Perhaps she dozed—she was never sure. Suddenly, however, she opened her eyes with a strange sensation of terror. A breath of air had stolen into the room, a hand, barely visible, moved the fastening, and the window stood wide open. The hand lingered upon the shelf. She stared at it fascinated. Her own fingers, which had crept out towards the switch, paused as though paralysed. She heard the sound of her name called breathlessly from behind the inner door which led to her bathroom.
“Lady Glenlitten!”
She was powerless to reply. There seemed to be some vague movement of that cumbrous form which obscured the night, and suddenly through the window she looked into a pair of eyes. She heard the chink of jewels. Some one was bending over her dressing table. The door of her sitting room was swung open. The white shirt front of a man gleamed in the darkness. She made one more effort. This time her fingers reached the switch, but they pressed it in vain. A sudden darkness seemed to have fallen upon the whole world. The reflection of the lights from other parts of the house was suddenly dimmed.
Against the background of exclamations from the corridors and halls below came other and more terrible sounds close at hand—a flash of yellow fire across the room, a sharp report, a groan, and the sound of a heavy fall. That was all the little Marchioness knew of what took place in those few seconds, for when they found her she was lying across the bed unconscious.
Throughout the great house, after the first shock of surprise at this sudden blanket of darkness, there was a certain amount of half-amused commotion. Servants came hurrying from their quarters with lamps and candles of every description. Upstairs there were the mingled sounds of scuffling, laughter, and subdued chaff, and in course of time little tongues of light appeared upon the landings and in most of the rooms. The library where Andrew Glenlitten had been playing bridge, with his sister, Major Fraser and Grindells, was perhaps the best served for illumination, owing to its considerable collection of inherited Georgian candlesticks, but Glenlitten excused himself temporarily from continuing the game. He summoned Sir Richard, who was reading the Times before the fire.
“Come and take my place, Dick,” he begged. “I must go and see if Félice is scared to death.”
Sir Richard folded up the Times, rose to his feet, and strolled across the room. Glenlitten, pausing to exchange a few remarks with the younger crowd who had recommenced dancing, mounted the great stairs, carrying a candle in his hand. On the first corridor he met a perturbed lady’s maid.
“Have you been in to see her ladyship, Annette?” he enquired.
The woman answered him in rapid French.
“Milord, I cannot enter. The door is locked.”
“Ridiculous!” he answered brusquely. “It has never been locked since we have been here.”
He passed swiftly on into his own apartments and turned the handle of the connecting door between his dressing room and his wife’s bedroom. To his surprise, he found that the maid was right; it was certainly locked. He knocked on the panels, softly at first, and then louder. There was no reply. “Félice!” he called out. “Félice!”
“Milady!” Annette cried, shaking the handle of the other door.
Still no reply. Glenlitten, by this time genuinely alarmed, hastened down the corridor, made his way along a short passage, and tried the handle of another door. To his relief it opened. He passed into a large and very beautiful bathroom, now in darkness, but still faintly impregnated with the odours and perfumes of feminine use—the odours of bath salts, flower-distilled waters, and scented soaps. He hurried through the adjoining sitting room, and, scarcely pausing to knock at the inner door, turned the handle with a prayer in his heart. Holding the candle high above his head, he entered his wife’s apartment. A step across the threshold, and the heavy candlestick nearly slipped from his shaking fingers. He stopped with a little gasp—a strong man sick with shock. Lying only a few feet away, with an ominous patch of red staining his white shirt, lay the man whom since the threatened storm every one had been missing—the Comte de Besset, the famous French polo player, golfer and reputed millionaire. And across the bed, as white and still as death itself, Félice!
CHAPTER III
There are seconds, even minutes, in one’s life which one loses forever. Andrew Glenlitten was never able to remember crossing the room or setting down the candlestick, as he must have done, with steady fingers by the side of the bed. He remembered only his first convulsive clasp of that still, inanimate form, his low cry of passion as he folded his arms around her. Of the dead man lying behind, he took no note. It was like a minor incident which had passed from his apprehension.
“Félice, you aren’t hurt, dear? Open your eyes! Félice!”
She gave a little moan, and a great relief swept into his heart. He heard the maid sobbing to herself behind him, and he spoke to her without turning his head.
“Get down below as quickly as you can,” he ordered. “Fetch Doctor Meadows and Sir Richard Cotton. Don’t make any mistake, mind. The doctor and Sir Richard.”
“I cannot pass,” the woman half sobbed, half shrieked. “Upon the carpet there! It is Monsieur le Comte. He is dead. There has been a crime!”
Glenlitten turned fiercely around, seized her by the shoulders and half pushed, half carried her to the corridor door. He unlocked it and thrust her out into the candle-lit gloom… .
“Do as you are told,” he insisted sternly. “The doctor—he is about somewhere—and Sir Richard is playing bridge in the library. Say nothing to any one else. Don’t let any one else come up.”
Back to the room. It seemed to him that Félice had stirred slightly. He kissed her eyes and her lips, and he felt a warm breath come faintly out. Suddenly she moved a little and raised one arm, which found its trembling way round his neck.
“Félice, my love!” he murmured. “Lie still. Soon you will be better.”
She moaned once more, but this time there seemed to be something more of relief than pain in the strangled