The Prisoner in the Opal

it wasn’t. The main thing was that there shouldn’t be another opportunity of repeating tonight with Diana present. But the invitation of my pillows was becoming irresistible, would have already become irresistible if I had not had just one little spark of shame glowing within me at the thought that all my fine plans and resolutions were dwindling to nothing at all because I couldn’t keep my eyes open. Then I sprang up and turned out the light. I couldn’t go on with the white sheets and the pillows shouting to me not to be a fool. In the dark, unable to see them, I might be better able to keep awake. And it was lucky that I did turn the light out. For a few minutes later, as I was sitting on the edge of the bed, I heard the scrape of a foot upon the stone staircase outside my door. Someone⁠—Evelyn Devenish⁠—it could only be her⁠—was listening outside my door to make sure that I was asleep. At once I was wide awake and certain too that I was late, that I ought to be now dressed and ready in the hall. I had a fear that she would go into Diana’s room, and I listened for the sound of a door opening and shutting, for a startled cry, for a rush of feet. But when a few moments afterwards I opened my own door, the house was so silent that I felt I could have heard a mouse stirring.

“I had closed my shutters and drawn the curtains over the windows, when I first went upstairs. I turned on the light again and looked at my watch. It was within a few minutes of half-past twelve. I crept downstairs and very gently opened Diana’s door. Her light was still burning, but she herself lay upon her bed in the dress which she had been wearing, breathing easily and sound asleep. I laid a quilt over her, took from the drawer the black velvet suit, the cassock, the domino and the mask, and was turning towards the door when I saw a parcel wrapped up in brown paper upon the table. For all I knew, it might have something to do with the dress she was to have worn. I unfolded it and saw that it was the lace-edged surplice which upon special days I had seen the Abbé’s acolyte wearing at High Mass. I added it to my little pile of clothes, turned out the light, took the key from the lock, and after going out locked the door behind me. I didn’t want Evelyn Devenish to blunder into the room at the last moment and find her asleep. If she tried the door, she would think that Diana had already made her way to our rendezvous and had locked her door for safety.

“At ten minutes to one, then, dressed and masked, I slipped out of the front door and went quickly down the road to the farm buildings. A small car without any lights stood in the road. Robin Webster quite undisguised sat at the wheel, with a woman beside him⁠—Evelyn Devenish. She threw open the door upon her side, but I had quickness enough to see that fortune was favouring me. I waved with my hand, ‘The answer is in the negative,’ and climbed into the dickey. Neither Robin Webster nor Evelyn pressed the invitation to join them, and the car ran swiftly along the road across the pasture and up the hill to the gate. I let them both get down first, and I was still indeed on the step, when I heard a stifled oath from Webster and a little cry of annoyance from Evelyn Devenish. Both of them had got some of my professor’s varnish on their hands, and when I reached them they were rubbing it off as best they could with their handkerchiefs. ‘Be careful of the gate. It’s sticky,’ said Robin Webster as he swung it open. I passed through behind him and Evelyn Devenish, and I kicked it to with my foot. I wanted everybody who used that gate tonight to open it with a hand upon the latch. The front door of the house was open and the passage lit. The light streaming through the doorway showed me some small groups of people, and here the light revealed a mask, there an enshrouding cloak. There were lights, too, in the library upon the ground floor, and the shadows of people moving to and fro were flung upon the gravel. The company, indeed, was larger than I expected, and at one moment I welcomed it as a security, at another I dreaded it as multiplying the chances of detection.

“ ‘This way,’ said Robin Webster quietly, and he led us round to the back of the house. Here Monsieur de Mirandol was waiting, and we went up by a back staircase to a small room behind the conference room, and leading into it by a door in the panel. On a chair were the vestments of the Abbé Fauriel. Monsieur de Mirandol was in a fever. His face was patched with red and his hands shaking.

“ ‘You are ready?’ he asked. ‘It is time.’

“Evelyn Devenish laughed, upon a low thrilling note.

“ ‘This is my moment,’ she said. ‘The old days shall be the new days. What happened once shall happen again. As she won, so shall I.’

“They were the words of the fortune-teller, of the charlatan making mysteries, but they were uttered in a voice so passionate and sincere that I couldn’t doubt they meant all the world to her. ‘Lord of the Earth!’ she cried in a low voice, and sobbed and spoke her prayer again. ‘Lord of the Earth,’ and she crossed herself upwards instead of downwards with her thumb. ‘Give him back to me!’ She looked at Robin Webster, her eyes shining bright through the holes of a black silk mask. She was wearing a long cloak which she held