreement in September signaled fragile borders and unstable guarantees, prompting British civil‑defense steps, including the nationwide distribution of gas masks that autumn. Even apolitical thrillers absorbed this atmosphere of unease about travel, identity, and the reliability of official protection. Without naming ideological stakes, Step in the Dark channels interwar uncertainties through credible institutions, technologies, and social conventions. Its focus on a self‑reliant woman navigating charming yet treacherous spaces mirrors a culture balancing modern freedoms with a gathering sense of threat.
STEP IN THE DARK
CHAPTER ONE. REFLECTIONS
Across the table, Georgia Yeo looked at her hostess with timid admiration.
"I wonder," she thought, "if the time will ever come when that face will be familiar to me, at meals?"
She was acutely nervous, for she realized that the little dinner-party was a formal occasion when she was on exhibition. This was her great moment—her chance to grasp a future which blinded her with its brilliancy.
At present, she felt almost breathless by the rush of events, as though she were another Alice, whirled relentlessly through the air. It was only ten days since she had left England, for the first time in her life. Since then, much had happened—and it had happened too quickly.
She had come to Brussels and met the Count[1q].
History was made on her first night. She chose to stay at an old-established hotel, patronised by those who preferred an atmosphere of tradition to ultramodern plumbing. Once the mansion of a wealthy family, it preserved its original grandeur of yellowed marble walls and vast gilt-framed mirrors as a background for solid nineteenth-century furniture.
It was situated in the town, amid a tangle of dark narrow streets, so that Georgia was able to gaze through the revolving doors of the lounge and watch the people passing outside. A fine rain was falling so imperceptibly that it was visible only as a sliver through the darkness. It glistened on a procession of umbrellas and the statuary of a fountain, set in the middle of the road.
Inside was the brilliancy of branching electric lights—a constant flux of visitors—a babel of voices speaking an unfamiliar language. As she sat and watched, the novelty of her surroundings thrilled her to excited expectancy. For six years she had looked out, at twilight, always upon the same scene—an empty grey waste, with a distant white line of crawling foam, marking the sea.
She opened her cigarette case, which was the signal for the Count literally to leap into her life, forestalling the waiter with a match.
"Can it be really true?" he asked a minute later. "The clerk at the Bureau tells me that you are Mrs. Yeo—the celebrated writer of so many detective thrillers?"
Faster, faster...When she admitted her identity, the Count swept her away on the current of his exuberant spirits. In his stimulating company, she saw Brussels as a whirling confusion of ancient buildings, cobbled streets, statues, still life paintings of carcasses and dark arcaded dress-shops.
Out of the swarm of impressions there emerged a few indelible impressions. The mellow glory of the gilded houses of the Grand Place seen in a red, watery sunset. The twin towers of St. Gudule's floating in a silvery mist. The massive grandeur of the Palais de Justice, challenging the shock of Judgment Day. The soaring figure of St. Michael glittering in the morning sun. The horror of a picture in the Wiertz Museum—"The Age of Innocence"—which depicted two children burning a butterfly's wings.
Faster, faster...The Count rushed her from place to place, with cyclonic energy. He remained volatile, impersonal and adventurous—running risks with regulations and stamping on convention up to the moment when he formally expressed his wish that she should meet his family.
The pace increased to a breathless whirl after his relatives arrived at the hotel. Mrs. Vanderpant—aunt to the Count—was the widow of a wealthy and distinguished American. She was accompanied by an impressive-looking scientist—Professor Malfoy—and a youth named "Clair"—both connections on the American side. They were installed in the most expensive suite, from whence issued the fateful invitation.
Then, with a grinding jar, everything stopped still and Georgia found herself stationary at the dinner-table.
She was on approval.
The meal was laid in the private sitting-room, which was a chill apartment with a vast expanse of waxed parquet flooring. Starched white net curtains hung at the three long windows, framing narrow slices of cobalt-blue night sky. The golden glow of candlelight was reflected in a large Regency mirror upon the wall.
Georgia could see herself in it—small and very fair, in a backless black dinner-gown. She always looked younger than her age, but to-night, in spite of her efforts at sophistication, she appeared too immature for her writing record.
She moved her head and her reflection vanished.
"I've gone inside," she thought. "That mirror has swallowed so many faces—so many scenes."
Her dislike of seeing herself in the glass dated from her childhood, when her nurse used to hold her up before a large old-fashioned mirror. One night, she dreamed that, instead of seeing her familiar nursery, she looked into a dark smoky place, where strange people with depraved faces drank and played cards.
