I

AND suddenly, in the thick darkness, whirring as if it were a scream, intermitted for a moment and again commencing, a little bell rang out at Dudley Leicester’s elbow. As suddenly, but with a more gracious diffusion, light welled down from above his head, and Etta Hudson’s voice mingling with it:

“Stop that confounded thing! I don’t want all the servants in the house to know you are here.”

She leaned over the white and ormolu banisters: the light swinging over her head made a halo above her disordered hair; her white shoulders gleamed.

“Stop it,” she said; “Don’t fumble so ridiculously. Don’t you know how to take the thing off the hooks?”

She laughed at him derisively; her face disappeared as if she were about to continue her upward journey. Then once more she was looking down at him:

“Tell whoever it is,” she said, “that Sir William is in Paris and Lady Hudson in bed. Say ’sir’ when you speak, and they’ll think it’s the second footman, Moddle! Don’t you remember Moddle?” And again she laughed, and her ascent of the stairs was marked by the tips of her fingers, visible as if they were little white and creeping mice.

Dudley Leicester put the receiver to his ear. A peremptory “Are you 4,259 Mayfair?” made him suddenly afraid, as if a schoolmaster had detected him in some crime. Hitherto he had had no feeling of crime. It was as if he had merely existed in the tide of his senses. An equally peremptory “Don’t go away” was succeeded by the words: “Get down,” and then:

“Is that Sir William Hudson’s?”

Leicester answered—he had the words clearly fixed in his mind—but already he was panting:

“Yes, but Sir William’s in Paris, and Lady Hudson in bed.” And he did not omit to add “sir.”

Through his mind, quickened by his emotions of fear, there shot the idea that now they must go away; that it was all over; that he was very tired; that he must sit down and rest.

Then suddenly—still low, distinct, stealthy, and clear—the voice of the invisible man asked:

“Isn’t that Dudley Leicester speaking?”

He answered “Yes,” and then with a sudden panic he hung the receiver upon the hooks.

And Etta Hudson, descending the stair with the letter in her hand, saw him sitting dishevelled and dejected, as if all his joints had been broken, in the messenger-boy’s chair beside the heavy, dark table.

He rose suddenly, exclaiming: “You’ve got me into this scrape; you’ve got to get me out of it. What’s to be done?”

Standing on the bottom step of the stairs, she laughed at him, and she laughed still more while she listened:

“How do I know who it was?” He poured forth disjointed sentences. “I told you somebody would see us in Regent Street. It might have been your husband, or some blackmailer. London’s full of them. I can’t possibly ring them up again to ask who it was. Perhaps they spoke from a call-office. What’s to be done? What in the name of God is to be done?”

A certain concern and pity were visible in her eyes: she opened her lips and was about to speak, when he exclaimed:

“It would break Pauline’s heart. What’s to be done?”

The line of her brows hardened, and she uttered a hard little laugh.

“Don’t you know,” she said; “why, my dear Dudley, the answer is: ’That’s the bare’s business.’”

His first action on awakening was always to stretch out his hand for the letters that his silent man would have placed by his side, and to glance at the clock on his dressing table to see how many hours he had slept. And, indeed, next morning his first sensation was one of bodily well-being and of satisfaction because the clock appeared to inform him that he had slept for three hours longer than was his habit. But with a slight feeling of uneasiness he remembered how late he had been the night before, and stretching out his hand for the letters, he heard a voice say:

“Are you 4,259 Mayfair?”

He had answered “What?” before he realized that this question was nothing more than a very vivid recollection. But even when he had assured himself that it was only a very vivid recollection, he lay still and discovered that his heart was beating very quickly. And so afraid was he that the motion of stretching out his arm would bring again the voice to his ears, that he lay still, his hand stretched along the counterpane. And suddenly he got up.

He opened one white-painted cupboard, then the other. Finally, he went to the door of the room and peered out. His man, expressionless, carrying over his arm a pair of trousers, and in one hand a white letter crossed with blue, was slowly ascending the staircase at the end of the corridor.

“You didn’t ask me a question,” Dudley Leicester said, “about two minutes ago?”

Saunders said: “No, sir, I was answering the door to the postman. This, sir.” And he held out the registered letter.

It was as if Dudley Leicester recoiled from it. It bore Pauline’s handwriting, a large, round, negligent scrawl.

“Did he ask our number?” Dudley inquired eagerly; and Saunders, with as much of surprise as could come into his impassive face, answered:

“Why, no, sir; he’s the regular man.”

“Our telephone number, I mean,” Dudley Leicester said.

Saunders was by this time in the room, passing through it to the door of the bath-cabinet.

“As a matter of fact, sir,” he said, “the only thing he asked was whether Mrs. Leicester’s mother was any better.”

“It’s very odd,” Dudley Leicester answered. And with Saunders splashing the water in the white bath-cabinet, with a touch of sun lighting up the two white rooms—in the midst of these homely and familiar sounds and reflections, fear suddenly seized Dudley Leicester. His wife’s letter frightened him; when there fell from it a bracelet, he started as he had never in his life started at a stumble of his horse. He imagined that it was a sort of symbol, a sending back of his gifts. And even when he had read her large, sparse words, and discovered that the curb chain of the bracelet was broken, and Pauline desired him to take it to the jeweller’s to be repaired—even then the momentary relief gave way to a host of other fears. For Dudley Leicester had entered into a world of dread.