Kneeling down, he pulled at Emily's shoulders. He pulled her over on to her back.
"My God!" he whispered. "My God!... my God!..."
A bell jangled in the basement. Some one with his head lowered was peering through the frosted glass of the front door.
III
In moments of crisis the human mind can become extraordinarily efficient. Before the bell was silent in the basement, the mind of Stephen Byrne, kneeling in a sweat by the dead body of a housemaid, had covered a vast field of circumstance and performed two or three distinct logical processes. His first instinct was to put out the light. With that person peering on the doorstep the light in the hall had better be out. He felt exposed, naked, illuminated. On the other hand, one could see practically nothing through the frosted glass from outside, only the shadow of any one actually moving in the hall. That he knew from experience. Probably the person—whoever it was—could see nothing that was on the floor, nothing that was below the level of his or her interfering eye. If Stephen stayed still as he was, the person might never know he was there, might even go away in disgust. To put the light out would be a gratuitous advertisement that somebody was in the house. Besides, it would look so rude.
Stephen did not turn out the light. He knelt there on two knees and a hand, staring like a snake at the front door. With his right hand he was stealthily scratching his left armpit. It was itching intolerably. And his dress-collar was sticking into his neck. He was intensely conscious of these things.
But all the time the precipitate arguments were jostling in his brain. What sort of person would peer through the glass? Surely a very familiar thing to do. He could think of a few people who would do it—the Whittakers—but they were away; his wife—but it was too early, and she had a latch-key; John Egerton—but Stephen thought he was out. Or a policeman, of course.
A policeman who had heard the screaming, or been told of the screaming, might do it, or even a neighbouring busybody, if he had heard. But they would have clattered up to the door, run up or stopped importantly on the doorstep—probably hammered with the knocker. The person had not done that. He had only rung that damnable bell.
The person's head disappeared. He gave a loud knock with the big brass knocker which Stephen had bought in Jerusalem. Just one knock. Then the whole world was silent. Stephen's heart thumped like a steam-engine going at slow speed. He thought, "It's true what they say in the books.... I can hear it."