He had meant to cry out loud, but, to his intense surprise, his throat was dried up.
There was no answer, no stir, no noise. The silence that exists between the stars seemed to close in upon him. Then he really knew what fear was. He admitted to himself that he was unmistakably and horribly afraid. He admitted that life was inconceivably precious, and the instinct to preserve it the greatest of all instincts. And gradually he came to see that the safest course was the most desperate course, and gradually his courage triumphed over his fear.
He dropped gently to his hands and knees, and began, with a thousand precautions, to crawl like a serpent towards the outer hall. The darkened lamp he held between his teeth. If the mysterious will fired again, the mysterious will would almost to a certainty fire harmlessly over his head. At last his hands touched the portière. He hesitated, listened, and put one hand under the portière. Then, relighting the lamp, he sprang up with a yell on the other side of the portière, and clutched for the unseen intelligence.
But there was nothing. He stood alone in the outer hall. To his right lay the side-passage between the drawing-room and the cabinet de toilette, which Camilla had used on the night of her engagement. In front of him was a door, slightly ajar, which led to the servants' quarters. He gazed around, breathing heavily.
CHAPTER XVII
POLYCARP AND HAWKE'S MAN
Then it was that he heard a noise, something between scratching and fumbling, on the further side of the front-door, in the main corridor of the flats. He could see through the ground glass over the door that the corridor was lighted as usual.
He thought: 'Someone is breaking the seal on that door!' And his next idea was: 'Since the seal is being broken in the full light of the public corridor, it is being broken by someone who has the right to break it. Only one man has the right, and that man is Francis Tudor's executor, Senior Polycarp.'
The noise of scratching and fumbling ceased, and a key was placed in the lock.