The house was quiet at last, there was a passing cab or two, the heavy tramp of a policeman. Up in the nursery little Mamie was still sleeping, she was flushed and uneasy and murmuring as she slept. The recreant nurse lay on her back snoring loudly. Well, Hetty was a light sleeper, and her room was just opposite the nursery. Nurse would have slept through an earthquake.
Hetty returned to her room, but not to sleep. The vague shadow of some coming trouble lay upon her. She was young and healthy, and she was engaged to one of the best men on earth. And they were going to be married soon. She ought to have been superlatively happy.
Yet she was restless and uneasy. She had never known what it was to be nervous before. There was a dull booming noise somewhere, a knocking that seemed to proceed from the Corner House. Hetty heard something fall with a thud, she could have sworn to a stifled cry. A door opened and closed somewhere, there was a strong draught as if the basement had been opened. Hetty's heart was beating in some strange, unaccountable way. A little cry brought her to her feet.
But it was only Mamie whimpering and crying for her. The child was awake and sitting up in bed, whilst the nurse still slept. Mamie was hot and feverish.
"I am so sorry," she said, "but my throat is all parched up. Dearest, do please get me some soda-water."
"All right, darling," Hetty whispered. "Lie down and be quiet, and I will see what I can do for you. I shan't be long."
There was everything that Hetty required in the dining-room. She crept softly down the marble staircase in her stockinged feet; down below in the hall a solitary point of flame in the electric corona made fitful shadows everywhere. There was one light also in the big, dark, dining-room, which was always left there, so that Hetty had no difficulty in finding a syphon of soda-water. She crept out into the hall again and paused.
Cigarette smoke. Smoke of a pungent acrid kind that might have been smoked in the house, but never beyond the kitchens. And it was fresh, too, for a trailing wreath of it hung heavy on the air. Without a doubt somebody was in the morning room.
Yes, Hetty could hear the chink of a glass, the fizz of something aerated. Her heart was beating painfully, but she was not afraid. Dimly, in a mirror opposite, she could see a hand reflected. But she could not see the face. The girl deflected the mirror slightly, so that the head and shoulders of the intruder were dimly focused upon it.
A cry rose to her lips, but she stifled it. In a sudden, blind, unreasoning fear she fled noiselessly up the stairs. She had seen that man's features. It was the face of the man from the Corner House!