The housemaid must find the lamp still burning brightly in the morning when she came to set the room to rights. Was his nerve failing him that he should have almost overlooked so vital a detail? The horror was mounting now, but he forced himself to a final, searching survey; his hideous task was accomplished!
A few hurried, cautious steps, a moment of hesitation, and he stood at last outside the door. He felt an overmastering impulse to close it, to seal that room and its gruesome contents away from the living world, but he reminded himself sternly that it would not be a logical move. Leila, awaiting his coming, would have left the door ajar that she might hear him. He reached behind him and drew it close to its casing until only a narrow line of light cleaved the darkness with dimmed radiance; then, repressing a mad desire to run, he tiptoed noiselessly down the hall.
At the foot of the stairs he paused and glanced back. Only the faintest lightening of the shadows betrayed what lay beyond, and extinguishing the lamp upon the newel post he crept up to his room.
From Leila’s empty dressing-room adjoining, the yawning blackness seemed to rush out menacingly to envelop him, but he shut it away with the closing door and, moving to his window, flung it wide.
Soft moonlight everywhere, silvering the treetops and shimmering upon the trout stream beyond. Moonlight and the whispering night winds and the peace and hush of a sleeping world.
It was over! He had done his utmost to forestall any possible doubt or suspicion, had nullified every clue, had set the scene for the farce which would start with the rising curtain of dawn and felt confident that he was prepared at all points to meet the issue.
But what of the hours that lay between, the long night before him?
Chapter IV.
The Long Night
Storm turned from the window with a sudden realization that his task, instead of having been finished, had only begun. If he were to keep up this farce it would not be enough to attempt to obliterate from his memory the hour which had just passed; he must live from this moment as though it had never been. He must remember that, tempted by the beauty of the spring night, he had not come directly home by way of the short cut, but had chosen the winding path which skirted the club grounds and the lake. That would account for the time that had elapsed since the arrival and departure of the train.
He had only just come in, and finding the house dark had proceeded at once up here to his room. He would suppose Leila to be asleep in there, behind that closed door, and he would therefore move about softly, so as not to waken her. Every nerve shrank in revolt from the thought of retiring, of courting sleep and the nightmares which might arise from his subconsciousness to haunt him, yet he must proceed in all things as though this were but a usual homecoming.