Never in all her life had Jane seen anything so beautiful as the clear rain-washed sky, the grey rain-stilled sea. The little thud of the stone closing between her and Mr. Molloy was one of the most sounds that she had ever heard. She felt as if she had never really appreciated the daylight before. There were nice woolly clouds on the horizon. The damp air was fresh, not like the air in those passages. There was a gorse bush with about two and a half yellow flowers on it, rather with the rain. Jane regarded them with intense affection.
She walked down the path, drawing long breaths and ready to sing with pure relief—“Ease after toyle, port after stormie seas.” She frowned, remembering the next line. After all, they were not out of the wood yet. An unpleasant proverb succeeded Spenser’s line—“He laughs longest who laughs last.”
“Rubbish,” said Jane out loud, and she began to run.
She came in with such a glowing colour that Mr. Ember, who met her in the hall, was moved to remark upon it.
“You seem to have enjoyed your walk. Where have you been?”
“Round by the headland,” said Jane.
The roll of typed paper her knee beneath her stocking top. In her arms she carried a sheaf of yellow tulips. She made haste to her room and set the flowers in a jar on the broad window where they could be plainly seen from the terrace. With all her heart she prayed that George Patterson, who was Anthony Luttrell, would see them. She did not know that George Patterson had ceased to exist, and that Anthony Luttrell, having taken the law into his own impatient hands, was on his way to London.
There had been an encounter with Raymond in the laboratory—her hand for a moment on his arm, his muscles under her touch; not a word spoken on either side, not a word needed. The scene carried Anthony to his breaking-point. At the next roll-call George Patterson was missing. Meanwhile Raymond was behind a locked door, and Jane set yellow tulips on her window-sill.
Having made her signal, Jane turned her mind to the lists. She was afraid to keep them on her, and she was afraid to hide them anywhere else. If Molloy missed them, and had any means of communicating with Ember, she would be searched, and her room would be searched. Whatever happened to her, they must not recover the lists until she had copied them.
She remembered the trap-door in the cupboard, but it was just possible that Ember knew about it, not likely but possible. After five minutes’ profound thought, she went to a drawer into which she had emptied a quantity of and ends.
Renata, it appeared, had a mild taste for drawing. There were pencils, indiarubber, a roll of paper, and some drawing-pins. Jane took out the cartridge paper and the drawing-pins. She extracted the lists from her stocking top and smoothed them out flat. Then she opened the cupboard door, mounted on a chair as close to the cupboard as possible, and pinned the lists on to the cupboard ceiling with a sheet of cartridge paper covering them. They just fitted in between two rows of hooks. Jane got down with a sigh of relief and unlocked her bedroom door.
The evening passed like a dream. Lady Heritage did not appear at all, and Jane found a strange unreality in the situation which kept her talking to Mr. Ember in set schoolgirl phrases whilst he to her with more than a hint of . She was glad when she could take a book and read.
It was eleven o’clock before she dared begin her night’s work, but she came up to her room with her plan all ready. First she took off her dress and put on a dressing-gown, just in case any one should come to the door. Then, having turned the key and switched off the light, she took a candle into the cupboard, set it on a shoe box, and took down the lists. She put a cushion on the floor, fetched Renata’s fountain pen and some sheets of foolscap which she had taken from the library, and began her work of copying. With the cupboard door shut there was no chance that any one would see her candle.
She wrote , town after town, name after name. More towns, more names. As she finished each sheet, she checked it very carefully by its original. It was weary, work; but the weariness and the monotony were like a grey curtain which hung between her and something which she inexpressibly.
The idea of into the passage again, of creeping up to the laboratory in order to put back the lists before they were missed, filled her with . To allow her mind to dwell upon this idea was to become of carrying it out. She therefore held her attention firmly to the endless names, and drove an pen. She had to get up twice for more ink. Each time, as she stretched herself and walked the few paces to the table and back, the thought came to her like a cold breath, “It’s coming nearer.”
At last, in the dead stillness of the sleeping hours, the lists were finished. She pinned the copies on to the cupboard ceiling in the same way that she had pinned the originals, carefully covered with a piece of cartridge paper. Then she took the originals in her hand and faced the necessity for action. Her feet and hands were very cold. She felt as if it were days since she had had anything to eat. She wanted most dreadfully to go to bed and sleep. She wanted to have a good cry. What she had to do was to go down into slug- and possibly rat-haunted passages and risk waking an Uncle out of his beauty sleep. Jane gave herself a mental shake.
