The Cluny Problem. Dorothy Fielding

as the men had already turned the corner and would see the streak under the door and hear the click.

      Intensely vexed at the whole affair, she stepped behind the long curtains over the windows. The glass doors themselves had patent fasteners, which were too noisy to dare to open—for the moment—or she would have slipped out now, at once, into the garden. She was delighted when she heard Lascelles say rather nervously:

      "Oh, thanks! Thanks so much. I only—eh—wanted some paper to take to my room with me. This will do nicely. Thanks."

      "Sure there's nothing else?" Brownlow asked. And was it Vivian's fancy or was there something mocking in the question so solicitously put. "Nothing, thanks," was the reply, and a minute later she heard the two men pass on together down the passage to the main hall.

      She waited where she was. One of them might come back, and the villa's carpets were frightfully thick. A moment later she heard some one actually in the room. Some one who now closed the door. Vivian had noticed that her curtains by no means covered the whole of the window recess. She had not dared to touch them for fear of a fold continuing to quiver. Now peeping out, she saw that it was Mr. Brownlow who was back again in the room. But a Brownlow quite incredibly changed. Hands in his pockets, his shoulders hunched, his heard thrust forward, he stood staring at a table beside him with unseeing eyes. And as he stared, his face grew more and more malignant.

      The forehead, never lofty, seemed to flatten as she watched. The little eyes to move closer together. His jaw thrust forward till the yellow lower teeth jutted out a good eighth of an inch beyond the upper ones. It gave him a horrible resemblance to a wolf. Vivian had seen many seamy sides of life in her newspaper work, but she had never looked into a more criminal face than this man's was—now—seen like this, off his guard.

      The story her friend Edith Montdore had told her in the train came back to her. For the first time she thought that the gossip linking the husband with the lover's disappearance might well be true. She could easily imagine this man in front of her, this hitherto unseen, unguessed-at man, jumping on another in the dark, holding his head down under water until the heaving and the struggles should cease...She kept very, very still. Vivian was frightened.

      For a full minute she had the benefit of Brownlow's horrid and ferocious look, then, with a sudden gesture as though he had made up his mind, he opened the door again, stood a second, apparently listening, switched off the light, and passed noiselessly out of sight.

      She was after him in a flash. That was no face to let roam a house where a man on a dangerous mission might be sitting all unsuspecting.

      She flattened herself against the wall, even though he switched out each light as he came to it, so that the corridor leading to the cedar room was quite dark, as dark as the one which Mr. Lascelles had been patrolling. Had he gone back to his post? she wondered. Apparently this idea struck Brownlow, too, for at the corner he turned and gave the side-passage a long scrutiny. From the sound of his steps, she thought that he even tried a door at the farther end which led into the garden. Then he came back, and again he switched off each light. All was in darkness now, except that some leaded panes at the other end shed a sort of blurred luminosity all along the corridor.

      By it Vivian saw Brownlow tiptoe to the door of the cedar room, and bending down, press his ear to the keyhole.

      In the stillness she heard Anthony's voice talking, apparently pleasantly, and a moment later came another peal of laugher from Mrs. Brownlow. Vivian had never heard her laugh much before. Then came a sentence or two in her voice, but said with great animation.

      Evidently it was not sober business that was going on behind that door. The man outside it stayed as he was for several minutes, then he straightened up, and, as Vivian backed into the room where she had been, he passed her walking swiftly on into the main part of the house. She followed cautiously until she saw him enter the billiard-room with some word that she did not catch, in a pleasant, ordinary voice.

      She moved away, took up a book, and sat down in a corner of the lounge close to the room where she now heard the click of balls.

      She had plenty to think of. First of all, she considered Mr. Lascelles's silent pacing of that dark passage. Mr. Lascelles—was he here by some arrangement with Anthony? Was he the man whom Anthony expected to meet? That might be possible. And that long, quiet interchange of glances between himself and Smith at dinner, when Anthony's name had first come up, could her idea explain that too? It must, if it were the right one. She saw the look again. Not stealthy exactly, yet not open. But then came the thought that Anthony's mission, or quest, was he here by some arrangement with Anthony? Was he the cause of it? Of course, that might include Mr. Lascelles. But it obviously did not include Smith. For Mr. Smith had not been acting, she felt sure, when he had inquired whether Mrs. Brownlow's chance-met friend were the Anthony Cross. But Mr. Lascelles might have had something he wanted to ask of Anthony—some favor. That might explain his acts tonight, and that look between the two friends...

      Her thoughts passed on to Brownlow. The man was madly jealous. Of that she felt certain. Most dangerously jealous, too. That sent her mind racing back to the photograph of Mrs. Brownlow, to the "problem" in Anthony Cross's past, to the vamp of Mrs. Montdore. The last term she thought, but the fears of a wife with a slightly uncertain husband. But the photograph, Anthony, and that awful look on the husband's face...

      She made up her mind to see Anthony as early as possible tomorrow morning and warn him of what she had seen. It was too late tonight for the talk that she had hoped to have with him outside. And in the villa, he would be accompanied to the door for certain by some member of the household.

      She told herself that she ought to leave Porte Bonheur if there was any idea of resurrecting Anthony's past. But she found herself very reluctant to cut herself off from any chance of knowing what happened after she left. The clicking of balls beside her stopped.

      "By Jove," came in Brownlow's voice; "my wife and Anthony Cross seem to have a lot to say to each other." How jocosely he said it, and now, as he stepped out of the room, how pleasantly he smiled at her as he passed her chair.

      After a moment Smith came out too, and, also after a moment, went on down the same way.

      Vivian closed her book and decided that it was her turn to get some note-paper from the writing-room.

      Neither man was to be seen. But she heard Brownlow's voice. Evidently he had joined his wife. She looked at her watch. The talk in the cedar room was certainly a long one. Yet, as a rule, Anthony was a man of few words. She went to her room. It was not till nearly one o'clock that the light ceased to shine on the bushes in front of the cedar room, and only then did Vivian, fearing she did not know what, leave her window, and go to bed.