Her father, who always explained the connection between cause and effect, pointed out that the dream was the logical result of looking at a forbidden volume of Hogarth's engravings.
Although she accepted the moral, she always believed that the mirror had yielded up an evil page from the past.
At the present time, she was in a super-sensitive condition which was a prelude to the temperature she usually ran, as a penalty of excitement. To counteract its effect, she had taken a draught and, as a result, did not feel quite normal.
With the momentary detachment of a spectator, she looked at the others sitting round the table. Her hostess, Mrs. Vanderpant, was elderly, with a clear-cut arrogant face, pinched austere features, and a sunken mouth, expressive of intolerance and pride. In contrast with her chill personality, the Professor's vast florid clean-shaven face was benignant and his voice a melodious gong, although he rarely spoke. He had a shock of snowy curls which shadowed his black eyes, twinkling behind gold-rimmed pince-nez[2].
The youth, Clair, was too young to count with her. She was conscious of him merely as a sharp-faced youth, in a dinner-jacket. He spoke with an American accent, although his small hands and feet, in conjunction with smooth blue-black hair, suggested a Latin type.
There was another guest, her literary agent, Harvey Torch. He was a pleasant man, but entirely dwarfed by his neighbour. The Count's high-voltage personality eclipsed the rest of the party. He was unusually fair, with sparkling blue eyes and glittering white teeth, so that, whenever he moved or spoke, there was a constant flash and gleam.
Georgia shifted her position in order to see them reflected in the mirror—a reduced but vivid company. Above all, she was conscious of the Count flickering across the dimness of old glass, like streaks of luminous paint glimmering in the darkness.
Her vision blurred and her head began to swim.
"This moment must last," she thought. "One day—perhaps a thousands years hence—some one will look into that glass and see us all sitting round the table, just as we are now...And by then, everything that is going to happen to us, will have happened. We can do nothing then, to help or hinder."
It was this sense of imminent and unknown destiny which weighted down her spirit. She awoke to reality at the sound of her hostess's voice, which, in spite of her effort to be gracious, remained harsh and grating.
"Are you going to visit any other part of Belgium?"
"No," replied Georgia. "I'm going to stay in Brussels, all the time. At the beginning of my visit, I motored through part of the Ardennes."
"You saw some fine scenery."
"Yes, but it was too old and too cruel. There were so many ruins and prisons with horrible oubliettes[1]. They depressed me."
"This is really amusing," laughed the Count. "You are sorry for people who have been comfortably dead for hundreds of years. Yet you are utterly ruthless to your poor characters."
"That's different. I can control my situations. My prisoners are already released."
"But some prisons are quite comfortable. At least, I have been assured so by financial, or rather, high-financial friends...Besides, you told me you had been shut up in one small place, all your life. You've been living in one room. Where is the difference?"
Although she knew he was teasing her, Georgia answered the Count's question seriously.
"The difference is this. I can leave my prison whenever I like...But it must be ghastly to know you have got to stay in one place for ever. Always seeing the same scene, like Napoleon on St. Helena."
As she spoke the room was momentarily blotted out, and she seemed to be looking at the last red gleam of a setting sun reflected on long lines of grey waves, rolling out towards the horizon.
On—on...They moved ceaselessly, but she had to stay and watch that sullen waste of water. A scene of stark desolation. No ray of hope. Doom inexorable...A prisoner.
As though he sensed his client's discomfort, Torch came to her relief with a remark on a topical subject. Released from taking further part in the conversation, she became aware that the youth, Clair, was staring at her with hard, curious eyes. Their hostile expression told her that, for some unknown reason, he disliked her intensely.
Even as the certainty flashed across her mind, she realised that the antipathy was not only mutual, but—in her case—intensified by instinctive repulsion.
His merciless scrutiny turned the meal to a social ordeal. It was a formal and elaborate affair of many courses and wines, with two waiters in constant attendance. The table was decorated with orchids and covered with a cloth of handmade lace.
As she looked at it nervously, Georgia was plunged back into her childhood, when she had been taken to lunch at the Bishop's Palace. She could see again the white damask cloth, patterned with shamrock, as well as spattered with damson juice, which was her own shameful contribution.
Still under the spell of the past, her hand shook so violently when she raised her glass, that she was childishly afraid of spilling her wine. In this company, any slip or lapse from perfect manners might ruin her hopes. She felt overwhelmed by the importance of the issue at stake—crushed by the fact that the Count's relatives were persons of birth, rank and wealth.
"I'm aiming too high," she thought hopelessly. "I'm nothing. Nobody."