“Don’t be a rabbit, Jane Smith,” she said. “It’s got to be done. You know that just as well as I do. If it’s got to be done, you can do it. Get going at once.”
She got going. First she put the lists back in her stocking top. Then she put on the old serge dress. Her fancy played hopefully with the thought that some day she would give herself the pleasure of burning that abominable garment. She extracted the felt from the paper parcel to which she had them. They were still . She put them on. They felt limp, damp, and discouraging, but they had the merit of making no noise. Then she took a good length of candle and a box of matches and opened her door.
“Well, here goes,” said Jane, and stepped into pitch darkness. This time she shut the door behind her. As she took her hand off the handle she felt as if she were letting go of her last hold on safety, an thought, as she instantly told herself. She knew by now just how many paces took one to the place where the light should have been burning, and just how many more to the stairhead. The rose window showed like a pattern painted on the dark. It gave no light, but it marked the position of the door.
Jane felt the soles of her feet stick and cling to the damp slippers as she crawled down the stairs. They just didn’t and that was all; they only felt like it.
She hated moving the big chair in the dark, but it had to be done. Suppose she dropped it with a crash, suppose she pulled Willoughby Luttrell’s picture down when she was feeling for the catch; suppose a mouse ran over her foot—there is no end to the cheerful suppositions which will one’s brain in circumstances like these.
Jane did not drop the chair with a crash, neither did Willoughby Luttrell’s picture fall down, nor did a mouse run over her foot. She passed through the panelled door, shut it behind her, groped her way to the foot of the steps, and lighted the candle. It was then that the cheering thought that she might perhaps encounter Henry came to her, only to fade as she remembered how long past midnight it now was. However, if she had not Henry she had at least a light. It is much harder to be brave in the pitch dark even when, as in the present case, the darkness is really a protection.
Jane walked quite up the second passage on the left until she came to the point where she knew that she must put the light out again. Molloy might be awake. She blew out her candle and began to feel her way forward. She came to the corner, and passed it. Moving very slowly and cautiously, she crept up to the steel gate and stood with her fingertips on it, listening, and thinking hard. She could feel that the door was ajar. That struck her as strange, very strange. If there ever was a man badly scared, Molloy was that man when she had said that the secret of the passages was not confined to himself and Ember. Yet he had gone to sleep leaving the gate ajar. Had he? Jane’s mind gave her a clear and definite answer. He hadn’t, he wouldn’t. She had been so sure that the gate would be shut, so ready with her plan. She was going to unfold the papers, push them between the bars, and jerk them as far across the room as possible. Molloy might think they had fallen from the bench, or, if he had his doubts, might well wish to avoid letting Ember know that Jane had been in the laboratory. All this she had so present in her thought, that to feel the gate give to her hand staggered her and set her shaking. She quieted herself and listened intently. Not a sound.
She did not somehow fancy that Molloy would be a quiet . She had anticipated snores of a certain rich quality. Here was silence in which one might have heard an infant draw its breath, a silence undisturbed, .
It was not only the silence which to Jane. That odd, dim, only half-understood sense which some people possess, clamoured to her that the place was empty. As she stood there, and the seconds dragged into minutes, this sense became so that she found herself resolving to act in to its .
She pushed the gate and heard the alarm ring. With all her ears she listened for the sound of a man stirring, waking, and starting up. At the first movement she would have been away, and Molloy, new roused from sleep, would never have caught sight of her. There was no movement. The bell went on ringing, a little continuous of sound, not loud but as confusing as the buzzing of a mosquito.
Jane switched on the light, slipped round the gate, and closed it. The bell stopped ringing. The jarred silence settled slowly, as dust settles when it has been stirred. There was no one there. The unshaded light showed every corner of the . Molloy’s bag was gone. Like a in the face came certainty. “He’s gone. Molloy’s gone too.”
Slowly, almost mechanically, Jane extracted the rolled-up lists from her stocking. She was still holding the unlighted candle in her left hand. The lists bothered her. She moved towards the bench to put them down, but first she laid the candle carefully on its side so as not to stub the wick, and, sitting down, began to smooth the papers out upon her knee. It was whilst she was doing this that she saw the note.
It lay on the end of the bench up against a book. It was addressed to Jeffrey Ember, Esquire. The capital E’s were magnificent flourishes; an underlining like an supported the superscription. Jane, like other well-brought-up............