"No, no, no," H.M. told him in a fussed and malevolent way. "I made her promise, before the old hobgoblin sent her away from here, to take two nembutal pills as soon as she got home. Son, it wouldn't wake her if the whole town of Brayle fell down. All right: you be stubborn and cloth-headed. Try it!"
Martin did try it He sat at the telephone-table in the dark rear of the hall, listening to ghostly little ringing-tones which had no reply. Surely Dawson or somebody must be about? Never mind. It was late. He put down the 'phone.
Suddenly Martin realized he was in the dark. A gulf of mist in his imagination, opened in front of him; somebody's hands lunged out; the solid floor melted away for a plunge outward…
None of that! Martin went back towards the lighted drawing-room, timing his steps slowly. Himself: a focus of hatred. And again, everlastingly, why? The atmosphere of the drawing-room intensified this thought since Masters and H.M. had evidently been talking rapidly. It seemed to Martin that the Chief Inspector, in utter incredulity, had just opened his mouth to protest. Afterwards they did not speak.
They turned off the lights in the drawing-room. They went out of the house softly, Martin slipping the latch of the front, door. In a fine night the quarter moon dimmed by a sweep of stars, they crossed the road.
At the Dragon's Rest whose front showed no light what might be called the hotel-entrance was in its south side, the narrower end of the building. As Martin made for the hotel-entrance door, Masters preceding him and H.M. following him, he glanced southwards because Brayle Manor was somewhere there.
It seemed to him that in the distance the sky had a faintly whitish glow, conveying a sense of movement No sounds; or were there? The glimmer wasn't fire. He could tell that But…
"Oi!" whispered H.M., and shoved him inside.
A narrowish passage ran the length of the inn from south to north. Beyond the left-hand wall lay the three bars. In the right-hand wall was a cubicle for signing the visitors' book, then a door to the dining-room where Martin remembered having had lunch on Saturday, then more doors to the end. The wails, white-painted, had at one side a design of brass warming-pans framing a sixteenth-century crossbow; and the light of a shaded lamp shone on ancient scrubbed floorboards.
"See you later," whispered Masters, and tiptoed up the narrow staircase towards the bedrooms.