"Warned of what? What have you heard?"
"I didn't hear, I saw. Ah! do come quick, I ought to be there, you know, showing a light."
She spoke in curiously even tones, and for an instant Ned thought she was sleep-walking or dreaming. One of those deadly dreams of excessive hurry in which, no matter what you do, thought leaves the labouring body far behind.
"You saw it! But where, and what?"
She was silent for a second, looking at him half-dazed, then she spoke quite naturally. "It was in the crystal--the one they brought from Thibet. He said I could, and so I saw----"
Suddenly her whole bearing changed.
"Fire! fire! fire!" The cry, loud and clear, came as she turned and fled, he after her down the dark passage, led by the glimmer of her white gown.
Had she gone mad, or had she really seen something?
There was a little outside door, once the postern gate of the old Keep, which opened at the angle of the wing and the main part of the house. He followed her through that, losing her almost immediately in the dense white fog which clung to the damp walls. The windows of Sir Geoffrey's study were open, and as he ran past them, following the path, he heard something which sent the blood in a wild leap through his veins. It was a furious insistent ringing of the telephone call bell, which Sir Geoffrey, in his first delight with his new toy on the point, had put in so that he might be constantly in touch with the workmen.
Then something was wrong. What? As he spurted ahead towards Helen's ghost-like figure seen in the clearer atmosphere beyond, he asked himself how she could have known.