I suppose that in even the most sheltered and uneventful lives there are some little scenes that, for one reason or another, stand out with illogical precision from among the million of tiny impressions that are daily transferred from retina to brain. Childish memories, perhaps, that stand out clear and unfaded by the passage of time, while the settings of life’s more important crises become fogged and indeterminate. For me, however, there will always remain an unfaded mental picture of that quiet dimly lighted landing, the tracery of the pattern on the carpet, the shadow of the hand-rail on the stairs, the high lights and shadows on the metal of the double switch, and the plain white card with its ominous little message. I have but to close my eyes to recall each minute detail at will, and see myself standing hesitant at the center of the picture, miserable, and incapable of action.
Since breakfast time, a century ago it seemed, each long hot hour had been fraught with some fresh horror or distress, and now, fagged out, my brain refused to work—my faculties failed to function. I gazed at the card in stupid amazement. I felt my eyes grow round and goggle. What should I do? What ought I to do? Should I obey my first impulse and arouse the decisive doctor, in spite of the fact that a space of minutes only had passed since I had labeled him the logical answer to our riddle in the dark? Should I knock up Kenneth and Ralph and precipitate yet another repetition of the earlier angry scenes? Should I ring up the police? Or should I allow myself to drift, come to no decision at all, go to bed, and lock my door? Each alternative in turn I pondered twenty times and then rejected. To go calmly to bed, leaving the others ignorant and unwarned of such an open threat against their safety was unthinkable indeed, yet try as I might, make up my mind I could not, to any other course of action. There I stood, yes, and might have stood till dawn of day, turning the wretched card ever over and over in my hands, hot with self-shame and fuming at my incapacity. Then I heard a gentle muffled sound of movement on the landing up above, which brought me back to life once more and quickened me to action.
I pushed up the switch as gently as I might and stood in the dark, alert at last and listening. Yes, some one moving cautiously above—faint but unmistakable. Testing each board as I trod it against a sudden creak, step by step, soft and slow, I crept along the stairs that led to the upper landing and poor murdered Stella’s bedroom.
The door of the fatal room was standing wide, and as my eyes reached the level of the topmost step they met a beam of white electric light. Low and level it made a track of light that cut the darkened room in two, and crouching down against it, there was somebody kneeling.
It was The Tundish. I recognized him at once in spite of the dim light. The big white tassels at the end of his dressing-gown cord and those thin but steady hands of his gave him away.
I negotiated the remaining steps and gained the head of the flight without a sound, unless my thudding heart was really audible. Then I stood absorbed. To his right on the floor there lay a small electric torch. That was the light I had seen as I mounted the stairs. In the narrow path that it slashed across the shadows the doctor’s sensitive hands were moving methodically over the carpet. He was stroking the pile this way and that, his white taper fingers ever probing and searching. Then he pushed the light a pace farther on and repeated the process. I watched as he moved his position half a dozen times or so, then from the landing below there came the unmistakable distinctive click of a closing door.
The Tundish heard it too. I saw him jerk up his head to listen. His hands ceased their restless searching and lay quiet and still in the band of light. What would he do, I wondered, if he thought that there was some one awake and moving about on the landing beneath? What would he do if he knew that I stood there in the dark just behind him watching him at work?
He switched off the electric torch. I flattened myself against the wall.
“What is it, Jeffcock?” he whispered. “Did you hear a door shut down below?”
I jumped like a frightened horse, so sudden and unexpected came the whispered question from out of the quiet, darkened room. Not once had he turned his head or glanced in my direction. The landing was inky black. I could have sworn that I had not made a vestige of noise as I crept up the stairs to find him. Yet, not only did he know that he was being watched, but he knew that it was I.