Wendover was glad that the bridge precluded much conversation. He felt that Sir Clinton had drawn him into a false position that evening; and he had to exert himself so as not to betray his feelings in the matter. Once they sat down, however, the play turned out very even; and he had not much mental energy left for anything beyond his game, which tended to reconcile him to his visit. Both the girls played better than the average; and he was beginning to forget his dissatisfaction as time went on.
“That’s game and rubber,” said Sir Clinton, at length, as he looked up from the marker lying beside him.
Sylvia glanced at her wrist-watch.
“Shall we play another?” she asked. “There’s plenty of time, unless you wish to get away early.”
As she spoke she stretched out her arm to lift the marker; but in the middle of the gesture she gave a sharp cry of pain and started up from her chair. Then, as she mechanically brought her hand down again on to the table, Wendover saw a spurt of blood from her right wrist, and, at its source, the brown feathering of one of the poisoned darts embedded in her white skin.
For an instant the group around the bridge-table was stricken into immobility, while the blood jetted from Sylvia’s wrist and stained the cards across which her hand had fallen. The swift incursion of tragedy upon the scene had taken them unawares. A moment or two earlier they had been sitting in safety, intent upon their game. Then, out of the night the tiny missile had sped to its mark; and the King of Terrors had come among them. There had not even been the warning of the air-gun’s report; for it must have been drowned by the noise of the loudspeaker which still continued to pour out its incongruous flood of dance music.
Wendover frozen in his chair, took in the scene almost without knowing that he was observing it; the pain-shot face of Sylvia, the horror in Vera Forrest’s eyes, the trickle of blood across the littered cards, and the cool visage of Sir Clinton as he leaned over the table towards the wounded girl. Then, as he watched, Sylvia’s expression changed. She had seen the poisoned dart in her wrist and now she understood what it meant. Her lips opened as though saying something, then her face grew suddenly white, and she slipped back in her chair.
Sir Clinton rose swiftly and lifted the unconscious girl across the room to one of the couches. Wendover noticed that, even in the haste, the Chief Constable took care to use his own body as a shield, keeping it between Sylvia and the window until he had reached a point which seemed out of range of the assassin.
“After the brute, Wendover!” Sir Clinton ordered, raising his voice above the clamour of the loud-speaker. “You may be able to spot him before he gets clear away. And shut that window behind you.”
Galvanised into action by the curt directions, Wendover suddenly ceased to be a mere spectator. Without a word he swung himself through the open window and out into the darkness. Somewhere in the gloom, the unknown murderer must be lurking, waiting perhaps to make sure of his victim with a second shot. Wendover was filled with an anger wholly alien to his usual temperament, and he peered eagerly into the obscurity around him in the hope of glimpsing a shadow moving among the shades.