It was then that he heard someone twist cautiously the handle of the door. He forgot star, Elizabeth, Lucy, everything but his own safety. In one stride he reached the oil lamp which lit the room and turned it out. The room was still too light or seemed so to his hammering nerves from the wash of moonlight which entered at the window. It was too late to hide behind the door, so Andrews pressed his back against the wall and cursed himself for being weaponless. What a sentimental fool he had been to leave his knife behind him at the cottage. Where were the two runners, he wondered, who were supposed to guard him? Drunk in bed in all probability. He watched the door handle with fascination. It was of white marble and glimmered, touched by the crest of the moon’s wave, with deceptive distinctness. Again it twisted round with surprising silentness and then flew outwards like a thrown ball. An oil lamp stood in the passage outside and its light cast a kind of mocking halo round the head of the cockney Harry, who stood in the doorway, his face thrust forward and moving from side to side, like that of a snake.
Andrews pressed himself still harder against the wall, and Cockney Harry sidled into the room. As though he was aware that the light in the passage put him at a disadvantage he shut the door behind him. “Andrews,” he whispered. His eyes were not yet used to the dark, and the silence made him uneasy. He too put his back against the wall, opposite the place where Andrews stood, as if he feared attack. Then he saw Andrews. “So there you are,” he said. Andrews clenched his fists in preparation for an unexpected spring, but the smuggler saw the movement and flashed a knife warningly in the moon’s ray. “Stay where you are,” he whispered.
“There are runners in this hotel,” Andrews also lowered his voice. “What do you want?”
“I’m not afeared of the runners now,” the man said. “But look ’ere,” he added plaintively, “why d’you want to quarrel? I’m ’ere to do you a service, strite I am.”
“To do me a service?” Andrews repeated. “Do you forget who I am?”
“Oh, I don’t forget ’ow you squeaked on us, but one good turn deserves another. You didn’t squeak on me this afternoon, and you might ’ave done easy.”
“It wasn’t for love of that face of yours,” Andrews said. His fists remained clenched against any sudden attack.
“You ain’t very griteful,” Harry complained. “Don’t you want to ’ear my news?”
“What news?”
“Of Carlyon an’ the others.”
“No, I’ve finished with them,” he said and added, as always with a curious aching heart, slowly, as though in an effort to overcome with finality each ache, “I never want to see that man again.”
“Ah, but ’e ain’t finished with you. Nor with yer ladybird.”
Andrews started forward. “What do you mean?”
“Now keep back,” Harry flashed his knife again. “What I mean is they feel they been cheated by ’er—cheated shimeful.”
“Carlyon wouldn’t do anything to her, I know he wouldn’t.”
“Ah, but there’s Joe. ’E says she ought to ’ave a fright, an’ Carlyon agrees to that, but ’e don’t know what Joe and ’Ake calls a fright. They are all off to give it ’er tomorrer or the next dy.”
“You are lying, you know you are lying,” Andrews panted a little like a dog thirsty or out of breath. “This is a trap to get me to go back there, so that you’ll catch me. But I won’t, I won’t go back I tell you.”
“Why, that’s why I’m ’ere—to warn yer against goin’, in case you were thinkin’ of it. They’ll all be there. Carlyon’ll kill you as soon as look at you. Though ’Ake says as killin’s too good. ’E says they oughter ’ave some fun with you first.”
“Well, you can tell them that I’m never going back there. It’s no use laying that trap for me.”
“Good. Now I’ve warned yer an’ we’re quits. Next time,” Harry spat on the floor expressively and again flashed the steel of his knife in the moonlight, “don’t you expect me to be friendly.” He gave the impression of sliding across the floor. The white marble handle again flew outwards and the smuggler disappeared. Up the street the clock of St. Anne’s Church beat out with irritating deliberation the half after eleven.
Like a dream the man had entered and like a dream he had gone. Why could he not have been one more degree a phantom and become a vision only? Now inevitably a turmoil was roused in the mind. Carlyon would not harm a woman, Andrews thought. It is only a trap to catch me. But then was it likely that they would plan such a trap for me, a coward? They could not expect to do anything but repel him by danger. Again he repeated to himself that she was safe, that Carlyon would see to that, but still he could not dispel from his mind the thought of Joe and Hake. Tomorrow or the next day. If he were to leave tonight he could warn her in time, and they could both escape. But that was only if it were not a trap. Perhaps even now Harry, Joe, Hake, Carlyon and the rest were preparing to meet him on the downs. And yet how good, how glorious it would be, to be coming down the hill at dawn, to wait perhaps for the first sign of smoke to show that she was awake, to tap on the door and see recognition lit in her eyes. She would have to welcome me, he thought. I have earned that, for I have done all that she told me to
