Читать книгу Put Out the Light - Ethel Lina White - Страница 8

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EVEN as Miss Vine slept, immune to fear, the shadows were stirring in the valley. They crept along the roads, rode the walls of houses, and climbed into windows.

Had Miss Vine seen them she would have been afraid. But it was a long chain of events which led out from the safety of four silver walls, and up to a dying gurgle in the dark. It twisted and serpentined, while it looped itself around the small obstacles of chance incidents.

Thus it came to pass, that, on this night, a small mongrel pup was, for a second, overlord of the Masters of Fate. It was an ironic gesture on the part of the mocking gods, for Miss Vine kept no dog, even for defense. She hated all animals, and the canine tribe in particular.

But Miss Vine's fate was already sealed in a long-distance call to Death—because, aeons ago, the star decreed that a spinster should be murdered by night.

The puppy, whose name of Wendy was a double-fault—both as regarded his sex, and also his instincts, which were destructive rather than protective—lived at the Moat House. It was a low, white residence, set amid extensive water-fed grounds, and two miles, as the crow flies, from Jamaica Court.

Nominally, the puppy was the property of Mrs. Antrobus—the widow of a judge, and the official owner of the Moat House. She was a lady of strong character, and had ruled her late husband with an iron hand. In the puppy she met her master. She allowed the small creature to impose his will on hers, and to rule the house.

In one direction only was his ambition frustrate. She decreed that all respectable and law-abiding little dogs should stay at home, after dark. Every night, at nine o'clock, the housemaid carried him into the kitchen and put him to bed, in his basket. He made no protest, beyond looking like a martyr, but lay, curled up in feigned slumber, while he listened to every word of the servants' gossip.

When their supper was finished and the creaking of the back stairs told him that they were safely on their way up to bed, he leaped from bed, butted open the kitchen door, and padded back to the deserted drawing room.

A little lord of creation, he was now free to choose his own sleeping berth—the best chair or the forbidden brocade settee. But, first, he always crossed over to the French windows, where he stood, wistfully gazing out into the darkness of the garden.

His instinct told him that he was missing the best things of life—scufflings and rustlings in the undergrowth, strange strong scents, and a whole world of adventures and perils which lay hidden outside in the gloom.

On this especial night he had made his usual survey, and was blissfully snoring on the plum-brocade settee, when something drifted from the belt of wood which walled one side of the lane, at the bottom of the garden.

It was a shadow.

It clung to the darkness, as though it were a detached scrap of the night. Almost invisible against the trunk of an oak, it stared up at the Moat House.

The low, white building lay in total eclipse. No crack of light outlined any of the long dark windows. Apparently, every fire was drawn, every door locked, every inmate asleep.

The shadow crossed the lane and opened the front gate, slowly and cautiously. At the sound of a betraying creak—which was magnified by the stillness to a rusty scream—it flitted back to its shelter, and melted again into the bark of a tree.

The minutes ticked away—and each tick was the beat of a heart. The silence of the night was unchallenged. Creeping out again, the shadow slipped through the open gate, and into the tenebrous shadows of the drive.

Slowly, as though feeling every inch of its way, it pressed on. In the shade of the trees it looked blind and formless—without limbs or features, as though some elemental passion had achieved experimental materialization.

But when it came out into the open it was revealed as an indefinite figure, muffled in a cape, and with its face blacked out by the mask of a dark handkerchief.

The shadow paused. On the other side of the moat which gleamed ahead, like a black, sluggish canal, seeded with stars, was a wide expanse of lawn, where the Judge's widow gave garden parties, in summer.

When it had slunk over the drawbridge, the shadow knew that its Rubicon was passed. Although the house looked dark and silent, even now some wakeful person might be standing behind the window curtains, looking up at the stars.

A drove of wild horses thundered through the shadow's head—and each hoof-beat was the galloping of its own heart. Conscious of its peril, it crossed the grass, and reached the French windows of the drawing room. Without a pause wherein to weaken, it drew out a bit of bent wire and began to pick the lock of the door.

Careless through long immunity, no one in Oldtown took elaborate precautions against burglary. But, although the mechanism was simple and the shadow worked with dexterity, it was nervously conscious of a race with time. Two separate chimes sounded from the clock-tower of a village church before the door yielded to pressure and swung open.

The shadow tried, in vain, to pierce the gloom of the interior. It knew itself to be a black silhouette in the doorway, while the room kept its secret.

Had it been seen? Then, someone was waiting for it, in the darkness. It was walking into an ambush. An undergraduate nephew of Mrs. Antrobus was staying at the house; he was a footballer of repute, who would welcome the chance of a tackle.

The shadow could not afford to linger. Risking all, it drew out its electric torch and flashed the light over the floor and walls.

The room was empty, although it showed the recent tenancy of its mistress by the comfortable disorder of dented cushions and open library book. It was a large, pleasant apartment, rather too ornate in its decoration, and overcrowded with furniture and ornaments. The walls were almost covered with water-colours, in gilt frames, depicting Italian landscapes with pansy-blue skies and groves of olives.

The dancing circle from the torch flickered like a will-o'-the-wisp, over many a valuable ornament in carved ivory or finely wrought silver, which were souvenirs of the Judge's years of office in the East. Then it rested on the marble mantelpiece, where a Dresden china shepherd and shepherdess smiled at each other, over the barrier of the gilt French clock.

The shadow took its bearings, and then snapped off the torch. Working its way between the furniture, it stole noiselessly to the fireplace, and snatched the nearest Dresden figure—the flaxen-haired shepherd in sky-blue breeches.

It was on its way back to the open French window, when the sound of footsteps outside the house caused it to hug the wall, as a bat hooks itself under the eaves.

Mrs. Antrobus' nephew, who, by all the rules of the game, should have been snoring dreamlessly upstairs, was cutting diagonally across the lawn, on his way to the front door. Although he had nearly drunk in the dawn at a stag-party, he was still sober, and aggressively fresh after his long walk home.

The shadow had no real fear of detection. The nephew stood in wholesome awe of his aunt, and was obviously intent on getting into the house quietly, in view of the late hour. The shadow could see his broad back and muscular shoulders in the shelter of the porch, and it strained its ears for the creak of the front door, which would be its signal to slip out into the garden.

But, even as it listened, it heard a snore from the settee. With eyes grown accustomed to the gloom, it saw a fat white puppy, just stirring out of its sleep.

The small creature yawned, blinked—and suddenly spotted the shadow. Instantly, it was erect, every hair bristling.

The shadow knew that the game was up. At the first yap, the nephew would turn his head and see the open French window. The intruder would be bottled up if it stayed in the room, and overtaken if it tried to escape.

Quicker than light, two instincts flashed together in warfare within the puppy's mind. It knew its business, which was to arouse the household. But, even as its jaws opened, its wicked eye espied the French window.

It stood ajar. The barrier which guarded Paradise had mysteriously fallen during the night.

The stronger instinct won. Wagging its tail feebly, basely pretending to be invisible, accepting the stranger as an inmate of the household, the puppy sneaked across the carpet, and shot out into the garden.

Its flight across the grass was noiseless as a flash of lightning. The crisis was over. As the nephew entered the house, the shadow, in its turn, slipped out of it, cautiously closing the French window.

When it reached the drawbridge, it stopped to drop the Dresden china figure into the moat, where it sank from sight, down in the opaque olive-green water.