“Oh, I see,” said Freddie. “You mean that she was going along the corridor in the direction of the bachelor’s wing?”
Westenhanger saw Eileen start in her chair at this elucidation by Freddie, but she evidently held herself in with an almost physical effort.
“Why on earth doesn’t she say something?” he wondered to himself. “I’d stake my money that she’s straight, and yet she lets that little swine go on unchecked with his insinuations. I can’t understand it.”
Whether she wished it or not, Mrs. Caistor Scorton had changed the whole atmosphere. Up to the moment when she began to speak, the affair had been handled in an almost frivolous spirit. Freddie Stickney had been making a fool of himself, and no one liked him sufficiently to feel troubled by that aspect of the matter. Even the Talisman theft had not weighed over heavily as a personal thing, for nobody had any formulated suspicions in his mind. But Mrs. Caistor Scorton, in half a dozen sentences, had brought them face to face with a new problem, and the silence of the girl made it difficult to find innocuous explanations. Something ugly had reared up in the midst of what, to most of them, had been little more than a joke. Eileen’s white, strained face, and her attitude of a creature at bay, had taken away all humour from the situation. Freddie Stickney had achieved a masterpiece in the creation of discomfort. Westenhanger could see Douglas Fairmile’s face, and in its expression he read the twin of his own feelings.
The American broke the silence, before its awkwardness grew too obvious.
“You mean that Miss Cressage was going towards the head of the main stair-case, I suppose?”
Mrs. Caistor Scorton nodded without speaking.
“I understand it better when it’s put in that way,” said Wraxall, bluntly.
Eileen Cressage threw him a glance in which Westenhanger recognised gratitude. The American had taken the edge off the situation, to some extent, by his intervention. But a moment’s reflection showed Westenhanger that Wraxall had merely turned the matter into a fresh and difficult channel. Down the stair-case was the way to the Corinthian’s Room and the Talisman.
Before anyone else could interpose comments, Wraxall again threw himself into the breach: