Pressing his face against the glass, Sterling, astounded, saw her take up a pencil and a writing-block from a dimly seen bureau. He could endure no more. Premature action might jeopardize the success of Nayland Smith’s plans, but there were definite limits to Sterling’s powers of endurance. These had been reached.
Stepping back a pace he raised his right foot, and crashed the heel of his shoe through the small leaded pane of glass just above the lock of the French window.
He had expected an echoing crash; in point of fact the sound made was staccato and oddly muffled. He paused for a second to listen . . . Somewhere in the distance a train whistle shrieked.
Thrusting his hand through the jagged opening, he turned the key, pushed the French window open and stepped into the room. Three swift strides and he had Fleurette in his arms.
She had turned at the crash of his entrance—eyes widely opened, and a look of fear upon her beautiful face.
“My darling, my darling!”—he crushed her against him and kissed her breathlessly. “What has happened? Where have you been? Above all, why didn’t you open the window?”
Fleurette’s eyes seemed to be looking through him—beyond him—at some far distant object. She made a grimace of pain— good God!
Sterling released her.
He had read of one’s heart growing cold, but was not aware that such a phenomenon could actually occur. Where there had been mystery—there was mystery no more. Fleurette’s love for him was dead. Something had killed it.
With a tiny handkerchief she was wiping her lips, watching him, watching him all the time. There was absolute silence in the room, and absolute silence outside. He found time to wonder if Gallaho had heard the crash, if those inside the house had heard it.
But this thought was a mere undercurrent.
All of him that was real, all of him that lived, was concentrated upon Fleurette. And now, looking him up and down, with a glance of such scornful anger as he had never sustained in his life from man or woman:
“You are just a common blackguard, then?” she said, in that musical voice which he adored, and yet again raised the fragment of cambric to her lips. “I hate you for this.”
“Fleurette, darling!”
His own voice was flat and toneless.
“If you ever had a right to call me Fleurette, you have that right no longer.”
Her scorn was like a lash. Alan Sterling writhed under it. But although she stared straightly at him, he could not arrest that strange, far-away gaze. She turned suddenly, and walked towards the bureau. Over her shoulder:
“Get out!” she said. “I am going to call the servants, but I will give you this chance.”
“Fleurette, dear!” he extended his arms distractedly. “My darling! What has happened? what wrong have I done?”
He followed her, but she turned and waved him away, fiercely.
“Leave me alone!” she cried, her eyes flashing murderously. “If you touch me again, you will regret it.”
She picked up a pencil and began to write.
Sterling, quivering in muscle and nerve, stood close beside her. Whoever had interfered between himself and Fleurette, upon one point he was determined. She should not remain here, in this house. Explanations could come later. But he proposed to pick her up, regardless of protests, and carry her out to the police car. Slowly he moved nearer, making up his mind just how he should seize her. There was a silk-shaded lamp on the bureau and in its light he was able quite clearly to read the words which Fleurette was writing upon the pad.
As he read, he stood stock still, touched by a sort of supernatural horror. This is what he read:-
“Alan darling. If you touch me I shall try to kill you. If I speak to you I shall tell you I hate you. But I can write my real thoughts. Save me, darling! Save me! ...”
Came a flash of inspiration—Alan Sterling understood.
Fleurette was the victim of some devilish device of the Chinese physician. He had induced in her either by drugs or suggestion, a complete revulsion of feeling in regard to those she had formerly loved. But because of some subtlety of the human brain which he had over-looked, although, as in some cases of amnesia, she could not express her real thoughts in words, she could express them in
“My darling!”
Sterling bent forward and tore the page from the writing-block.
Whereupon Fleurette turned, her face contorted.
“Don’t touch me! I detest you!”—she glared at him venomously; “I detest you!”
Sterling stooped, threw his left arm around her waist and his right under her knees. He lifted her. She screamed wildly and struck at him.
He forced her head down upon his shoulder to stifle her cries, and carried her towards the open window. . . .
CHAPTER 24
THE LACQUER ROOM
Gallaho by now very breathless pulled up, watching the porch of Rowan House.
The front door was open; this dimly, he could divine; but there seemed to be no light in the entrance hall.
The head lamps of Sir Bertram’s Rolls gleamed dimly but the inside lights were turned off. Evidently, Sir Bertram was leaving—after a very brief visit.
Why was there no light in the entrance hall?
Gallaho’s bewilderment was growing by leaps and bounds. To the problems of the scream, the broken window and Sterling’s absence now was added that of Sir Denis’s disappearance. Gallaho’s own inclination, for he was a man of forthright action, was to run up the drive quite openly to the porch, and to demand to see the occupier of the house.
But Sir Denis was in charge to-night. He could not act without his authority, and his last instruction had been:
“Do nothing, until I give the word.”
Between them, Gallaho thought bitterly, they were likely to make a mess of things.
A muted bang told him that the door of Sir Bertram’s car had been closed. Who had entered it he didn’t know. Suddenly the head lights cleaved a lane through darkness, illuminating the gravel drive, depicting trees of elfin shapes in silhouette, goblin trees. The entrance to Rowan House was transformed magically into a haunted forest.
The Rolls moved off, turned, and entered the drive. Gallaho darted half right into the shrubbery, crouched down, and watched. . . .
Someone was seated beside the chauffeur. The fleeting impression which Gallaho derived conveyed to his mind the idea of a native servant of some kind. This surely meant that Sir Bertram was not returning home, but was proceeding elsewhere?
And there was no means of following! The Flying Squad car was presumably at the local police station, picking up a party of men to raid Rowan House!
The Rolls purred swiftly by. Of its occupants, Gallaho had never a glimpse. But as it passed he sprang to his feet and stepped out on to the drive.
“Where in hell has everybody got to?” he growled.
The door of the house was open. He could see the black gap which it made in the dingy grey frontage of the pillared porch. Something very strange was happening here—had already happened; and now:
“Gallaho!” came a distant voice, “Gallaho!”
It was Nayland Smith!
“Where are you, sir?” Gallaho shouted.
He raced towards the porch of the house from which the cry had seemed to come, throwing precaution to the