She was grateful for the moral support of her agent—Harvey Torch. Although he had been annoyed by the Count's invitation, he had accepted it in obedience to his instinct to protect the interests of others. On this occasion, he was concerned lest his most lucrative client had become friendly with adventurers.
In his character of critical observer he studied his company, excepting Clair, whom he considered negligible. Mrs. Vanderpant looked a typical example of inbreeding during centuries of social prestige, while the Professor bore the hallmark of the Mayflower. The Count, too, appeared a perfect specimen of super-vitality and physical fitness. Although he was middle-aged, it was possible to picture him in earlier years, as a blond youth, running around a stadium with a flaming torch.
The agent decided that they were almost too genuine, besides having the advantages of a successful stage-setting and candlelight. Consequently, he subjected them to his usual method of debunking, which was, to dress them up—in his imaginations—in different clothes.
The mental exercise was justified by results. Stripped of his evening suit and with his hair shorn, the Professor could shape in the ring as a heavyweight bruiser. The boy, Clair, was changed into a vicious young apache, by a dirty jersey and a beret; while the Count could be any type of pleasant scoundrel, common to every quarter of the globe.
Mrs. Vanderpant, alone, defied his efforts to degrade her dignity. Although he reduced her to sordid circles of vice and squalor, she remained triumphantly, the perfect lady in adversity.
As a momentary pause jammed the flow of conversation, the social occasion was marred by a disconcerting incident. Clair, who had never removed his eyes from Georgia's face, suddenly broke his silence with a barrage of questions.
"D'you know Brussels well?" he asked.
"No," Georgia confessed. "This is my first visit."
"Gosh, how did you miss it? Haven't you travelled?"
"No. I—I've never been abroad before."
"Where d'you live?"
"In a small village, on the east coast of England."
"Why?"
"It's quiet for my writing."
"Got a big estate?"
"No, only a cottage."
"How d'you entertain?'
"I have so few friends. I've dropped out of things."
"No family?"
"My mother and my two big girls. Merle and Mavis. They are seven and eight."
Stunned by the rattle of question succeeding question, Georgia answered mechanically, like a witness bullied by cross-examination. She had expected the delicate probing of skillful leading remarks, if she were to be accepted as a member of the Count's family; but this violation of her reserve by an ill-mannered youth left her aghast.
The attack was too swift and unexpected for the others to intervene. Torch received the impression that his hosts preferred to ignore the catechism rather than to recognise any breach of manners. Although, at first, his own mind was a blank, the mention of Georgia's children gave him his chance to intervene.
"I'm one of the few privileged to have a photograph of Mrs. Yeo's little girls, taken with their mother," he said. "They look like three sisters—two from the nursery and one from the schoolroom."
He stopped talking, distracted by hearing an unusual complaint.
"Waiter," said Mrs. Vanderpant, "these knives are sharp. Bring blunt ones. That is the way to find out whether the meat is really tender."
After a swift substitution had been made and the beef had sustained the test, the Count exulted over his aunt.
"I knew it would satisfy even you. I spoke one word to the maitre d'hotel, who himself visited the kitchens and selected the joint."
The incident stirred up Torch's suspicion afresh, lest it were pre-arranged in order to demonstrate the exalted rank of guests who could command such specialised service.
The more he considered it, the less he liked the situation. He knew that circumstances had made Georgia specially vulnerable to attack. Apart from her work, her nature was pliant and credulous, while she had only just emerged from voluntary exile. This was her first holiday after years of high-pressure writing, when she had lived in the world of her own lurid imagination.
He argued that, if this family was what it represented itself to be, the Count would be too used to the society of beautiful glamorous women to fall violently in love with Georgia. Moreover, if it needed financial support, its objective would be a genuine heiress.
The fact that it appeared to angle for a best-selling novelist, put it in the class of cheap fortune-hunters. Suddenly he decided, therefore, to clarify his suspicions by a discussion on specialised motives.
"Of course, you've all read Mrs. Yeo's novels," he remarked. "Besides being her agent, I am one of her fans. At the same time, I don't think there is any comparison between real and imaginary crimes. Nothing in fiction can compare with the horror of 'The brides in the bath.'"
He turned to the Count.
"Probably you remember it? A man married several wretched women and then drowned them, to get their bit of money."
The Count looked at him with genuine interest.
"Now murder is something I can never understand," he said. "Any man who commits murder must be either a monster or a maniac. No sane person would risk his neck when there are so many ways of getting money from a woman."
"Any one who marries a stranger must accept the consequences," remarked Mrs. Vanderpant. "Of course, in our class, such a marriage is out of the question. We first insist on intimate knowledge of the family."
