For a moment her heart stood still and her very blood ran cold. Then in one desperate moment she recollected the sound of the bell.
Springing from her bed she flew to the door crying as she did so "the safe, the safe!!"
Wildly she flew down the passage her brain dazed her heart beating loudly.
Her eyes were too dilated to see, and in flying along she struck her head against a tall old clock and would have fallen headlong downstairs, to certain death, but a pair of arms were hastily flung around her and in another moment two unconscios figures were lying motionless in the still dark passage with only the pale moonlight lighting up their rigid faces.
CHAPTER 16
"SETTLED"
Marshland had not been awakened by the bell and so when she got up next morning at 6 o'clock, she was entirely innocent of the nights events. Putting on her apron she hastily went downstairs. Half way down the passage she caught sight of something white.
"Tut tut" she exclaimed "I wonder if those are my clean aprons or caps, they must have fallen from the beams." But here her wonderings were overun by the fact that the white things were no other than the prostrate bodies of Helen and Gladys.
Marshland uttered a stifled cry, but recovering her presence of mind she instantly raised Helen in her arms. Gladys had by this time quite recovered and was kneeling by her cousin on the floor.