He moved his right hand towards the cigar on the arm of the chair, and suddenly drew back again. Ruth Callice, a little way back from the light which touched Stannard's cheek, sat back with her eyes closed. There were bluish hollows under Ruth's eyes.
"The explanation, of course," said Stannard, "is so simple as to be almost comic. I mention it as a matter of: say unconscious muscular reaction. You're familiar, I imagine, with old fashioned rocking-chairs? And how they moved when you swung? I had simply rocked myself there.
"This sobered me. I threw that chair back and stamped out the cigar. My burnt fingers seemed to pain out of all proportion. It was now getting on towards two o'clock in the morning. And I decided to carry out an idea that.. well, it bad been in my mind from the first I would try out that idea, and get rid of its fears."
"Wear' demanded Masters. "What idea?"
Stannard grimaced.
"I wanted to see what would happen," he replied, "if I threw the lever and the trap fell."
Chapter 15
Stannard essayed a smile.
"There was no reason," he said, "why I shouldn't have done this before. One cause of my reluctance;" he brooded, "may have been shrinking from mere noise. Just as all of us shrink from making loud noises in an ordinary house at night
"I had some idea, perhaps from fiction, that it would be a boom or a crash. Logical reasoning should have told me that such trap-doors, in use, would fall smoothly and without noise. Or, at a time like this, that the machinery might not work at all.