"Oh, listen!" Annesley broke in. "Don't you hear a sound?"
"Yes," he said. "A door creaked somewhere."
"Mrs. Ellsworth's bedroom door. What shall we do? There's just the short passage at the back, and then she'll be at the baize door that opens into the front corridor. Quick! You, not I, must go upstairs—to that second-floor front room I spoke of. Hurry! Before she gets to the swing door——"
Without a word he obeyed, remembering his hat, which he had laid on the table. One step took him out of the lighted dining room into the dimness beyond. Another step and he was on the stairs. There, for the moment at least, he was safe from detection; for the staircase faced the front door, and Mrs. Ellsworth must approach from the back. She would come to the door of the dining room, and, expecting only the girl, would not think of spying at the foot of the stairs.
Besides, there was no light in the corridor except that which streamed through the reddish globes of the chandelier above the dining table. If only the man did not stumble on his way up, the situation might be saved.
He was alert, deft, quick-witted, and light of foot as a panther. Who but he would have remembered at such a moment to snatch up a compromising hat and take it with him?
Annesley stood still, rigid in every muscle, fighting to control her heart-throbs, that she might be ready to answer a flood of questions. She dared not even let her thoughts rush ahead. It was all she could do to face the present. The rest must take care of itself.
He had said that she would "make a good actress." Now was the moment to prove that he had judged her truly! She began to unfasten one of her long gray gloves. A button was loose. She must give it a few stitches to-morrow. Strange that there should be room for such a thought in her mind. But she caught at it gladly.
It calmed her as she heard a shuffling tread of slippered feet along the corridor; and she forced herself not to look up until she was conscious that a shapeless figure in a dressing gown filled the doorway, like a badly painted portrait too large for its frame.
"A nice time of night for you to be back!" barked the bronchitic voice hoarsened by years of shut windows. "Give you an inch and you take an ell! I told you half-past ten. Here it is eleven!"