“I could not mistake the thin, high voice of Monsieur de Mirandol any more than the precise articulation of Robin Webster, who replied to the remark.
“ ‘She will be out of the way. Diana arranged that she should have the upper room on purpose,’ and quickly upon that came the ‘Hush! Hush!’ of the third voice.
“I sat up in my bed then. I should be out of the way. Out of the way of what? I listened with both my ears, I can tell you. But the voices sank again, and only the intermittent ‘Hush! Hush!’ reached me intelligibly.
“Good manners or bad manners, I could stand no more of it. I slipped out of bed and crawled on my hands and knees to the window. I raised my head very, very carefully and looked down on to the terrace. Three people were standing at the edge of the terrace in the moonlight, not exactly under my window, but a little to the right opposite to the window of the drawing-room. They were Monsieur de Mirandol, Robin Webster and Evelyn Devenish. Although the gramophone had ceased, the drawing-room was still alight, and Evelyn Devenish was keeping a watchful eye upon its open door. She stood sentinel, as it were, with her back to the garden, and it was she who continually broke in with her hissed warning. She was not concerned with my window at all. Someone in the drawing-room was now approaching, now retiring, from the glass door. I, no doubt, was comfortably supposed to be fast asleep.
“I heard a day named and then another.
“ ‘Wednesday or Friday, of course,’ said Robin Webster. ‘The sooner the better.’
“ ‘Wednesday week, then,’ Monsieur de Mirandol answered. ‘It will take a little time to let the right people know. I can have all ready by then.’
“But there was a note of hesitation in his voice. It became evident to me that Monsieur de Mirandol was alarmed. The affair, whatever it was, was becoming trop répandu altogether. There was danger. People who knew of it, really knew of it, so that it was impossible to maintain any denial, could insist upon coming, and for their own ends. He reproached Evelyn Devenish. She had spoken carelessly over there in Bordeaux, and some woman who was ‘affreuse’ had simply bullied her way in. Evelyn defended herself. I heard the name Corisot, and Monsieur de Mirandol shrugged his shoulders like a man who knows the world, and said quite clearly—it was strange how that high, piping voice carried—‘Oh, Jeanne Corisot! I don’t say no! A different matter. But the old woman!’
“And a phrase struck my ears and tingled.
“ ‘But since everyone is masked,’ argued Evelyn.
“ ‘Except me,’ said Robin Webster.
“ ‘And, since it is my house which is used, me,’ continued Monsieur de Mirandol; and immediately the ‘Hush! Hush!’ came more insistently than ever.
“ ‘She is coming,’ Evelyn Devenish said.
“ ‘Then I’m off quick,’ said Robin Webster. What gave me the idea that he jumped at this excuse for getting away? ‘Good night,’ he said hurriedly, and as he turned away along the terrace towards the grove of trees and his house, an illuminating sentence was uttered. I might have listened to hints and allusions for a hundred years and never got near the truth. Now it flamed—blinding, horrible, so that I cowered down upon the floor in the cover of the wall.
“ ‘Good night, my friend Guibourg,’ Monsieur de Mirandol said with a piping laugh. Robin Webster laughed quietly, turning round in the moonlight a face grown suddenly sly, and more urgent than ever followed Evelyn Devenish’s protest. This time it ran—‘Oh, please, silence!’ she whispered; and for the first time during that whispered conversation she turned an eye upwards to my window. It was then that I dipped for safety, praying that she had not seen me. I comforted myself with the thought that even if she had she would be confident that I could make nothing of de Mirandol’s allusion.
“She did not know that I had served in a great library, and that my letters were M to O inclusive. ‘O’ contains ‘Occult,’ and I had to have a working knowledge of that subject—on what shelf and in what particular volumes information was to be sought. ‘L’ami Guibourg!’ Monsieur de Mirandol had said. ‘Good night, l’ami Guibourg!’ His laugh as he spoke the name, Robin Webster’s laugh as he greeted it, linked the name with the mysterious engagement for Wednesday week. There was only one Guibourg—the infamous Abbé of the Black Mass. Wednesday week, too! That was the date. A Wednesday or a Friday. Monsieur de Mirandol had stipulated for one of those two days of the week, and those two days were the days set aside for those unholy ceremonies. I had got to the heart of Diana’s secret now, of her obsession, her indifference—yes, and of my forebodings too. In spite of herself, through the trivial phrases of her letters to me something had broken from another world—the world on the edge of which her soul stood shivering.
“I lifted my head again very carefully. I saw that Diana had joined Monsieur de Mirandol and Evelyn, and that Robin Webster had vanished amongst the trees. The three who remained talked openly now. In a few minutes they returned into the house. I heard the glass door close; I saw the yellow light disappear from the drawing-room and the floor of the terrace. The house and its garden were given over to the moonlight. Only between the dark boughs of the avenue a beam shone from the upper window of Robin Webster’s chalet.”
Joyce Whipple omitted from her story the ordinary expeditions and amusements which occupied the days and evenings of the small party at the Château Suvlac. She kept to the incidents relative to herself. She was sent to Coventry by Evelyn Devenish and Monsieur de Mirandol, who was never out of the
