Читать книгу The Man Who Loved Lions - Ethel Lina White - Страница 14

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It was a relief to be alone and without John's presence as a reminder of destructive change. As she looked around the tower-room, she decided that some of its past charm could be restored.

"Actually it's the same except for the fire," she reflected. "I never saw it properly before, so I imagined it. That's all there is to it. I'll fix it."

Zealous as an A.R.P. warden, she mounted a chair and drew down a shade of dark-blue crinkled paper which had been rolled back. It shrouded the bulb and reduced the illumination to a funereal gloom, only relieved by the radiance of the electric fire. Once again there was shadowed mystery as the walls shrank into invisibility, like pimpernels closing before the threat of rain.

Brooding alone in the warmth, Ann recaptured some of the spell of the past. It seemed to her rather like a miracle to be actually back inside the tower-room. All that had happened that evening was but the prelude to the real adventure. A few false notes had been struck and the limiting had been too strong—but such slight hitches would be forgotten when the curtain rose.

Her tranquillity was suddenly shattered by a low rasping sound. It was not a roar, but rather like a purr which thickened intermittently to a snarl, as though in hint of underlying menace. She could not locate it, but it seemed to be everywhere at the same time—above, below and all around her—throbbing on the air like a fevered pulse or a distant gong.

"It's near," she thought. "Close to the house. Or even inside."

In the silence that followed, her imagination broke loose from her control and ran wild. She had a horrible suspicion that Richard was indulging his cankered sense of humour and unleashing a tigress to act as lady-receptionist at the reunion.

"He always hated Stephen," she thought. "Suppose he's planning for him to walk into a trap."

Without care for her own safety, she opened the door and stood on the small landing, gazing down into the well of the circular stair. It was too dark for her to see the lobby at the bottom but she heard someone coming up the steps. Her heart beat faster as she listened, because the footsteps were those of a man. They were too steady to be John's, while Richard was unlikely to use the outside entrance when a door on the landing led to the main staircase of the house.

The inference was a choice between James and Stephen—a fifty-fifty chance.

Hope flared up—to be killed by bitterest disappointment. As she threw the light of her torch downwards, it gleamed on black shiny hair on a flat head which reminded her vaguely of a snake...Once started, the reunion was continuing to function. Within a few seconds she would be linked up again with its sinister promotor—Richard.

While she waited she grew conscious of miserable seeping fear. It was inexplicable in the light of past experience, when her father had declared—in hackneyed phrase—that she had not a nerve in her body. Although she was not so immune as he boasted, during some narrow escapes, she had contrived the impression of thumbing her nose at danger.

As she stood on the landing, she realised that she was missing the stimulus of motion. When she was chased by a grizzly—and when her canoe was drawn into rapids, thundering towards the lip of an abyss—she had been sustained by the heat of excitement. She had to run—to fight; but it was a cold-blooded business to wait and listen while the footsteps wound around the spiral.

With an instinct to protect herself, she flashed the light in Richard's face when he was a few steps below her. It was evident that he mistook her for someone else, for he whispered with savage exultation:

"It's all right. By now—he must be dead."