Was it possible that some crime or tragedy was being enacted behind those grimy walls, all unknown to the police? The house was reported to be luxuriously furnished, the front of the place was all shuttered. Stranger things are happening in this London of ours every day in the week.
She could certainly mention the matter to----. Hetty stopped suddenly and caught her breath. A faint light had commenced to glow in the Corner House, gradually the blank window shaped to a luminous outline. The light grew stronger and stronger, till Hetty could see the balustrade of the staircase. And then, surely enough there came a face to the window.
A dreadful face, a face dull and dissipated, with horrible watery red eyes, yet full of malice and cunning and passion. There was a bristle of whiskers and a moustache, as if chin and razor had for days been strangers. As suddenly as the face had come it turned. A hand shot out from somewhere, as if seeking for the throat of the strange apparition, a fist was uplifted, and the figure disappeared, evidently going down before a cruel and crushing blow. The light vanished; it had probably been overturned and gone out.
"Good heavens!" Hetty cried. "Did you see that?"
She was conscious that somebody was by her side. She looked and found that her companion was the Countess. No answer came. Hetty touched the other's arm. She was shaking from head to foot like a reed in the gale.
"Did you see that?" Hetty demanded, again.
The woman by her side was slowly recovering herself. A minute later and she was her cold calm self again.
"I saw nothing," she said, between her teeth. "And you saw nothing. It was some trick of the imagination. There is nobody in yonder house. When I took this place a year ago so that I could be near--what am I talking about? I have been working too hard at my pleasures lately; I shall have to take a rest."
"I am not suffering from any delusions," Hetty said, coldly.
"All the same, you will say nothing," Leona Lalage hissed. "What you have seen or what you imagine you have seen tonight is to remain a secret between us for all time. Do you understand me? There is no better friend than I in all the world, and there is no more dangerous enemy. See?"