"All the same," persisted Torch, "any woman with money is bound to run a risk over her marriage. It must be a distressing problem in the case of some fascinating stranger. If she turns him down, she may lose a genuine love; and if she takes him, she may lose more than her money."
As he spoke, he glanced at Georgia. The candlelight stirred in the breeze from the open window and trembled on her misty web of pale hair. Her eyes were wide with apprehension, yet a smile hovered around her mouth. She looked elusive and unearthly, like a dryad escaped from her tree.
His apprehension sharpened to actual fear. While he was presenting a hypothetical case, she might be in actual danger. Even as the fear crossed his mind, Clair attacked Georgia again with a direct personal question.
"What would you do, Mrs. Yeo? You've got money."
Georgia put her hand to her throat, as though she found it difficult to reply. Dazzled by the Count's personality and position, she had avoided the intrusion of her personal matters in her romance. Her reserve had amounted almost to emotional paralysis; but now she realised that the time had come for her to take a desperate chance.
"I have no money," she said.
Remembering her royalties, Torch stared at her incredulously, while Clair flushed with anger.
"You make pots," he contradicted. "Every one knows you make pots. Are you trying to high-hat me because I asked you a question?"
"No." Again Georgia forced herself to explain. "It is true I have made quite a lot of money, although not as much as people think. Writers rarely do. But I cannot touch it. I have settled all of it on my children."
Before the youth could make any comment, Mrs. Vanderpant dismissed him.
"We shall not expect you to wait for coffee, Clair. The conversation of adults must be boring to you."
The youth grimaced but rose from the table. As he passed the Count, he laid his hand upon his shoulder with a possessive gesture which Georgia resented.
"He's jealous of me," she thought.
Meanwhile, Torch studied the general reaction to Georgia's bombshell, only to discover that no one seemed affected by it. The Count's smile was still gay and unconcerned, while the Professor devoted his entire attention to the peeling of a peach. Mrs. Vanderpant preserved the detachment of a perfect hostess.
In the face of their high social standard, the presence of an ill-bred youth at the table seemed an unfortunate choice. It made him wonder whether Clair was included in order to pump a prospective victim. If this were the case, her revelation was calculated to shatter the hopes of any fortune hunter.
He drew a breath of deep relief. Georgia was safe.
CHAPTER TWO. BEHIND THE CURTAIN
Although her ordeal was nearly at an end, Georgia felt that she could hardly endure the last minutes of the meal. She had a guilty sense of being there on false pretences, as though she had been masquerading in the guise of a wealthy woman, to invite hospitable overtures.
When she asked to be excused from staying for coffee, on account of her rising temperature, she was surprised at Mrs. Vanderpant's concern.
"Have you a maid?" she asked.
"No," replied Georgia. "But I know what to take for these attacks. I shall be perfectly well in the morning."
"All the same, you must not be neglected. I will speak to the floor-housekeeper and tell her that I shall regard any attention she can show you, as paid to me."
Her chin elevated in conscious pride of position, she turned to Torch, with the air of granting an audience, while the Count accompanied Georgia to the outer door of the suite. When they reached the vestibule, which was screened off from the salon by curtains of faded grass-green velvet, he smiled down at her.
"My aunt must have guessed that I wanted to speak to you alone," he said.
She waited for him to continue with a throb of intense eagerness. As she looked around, she knew that the memory of her surroundings would always remain. In after years, she would recall the ivory walls, the marble bust of Leopold I[3]. on a pedestal, and the white sheepskin rug—all dyed a moonlight blue from the glass of a hanging lamp. She noticed, too, an incongruous drain-pipe umbrella-stand, painted with bulrushes—and a steel engraving of a Victorian skating-scene.
The Count cleared his throat.
"I want to apologise for Clair," he said. "He did not mean to be rude. You see, with us, money is nothing. He was cross, too, because he thought you were pulling his leg."
He stopped and looked at her expectantly, awaiting her comment.
"I am sorry he misunderstood," she told him. "Of course, I was speaking the truth. It saves trouble...He seems very fond of you."
"Clair?" The Count laughed indulgently. "Yes. He is a rascal, but one can't help liking him."
"Yes?" Georgia spoke vaguely in her anxiety to learn the future. "Shall I see you tomorrow?"
He dashed her hope with a regretful smile.
"I'm sorry, no. You understand. Family We must all be early birds tonight, for my aunt starts tomorrow at an unholy hour. I am expected to accompany her."
"Then—this is 'Good-bye'?"
"Oh, I may return. But if that is impossible, you will be a cherished memory. Whenever I see your novels on the stall at a railway station, I shall be able to boast, 'Ah I have met the celebrated Mrs. Yeo—and she is even more charming than her books.'"
