His eyes, raised suddenly, were like burning fires, and the little man wilted under the gaze.
“Good kind aunt! I’ve seen her lick that little boy till he couldn’t stand. She’s lucky to be a woman. You tell her that one day. If she’d ’a’ been a man, she’d have got hers long ago. I’m going round to get that car ready. You have that young lady waiting for me when I come back.” There was menace in his tone which was unmistakable.
Without another word he lurched off, his hands in his pockets, a cigarette still drooping limply, and, turning, Mr. Cody flew up the stairs and burst into the room where his better half was sitting. He slammed the door behind him, and for ten minutes there was the sound of angry voices. Presently Mrs. Cody came out alone, and, going downstairs, unlocked the library and went in.
Sybil Lansdown was sitting up on the sofa, her head between her hands. Without a word, the woman gripped her arm and supported her out of the room and up the stairs. From this floor two flights of narrow stairs led, in one case to the servants’ quarters, and in the other to a spare bedroom which was used also as a box-room, and it was into this apartment that the girl was pushed.
Sybil was almost unconscious. She never recalled that journey up the stairs. When she woke, with a splitting headache, she was lying on a large oak bed that sagged in the middle. A little wax nightlight was burning under a glass, for by this time the light was fading from the sky.
She sat up, her head reeling, and tried hard to think consecutively. Near the bed was a small table with a glass of water and two tiny pellets, which she might have ignored, but the aspirin bottle stood open beside them. Her head was splitting. Oblivious to danger, and realizing in a dull way that these were intended to counteract the effect of the drug she had taken, she swallowed the two pellets and drank every drop of the water without taking the glass from her lips. With a groan she lay down on the bed, covering her eyes with her hands, and was sensible enough to make her mind as much of a blank as her throbbing brain would allow until the restorative took effect.
It was half an hour before the pain ceased and she ventured to lift her head again. She was dizzy, and with every movement the room swam round and round. But after a while she grew calmer, more her normal self, and she could think consecutively.
There was only a tiny window, and that was a skylight in the sloping roof. It was padlocked and covered with a stout wire netting. She tried the door, without expecting that her attempt to leave the room by that way would be of any avail. Going back to the bed, she sat down and tried hard to review her position without allowing her terror to overcome her.
She must have been mad to have gone alone with that woman (to that vain conclusion she naturally returned), but she was so confident of herself, and the counsel of perfection was very hard to follow, even in the most perfect of beings. The excuse was so flimsy, she told herself. Not a London child would have been deceived by this promise of family revelations. She dared not let herself think of her mother.
She tried the door again. It was heavily locked and probably bolted as well, for it resisted her strength at every point of its surface. It was very old and had the appearance of being something of a misfit, for there was a gap of an inch and a half between its bottom and the floor.
She walked back to the bed and sat down, trying to order her thoughts. The key! Was her detention remotely connected with that strip of steel? She was puzzled, but she would not allow herself to be utterly bewildered. She argued, as coldly as the circumstances would allow her, that, for some reason which she could not define, the key had something to do with her tragic situation.
She pulled up a chair and, mounting it, reached up to the skylight, but it resisted all her efforts, and, supposing she could force the window, it was utterly impossible that she could displace the three iron bars which covered the window.
As she was standing on the chair, she heard a footstep in the passage, firm and heavy, and, getting down to the floor, she turned to face the man who came in. It was some little time before the door was opened. As she rightly surmised, it was fastened with bolts, and these had to be shot before, with a click, the key turned and Cody came in.
He was one large, affable smile.
“My dear young lady, I’m afraid you have had a bad time. Do you have these attacks very often?”
“I don’t know what attacks you mean, Dr. Cody,” she answered steadily.
“Very sad, very sad,” he murmured, shaking his head mournfully. “I was really afraid for your life. Is there insanity in your family?”
The audacity of the question took her breath away.
“I don’t suggest there is,” he went on, “only I must say that your conduct is a little strange. You probably remember your screaming fit. No? Ah, I did not expect you would. It was very lamentable.”
“Mr. Cody”—she tried to keep her voice even, but it required a great effort—“I want to go home to my mother.”
He looked hard at her for a long time.
“I suppose you do,” he mused. “I suppose you do. But you need have no fear, my dear young lady; your mother has been notified and is already on her way.”
There was a little table in the corner
