Time stood still for Penderel, waiting there in the hall. A few moments before, when he had been hustling the women across to that room, it had seemed as if there wasn’t a second to waste, but now, as he listened in loneliness between those locked doors, he found there was time enough and to spare. No sound came from above. He crossed over to the door through which Morgan and Waverton and Sir William had disappeared in a struggling mass, and he tried the handle. It was locked, of course; he knew very well it was. That meant that Waverton and Sir William would first have to dispose of Morgan and then get the key from the Femm woman, before they could join him. And Morgan might easily be a match for both of them for some time yet. He listened at the door. Vague, distant sounds came through, suggesting that Morgan had not yet been overpowered but was still putting up a fight somewhere at the end of the corridor, perhaps in or near the kitchen. A creak from the stairs sent him back into the middle of the hall, with his heart-beats filling his ears. But nobody was there.
If that had been the moment for action, he felt, all would have been well. There was, however, nothing to do but wait, listen to the mocking old timbers and wait, stare at the jumping shadows and wait; and now he suddenly felt sick and afraid. He wanted to run away, to take the good the night had brought him, out of its darkness, and hurry with it into safety. But he could not take it away, for if he went now, hiding his head, it would not go with him: all would be lost. Well, he had wanted something to do, and here was something to do. He hadn’t had to wait long, he told himself grimly. How queer it was that there was something inside you that could relish, grinning with irony, the most damnable situation you found yourself in, pointing out how damnable it was! He’d discovered that in France, when, as now, something in him was afraid and something else wasn’t, something shook and something grinned. Some of the old faces came popping up, smiled, and were gone; fellows he thought he’d forgotten; a spectral parade; and he wanted to keep one steadily before him so that he could cry ‘It’s a good war’ and once again hear it call back to him, just one of the daft old slogans: ‘Jam for the troops, mate.’ He would feel better after that. He might give Gladys a shout. She’d understand. But no, that wouldn’t do.
His eye went travelling idly up the dimly lighted stairs, waiting for madness to creep down from the dark, and then suddenly his mind cleared. His place wasn’t here, dithering and dreaming, but at the top of those stairs. Once down here, the madman might easily escape him and let hell loose, unless of course the other two came back before he arrived. So long as there wasn’t another way down, the best place for him was obviously at the top there; and even if there should be another way down, he wouldn’t be much worse off up there, because it wouldn’t take him long to get back again. And the sooner he went up the better.
He walked forward, then stopped and looked round hesitantly. His hand went to his forehead, which was cold and wet. Wasn’t there something he could take with him, something to grip? Well, there was a poker, and that was better than nothing. Hastily he seized it, and was crossing to the foot of the stairs when he bethought himself of the light. He couldn’t take it with him, that would be too dangerous; but if he put the lamp somewhere near the front door it would throw a little more light on the place where he would have to take his stand, at the very top of the stairs.
He crept up, slowly, shakily, his shadow leaping and sprawling before him. There were little noises everywhere now, not a stair in the house without its creak. All that part of the house that yawned above him seemed tense, expectant. The little patch of darkness at the top was thick and crawling with unrevealed terrors. A step or two more and out of that blackness would spring a white, gibbering face. He’d had a dream like that once—it all came back to him, raw and palpitating, the whole experience, almost between one stair and the next—and he remembered how he had wakened, a little boy sobbing in the night, to find his mother bending over him. Who would bend over him now? Why hadn’t they turned God into this vast maternal presence, smooth hands and a murmuring voice and a familiar lovely smell in the dark?
He was standing at the very top now, one hand behind him, touching the rail, the other achingly folded round the poker. While his eyes stared into the shadows and his ears seemed to run on and search the landing, his thoughts went sickeningly racing round. He was terribly afraid now, angry with himself for standing there. Why shouldn’t he rush downstairs, join Gladys in that room and lock the door, or plunge out into the night itself, into safety and sweet air? However, probably nothing would happen. But then, if nothing happened, he would be all right here. And if he went and something did happen, whether it hurt him or not, he knew that all would be over, the road missed for ever; the rest would be just breathing and eating and sleeping, with his spirit, a poor shamed ghost, returning time and again to take its stand on these stairs.
Yes, he could only stay. What was that? Surely that was somebody moving, not very far away? Why didn’t Waverton and Porterhouse show themselves? But then they wouldn’t, not because they didn’t want to, but because it always happened like that: he might have known that he would have to be alone. He’d always been more afraid of madness than anything else—the very thought of a maniac had always filled him with terror, and when this creature had raved on the stairs he’d felt sick, as if he were being pelted with lumps of putrid flesh—and of course he’d have to come in the end to face it alone. The thing came at last, the darkness shaping itself, and immediately everybody disappeared, doors were locked all round you, and you found yourself alone with it. That noise again, much nearer this time! Yes, he was at the other end of the landing. He was coming on steadily.
‘Stop!’ he cried, quite involuntarily. ‘Stay there, d’you hear? Don’t try to get past. I’ve got a poker here and I shall use it.’ His voice was ridiculously hoarse and shaky, not at all commanding.
The footsteps ceased, and he found he could just see a vague outline of the madman standing there a few yards away. Undoubtedly he had stopped at the sound of a voice, but he made no reply. Penderel waited and then asked himself despairingly how he could have expected a reply. Madness wouldn’t stand there bandying words with him. Nevertheless he had stopped.
‘Go back and don’t be a fool.’ Sheer necessity compelled him to speak out again, for only the sound of his own voice kept him from running away. ‘You’re not coming past here. Get back at once.’ It was woefully grotesque and futile perhaps, yet it raised his spirits a little.