In spite of her temperature, Georgia began to feel cold.
"I am afraid I made a poor impression on your people," she said.
"Oh, no, no. How could you? You were modest and frank. Those are qualities which appeal to my aunt."
Suddenly Georgia was urged to tell him that life-story which she withheld so persistently from the public.
"It must be wonderful not to think of money," she said. "In my case, it's been the most important thing. My grandfather was a wealthy tea-merchant. He was a self-made man, but he sent his only son to Oxford—and all the rest. Father never earned a penny in his life. He dribbled away most of his fortune on the Stock Exchange. He was hopeless, for he would buy shares on margin. Now, I'm like my grandfather over money. Really, I'm a tough old man with a stubby grey beard and a droopy eyelid."
The Count joined in her forced laughter while he paid her the tribute of absorbed attention.
"There was so much worry about money," she continued, "that we were all glad when I married an old family friend. It seemed security. And then, everything happened at once. Edward—my husband—went bankrupt and committed suicide. I was left penniless with my mother and two babies to keep."
"Your mother, too?"
"Naturally. She lost her remaining capital in one of Edward's companies. I took a job, at first, and wrote my first novel at night. I'd written all my life. A miracle happened, for it was a best-seller. After that start, I've never looked back...But you can understand why I felt I must safeguard my children. They are dependent on me and I am not immortal."
"I do indeed. I honour you for it. May I?"
The Count raised her hand to his lips.
At that moment, his homage seemed a meaningless gesture. She waited for him to speak before she broke the silence with a final appeal.
"I hope I've not bored you. I only wanted to explain. You see, your cousin made me feel ashamed—because I'd done nothing and gone nowhere. Now you know why...Goodbye."
"No, 'Good-night.' We will hope."
Although she was used to loss, the episode was one of her bitterest disappointments when she went downstairs to her bedroom—unescorted. She had been living up in the clouds with a blond and radiant lover, who brought her the supreme gift of laughter, together with a dream-title of "Countess."
As she stumbled along the narrow carpeted passages which ran round two sides of the building, she suddenly realised that she was completely exhausted and that her bed was the only thing which really mattered. She could scarcely drag her legs to her room and when she reached it at last, it seemed small and stuffy in contrast with Mrs. Vanderpant's cool and lofty salon.
She threw off her clothes and after swallowing another draught crossed to the window. Below her was the traffic of the noisy street, with illuminated tramcars bearing advertisements of unfamiliar cigarettes and mineral waters.
Beyond rose a straggling map of lights which defined the higher parts of the city. Every spot was associated with the Count. Somewhere up there was the Congress Column and the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior, guarded by two bronze lions at his feet. As she gazed at the slope she thought of her own village, with the sound of the tide dragging back the pebbles, and the distant line of the sea.
Although it held those she loved best, she rebelled at the idea of returning to it.
"Not now—not after this," she murmured.
Feeling hopeless and miserable she climbed into bed. Very soon her thoughts grew blurred and she forgot everything but the present. Her attacks of temperature were not unpleasant, for she lay in a dry baked heat which reminded her of basking in sun-warmed sand. The open window admitted the noise of the street and a faint light from the illuminations below, but no refreshing current of night air.
The last thing she saw before she fell asleep was her evening frock, visible as a huddle of black draperies flung over the back of a chair.
When she opened her eyes again, she was looking at it still; but she was conscious of other changes. A cool breeze blew in upon her from the window, which appeared to have moved closer. The room, too, seemed nearly doubled in size.
"This is absurd," she thought. "I must still be asleep[2q]."
She stretched out her hand to snap on the light, but the switch was no longer there. She was in the same bed, however, for she could distinguish the pattern of the printed bed-spread—blue poppies on a green ground. In further proof her watch was under her pillow, although the dial was too small for her to see the hands.
Remembering that there was a view of a church clock from her window, she slid to the polished floor and groped her way towards it, only to be baffled by further transformation. The lighted street and the traffic had sunk into the ground. In its place was a vague darkness, blotched by a suggestion of foliage.
As she tried vainly to pierce the gloom, she noticed an iron stair spiralling upwards, just beyond the window sill. The sight of it filled her with an overwhelming desire to climb up to the roof. Her favourite dream—sleeping or waking—was of a city of the Future, where buildings rose up in towering tiers and pedestrians walked high above the streets, which looped downwards to the lowest torrent of rushing traffic.
"If this is a dream," she reasoned, "it's quite safe to get out of the window. But—I feel awake."
