“Yes, if you will, a little later on, tell me some of the things I would like to know. May I bring my sister to see you?”
“Please do; we should be very glad.”
She said good-by. The ordeal she had dreaded was over and concluded in a fashion she never anticipated. It was all strange—and yet not strange. She was persuaded that this interview had been dominated by something her father had left behind, in order that it might fight for what Derrick called readjustment. And in that she was ready to aid to the utmost. There was no room for fear now. She declined Derrick’s offer to walk home with her and went thoughtfully back with a new sense of being fortified in things that for years past had stirred secretly in her soul.
Derrick sat in the study late that night, with no pretense at work. Beech Lodge had dipped into utter silence, and the fire was low. His mind was full of the visitor of the afternoon, whose coming had lent a new significance to his surroundings. Now he perceived more clearly what it must have cost her to come. He was conscious of her communicable courage, the charm of her youth, and above all of the fact that to her also something had whispered from the infinite. How vivid she was, how understanding!
He wondered, too, what impression she carried away. Had he said too much, or too little? In talking, as he had done, to the daughter of a murdered man while she sat in her father’s study beneath her father’s portrait, in taking on himself the office of avenger—had he not already gone too far and too fast? Could Jean Millicent have done otherwise than approve while she must have been still struggling with profound and reawakened emotions? Had he been stilted and self-assured and pedantic? Had he assumed too much? These questions harassed him.
Against it he put the girl’s coming. She had not known what manner of person she would find but, braving the revival of her own loss, had determined to do what she could to save others from any tragic experience. This thought grew in his mind till, in turn, he recognized a new element in this strange affair. He had desired to answer if he could the voiceless petitions of the dead man, but now, in addition, he felt a wave of protection for those whom Millicent had left behind. It was this, he realized, that had animated him during his talk with Jean Millicent. And she had promised to help. He got up restlessly, lowered the lamp, and, moving to the French window, stared out at the moon-smitten lawn. How often must Millicent, who was so close to-night, have stared like this? Perhaps it was on such a night that the evil thing came, strong and merciless. But whence and how?
It was in the midst of a space of profound silence that he heard the faintest click at the door. He started at that, for his sister had been long in bed, and Perkins’s room was in the far corner of the house. What moved in Beech Lodge now? The door was opening, so slowly that it was almost imperceptible. His hair began to prickle. Was this the evil thing, and what did it seek?
He stood, breathless and motionless, his pulse hammering, till through the widening crack projected a hand, followed by a long arm and white-clad shoulder. The fingers were empty and extended as though feeling blindly. Then a face, pallid as of the dead. It was Perkins!
She glided forward without sound or speech, a wraith, a spirit of the night, so unreal, so remote as to be divested of human attributes, the thin hand still held out, exploring and testing the half-light that filtered through the silent chamber. It was the hand rather than the body that had life, with consciousness in its quivering finger-tips. She was only partly dressed and wore a loose white wrapper that accentuated the tall straightness of her figure. Her black hair hung in two thick ropes over her shoulders; her feet were bare; and her face was that of one who sees unspeakable things. The eyes were wide open, and in their glassy stare was a strange hunger and a great question.