There was no need to look for evidence of a visitor—the door was open wide.
His heart was beating thunderously as he stood in the quiet hall, where the only sound that came to him was the sober ticking of a clock. He struck a match and lit one of the candles that he knew Ursula kept ready on a side table. By its faint light he saw that a chair in the hall had been overturned and lay on the carpet, which had been dragged up as though in a struggle. He held on to the wall for support.
“I’ll go alone,” he whispered hoarsely, and went up the stairs slowly. Every movement required an effort.
On the landing above a dim night light burnt. It was a broad landing, carpetted with a square blue carpet and there were two easy chairs and a small table-nest. Ursula had told him she sometimes read there, for there was a skylight overhead which could be opened on hot days. Here, again, the carpet was in disorder and on the blue settee—
He bit his lip to stop the cry that came.
Blood! A great patch near one end. He touched it frightfully, and looked at the tips of his fingers. Blood!
His knees gave way under him, and he sat down for a second, then with a tremendous effort, rose again and went to the door of Ursula’s room and turned the knob.
Shading the candle with his hands, he walked into the room. A figure was lying on the bed: the brown hair lay fan-like across the pillow, the face was turned away from him, and then—His heart stood still.
“Who is that?” said a sleepy voice.
Ursula turned on her elbow, shading her eyes from the light of the candle.
“Ursula!” he breathed.
“Why—it is Tab!”
He caught a glitter of steel as she thrust something back under the pillow, that she had half withdrawn.
“Tab!” She sat up in bed. “Why, Tab, what is wrong?”
The candlestick was shaking in his hand, and he put it down on the table.
“What is wrong, dear?” she asked.
He could not answer; falling to his knees by the bedside, he trembled his relief into the crook of his arm.
XXXVII
Rex Lander was smiling as he drove through the rain, for it seemed to him that a great trouble had passed from his mind. The solution of all his difficulties had appeared miraculously. He did not hurry, the end was sure now and the woman who had completely occupied his mind for four years, whose portraits by the hundred he had secretly treasured, whose face he had watched, to whose voice he had listened night after night, until she had become an obsession that excluded all other thoughts and fancies, was his!
He had hated his sometime friend since the day Tab had made mock of his adoration. He had loathed him when the incredible fact had been proved beyond doubting, that Tab had stolen into the girl’s heart, and had won her in his absence.
He never doubted that with his great wealth, Ursula Ardfern was his wife for the asking. He had planned his life on this supposition. Wealth! The possession of great power, the ability to bestow upon the object of his choice all that human vanity or human weakness could desire.
Tab was dead now, he thought complacently, and his confession was ashes. He regretted the impulse which had made him write. He had had no intention of doing that when he brought Tab to Mayfield, and he was rather puzzled at his own stupidity. It was a mad thing to do. Mad? He frowned. He was not mad. It was very sane to desire a woman of Ursula Ardfern’s grace and beauty. It was sane enough to want money and to go to extremes to obtain what he wanted. Throughout all the ages men had killed others that their position might be enhanced. They were not madmen. And he was not mad. He had a definite plan, and madmen do not have definite plans.
Ursula would this night consent to marry him, and would be glad, if she refused, to consider her decision. He would be her accepted lover before he left the house, and the thought took his breath away.
“Am I mad?” he asked aloud, as he parked his car in the side turning where Carver had almost found it once.
Madmen did not take such elaborate precautions. Madmen did not remember that by some mischance her servant might telephone for the police, nor carry in their pockets a weighted cord to throw over the telephone wire and bring it down. They did not even buy the cord of such and such a length, so much to bind Tab Holland, so much to break the wire and buy just sufficient for the purpose.
“I am not mad,” said Rex Lander, as he went in through the gate.
The house was in darkness; no lights glowed from the upper window where she was sleeping.
He had made a very careful reconnaissance of the house, and knew its vulnerable points. He opened the casement window of the drawing-room, and had stepped softly inside the room before, in ordinary circumstances, a servant could have answered his ring at the door.
He was in her room! Her sitting-room! It held the very charm of her presence, and he would have been content to sit here, absorbing the atmosphere which she lent to everything she touched, dreaming dreams as he had dreamt so often in the night watches at Doughty Street, at his office, when he should have been working, in the solitary walk home from the theatre, after he had been listening entranced to her wonderful voice.
He took from his pocket a large electric torch and flashed it round. On the little cottage piano was a bowl of roses; reverently he drew one out, nipped off its stalk, and threaded it tenderly in his buttonhole. Her hand had placed it there. She
