Transfixed for an instant, the next both Sophy and Bellamy were running wildly towards Lady Wychcote's room. The scream had come from it.
They tore open the door without ceremony. Lady Wychcote was sitting up in bed, staring at the open window as though Death had appeared to her in its embrasure. Her eyes seemed to have set in her head.
Bellamy applied restoratives. She gasped, came to herself. She grew rigid with self-control under his hands, as though made of fine steel. Her thin lips snapped to—then parted.
"A nightmare," she said curtly. "I thought I saw Cecil's face." Shudders took her in spite of her grim will. She put her hand over her eyes. "Horrible!" she muttered. "'Twas horrible! I saw him as I see you—at the window ... his face, yet not his face ... a murderer's ... swollen...." Then she added, curt again: "You can leave me now. I have these disgusting dreams occasionally. I am quite over it."
Then Bellamy explained matters to her. There was no doubt that she had really seen Cecil's face at her window. She always slept with curtains drawn back, and shutters wide. The light from the shaded lamp which she kept burning all night on her writing-table would have just caught his face, had he stood on the stone ledge beneath her window and looked in. This is what he must have done.
When she had taken in the import of Bellamy's words, Lady Wychcote said that she, too, would rise and dress. They left her and went out to find the stairs and upper corridors rustling with frightened servants. Jepson, the butler, was talking in low tones with Gaynor. He came forward as he saw Sophy and the doctor.
"I tried to make them keep their rooms, madam," he said to Sophy. "But there's no doing with them when they're frightened."
Bellamy explained that Lady Wychcote had screamed from nightmare, but, as Mr. Chesney had been taken seriously ill and was delirious, she had thought it better to get up.
"Just send the maids to bed, and come back, Jepson—we may need you," he concluded.
He was nonplussed as to the next move to make. Should he have the door of Chesney's bedroom forced, the man, frenzied with alcohol and drugs, might commit some hideous act of folly—either against himself or against others. He might just be climbing in again at his window as the door was burst open, and throw himself backwards in his rage onto the flagged court below.