“Yes,” said Jane, “I will be there.”
“You have made me the happiest man in the world,” said Rodney. “I will meet you at the corner of the street at four, then.” He paused. “What is that curious clicking noise?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” said Jane. “I noticed it myself. Something wrong with the wire, I suppose.”
“I thought it was somebody playing the castanets. Until tomorrow, then, goodbye.”
“Goodbye.”
Jane replaced the receiver. And William, who had been listening to every word of the conversation on the extension in his den, replaced his receiver, too.
Anastatia came back from her visit late that night. She took her letter, and read it without comment. At breakfast next morning she said that she would be compelled to go into town that day.
“I want to see my dressmaker,” she said.
“I’ll come, too,” said Jane. “I want to see my dentist.”
“So will I,” said William. “I want to see my lawyer.”
“That will be nice,” said Anastatia, after a pause.
“Very nice,” said Jane, after another pause.
“We might all lunch together,” said Anastatia. “My appointment is not till four.”
“I should love it,” said Jane. “My appointment is at four, too.”
“So is mine,” said William.
“What a coincidence!” said Jane, trying to speak brightly.
“Yes,” said William. He may have been trying to speak brightly, too; but, if so, he failed. Jane was too young to have seen Salvini in Othello, but, had she witnessed that great tragedian’s performance, she could not have failed to be struck by the resemblance between his manner in the pillow scene and William’s now.
“Then shall we all lunch together?” said Anastatia.
“I shall lunch at my club,” said William, curtly.
“William seems to have a grouch,” said Anastatia.
“Ha!” said William.
He raised his fork and drove it with sickening violence at his sausage.
So Jane had a quiet little woman’s lunch at a confectioner’s alone with Anastatia. Jane ordered a tongue-and-lettuce sandwich, two macaroons, marshmallows, ginger-ale, and cocoa; and Anastatia ordered pineapple chunks with whipped cream, tomatoes stuffed with beetroot, three dill pickles, a raspberry nut sundae, and hot chocolate. And, while getting outside this garbage, they talked merrily, as women will, of every subject but the one that really occupied their minds. When Anastatia got up and said goodbye with a final reference to her dressmaker, Jane shuddered at the depths of deceit to which the modern girl can sink.
It was now about a quarter to three, so Jane had an hour to kill before going to the rendezvous. She wandered about the streets, and never had time appeared to her to pass so slowly, never had a city been so congested with hard-eyed and suspicious citizens. Every second person she met seemed to glare at her as if he or she had guessed her secret.
The very elements joined in the general disapproval. The sky had turned a sullen grey, and faraway thunder muttered faintly, like an impatient golfer held up on the tee by a slow foursome. It was a relief when at length she found herself at the back of Rodney Spelvin’s house, standing before the scullery window, which it was her intention to force with the pocketknife won in happier days as second prize in a competition at a summer hotel for those with handicaps above eighteen.
But the relief did not last long. Despite the fact that she was about to enter this evil house with the best motives, a sense of almost intolerable guilt oppressed her. If William should ever get to know of this! Wow! felt Jane.
How long she would have hesitated before the window, one cannot say. But at this moment, glancing guiltily round, she happened to catch the eye of a cat which was sitting on a nearby wall, and she read in this cat’s eye such cynical derision that the urge came upon her to get out of its range as quickly as possible. It was a cat that had manifestly seen a lot of life, and it was plainly putting an entirely wrong construction on her behaviour. Jane shivered, and with a quick jerk prised the window open and climbed in.
It was two years since she had entered this house, but once she had reached the hall she remembered its topography perfectly. She mounted the stairs to the large studio sitting-room on the first floor, the scene of so many Bohemian parties in that dark period of her artistic life. It was here, she knew, that Rodney would bring his victim.
The studio was one of those dim, over-ornamented rooms which appeal to men like Rodney Spelvin. Heavy curtains hung in front of the windows. One corner was cut off by a high-backed Chesterfield. At the far end was an alcove, curtained like the windows. Once Jane had admired this studio, but now it made her shiver. It seemed to her one of those nests in which, as the subtitle of Tried in the Furnace had said, only eggs of evil are hatched. She paced the thick carpet restlessly, and suddenly there came to her the sound of footsteps on the stairs.
Jane stopped, every muscle tense. The moment had arrived. She faced the door, tightlipped. It comforted her a little in this crisis to reflect that Rodney was not one of those massive Ethel M. Dell libertines who might make things unpleasant for an intruder. He was only a welterweight egg of evil; and, if he tried to start anything, a girl of her physique would have little or no difficulty in knocking the stuffing out of him.
The footsteps reached the door. The handle turned. The
