“The only way to bring this about is to give my work the substantial backing of a confession by the murderer. This I intend to obtain.
“I cannot but think that, if I succeed, my work is finished and the agreement of even the most sceptical assured.
XVIII
Enter Fairy Godmother
I
Dinner that night had been a melancholy business for the sisters. During the day the anodyne of action had brought them at times almost to cheerfulness; but from the moment when they had left the chambers of the great Marshall’s junior, their spirits had begun steadily to evaporate.
Of the two, perhaps Lucia suffered the most. She was older. She had not the ingenuousness which enabled Dora to take at their face value the reassurance of barristers and the like. And she suffered, though she would barely admit it to herself, from a complication of anxieties.
As the evening grew old so she grew angry and more angry—and always with Lucia Lemesurier. She felt something of contempt for herself. Surely a woman of thirty—Heavens, what age!—should have more feeling, more decency, when her little sister was in trouble so grave, than to offer only half her mind for the duty of consolation? Surely it was hardly—hardly seemly for this middle-aged woman to be—well, worrying, at such a time as this, over a petty quarrel with a man she barely knew? Yet, yet—well, he might have answered that note if he couldn’t come.
Lucia took herself in hand. This must stop! She looked across the pretty room to where Dora lay coiled upon a sofa, a book held before her face.
Lucia conceived suspicions of that book. She investigated, to find them well-founded. The book was upside down; the face behind it was disfigured by tear-laden, swollen eyes.
Contrite, Lucia attempted consolation, and was in a measure successful. For an hour—perhaps two—Dora lay with her head on her sister’s breast.
“Feeling better, dear?” Lucia said at last.
Dora nodded. “I do. Really I do. Sorry ’m such a little idiot. Only it’s—it’s—I can’t help thinking, wondering—oh, what’s the good? Everything’s going to be all right. It’s got to be! It must be!”
“Of course it will.” Lucia stroked the red-gold hair.
Dora sat upright, hands pressed to flushed cheeks.
“Don’t know why I’m behaving in such a damn silly way!” she burst out. “You ought to shake me, darling, instead of being so sweet. Look at Archie. He’s wonderful! And he’d hate it if he knew I was slobbering here like a nasty schoolgirl. He says it’ll be all right! And so does Colonel Gethryn.”
Lucia drew away; then silently reviled herself. Why, why in Heaven’s name, should mention of this man affect her?
But Dora went on. Dora was no fool, and Dora was interested. A good thing for Dora; for a moment it lifted from her that black pall of brooding fear.
“Weren’t you surprised, Loo, when Archie told us this morning about Mr. Gethryn really being Colonel Gethryn? And all those wonderful things he did in the war with the Secret What-d’you-call-it?”
“No,” said Lucia absently. Then hurried mendaciously to correct herself. “Yes, I mean. I was surprised. Very much!” She felt a hot flush mount to her cheeks. This did not lesson her annoyance with Lucia Lemesurier.
Came a silence, broken at last by the younger sister.
“I,” she said, with a gallant attempt at frivolity, “am going to repair to my chamber, there to remove traces of these ignoble tears.” And she hurried from the room.
Lucia stared a moment at the closed door; then sank back into the softness of the couch. Her thoughts cannot be described with any clarity. They were, as may be imagined, again a jumble. One moment she would smile at some secret thought; another would find her tense, pale, vivid imagination of horrors to come to her sister and her sister’s lover possessing her.
Would everything, as she had so confidently said, be “all right”? Would miracles indeed be worked by this—by Colonel Gethryn? How absurd the “Colonel” sounded! Colonels, surely, were purple, fat, and white-moustached, not tall, lean, “hawky” persons with disturbing green eyes.
She was startled from her reverie. Had she heard anything? Yes, there it was again—a tapping on the window. The thunder had stopped now, and the sound came sharply through the soft hissing of the rain.
There is always something sinister in a knocking upon a window. With a jump one exchanges the dull safety of ordinary life for the uncomfortable excitement of the sensational novel. Lucia, her nerves wrecked by the emotions of the past week and further jarred by the noise of the storm, sprang to her feet and stood straining her eyes, wide, startled and black as velvet shadows, towards the French windows.
The tapping came again, insistent. She took hold of her courage, crossed the room, and flung them open.
Anthony stepped across the sill. He was, as he had left Mr. Lucas ten minutes before, without hat or mackintosh. He seemed, as indeed he was, serenely unconscious of his appearance. But the pallor of fatigue, the blazing eyes, the labouring breath, the hatless head shining with wet, the half-sodden clothes, all had their effect upon Lucia. It had been for her an evening of horror. Now, surely, here was news of worse.
Her eyes questioned him. Her heart hammered at her breast. Speech she found impossible.
Anthony bowed. “Enter Fairy Godmother,” he said. “Preserve absolute calm. The large Mr. Deacon is a free man. Repentant policemen are busy scouring his ’scutcheon. I think it not unlikely that he will be here within an hour or so.”
Lucia was left without breath. “Oh—why—what—” she gasped.
He smiled at her. “Please preserve absolute calm. My nerves aren’t what they were. What do we do next? Tell little sister, I imagine.”
“You—I—I—” she stammered, and rushed from the room.
Anthony, having first covered the seat with a convenient newspaper, sank into a
