“I’m not mad,” he screamed. “I’m sane! Nobody can put me away—I’m not mad, Tab, you know I’m not.”
“You are just the maddest thing that ever lived,” said Tab inflexibly. “Thank God I saved Ursula—” the words were out of his lips before he regretted them.
He had turned the mind of the man at the door in the last direction he wanted it to go.
“Ursula—mine! Do you hear, she’s mine now.”
Tab heard the clash of the trowel as it was thrown down and the sound of hurrying feet, growing fainter.
Tab wriggled himself to his knees, threw back his weight and came to his feet. It was a terrible strain to support himself, but he was standing, doubled up grotesquely but free to move his feet a few inches at a time. So he crept to the table and leaning over, pulled the key toward him with his chin. He brought it carefully to the edge, then gripped the handle in his teeth and shuffled to the door. But the lock was set so close to the wall that he could not get his head into position to insert the key. He tried twice, and then what he feared, happened. The key dropped from his teeth with a clang to the floor.
He was on the point of kneeling when he heard somebody moving about, Rex opened the door to the sitting-room and shouted something; what it was, Tab could not hear, but there came to him a noise as if somebody was breaking sticks. Crack, crack, crack! it went, and then he sniffed. It was a faint smell of burning petrol he had detected, and he knew that for him the worst had happened. Mayfield was on fire.
XXXIV
“No answer,” said Exchange.
Mr. Carver rubbed his nose irritably and glanced up at the clock. Then he lifted the instrument again.