Outside the night once more settled back into a dreadful stillness. The searchlights fingered the sky with a new agitation. The house itself grew still as death. The only sound was the faint, irregular, untraceable creaking which afflicts old houses in the midst of the night. The French traveling clock struck eleven and at the same time a new sound, not at all like the distant unearthly creaking, came faintly through the open door of Lily’s room. It was an indistinct scraping sound as if some one were trying a key in a lock.
LI
LILY sat up, listening. The sound was repeated and presently there followed the noise of a door being opened slowly and cautiously. Lily rose and made her way to the dressing table where she pulled the bell. Once she pulled, and then again and again. There was no response. Either the servants were asleep or too terrified to answer. She gave the bell a final pull and when the only answer was silence, she took from the dressing table an electric torch and from the drawer of her carved desk a tiny pistol with a handle of mother of pearl which had been her mother’s. Then she made her way quietly into the hall until she reached the top of the stairway where she leaned over the rail and flashed the light.
The glare illuminated all the lower hall, lighting up the familiar carved chest, the straight-backed chair, the crystal chandelier, the mirror. Everything was the same save that on the chest with his head bowed and resting on his hands in an attitude of despair, sat Krylenko, hatless, his coat all torn, the blood streaming down the side of his face.
It appeared that he was weak and dazed, for he remained in this same position for a long time, failing to notice even the bright shower of light which, without warning, drenched the hall. When at last he stirred, it was to lean back wearily against the wall and say in a low voice, “I have used the key, Miss Irene.”
At the sound Lily ran down the long stairs, more rapidly than she had descended them in all the years she had lived in the house. She soared above the polished wood, until she stood suddenly by his side. She bent over him and touched his shoulder.
“It is not Miss Irene ... I am Lily,” she said. “Lily ... Miss Irene’s sister.”
With one arm Krylenko wiped the blood from his eyes.
“Then you don’t know me,” he said weakly. “I am not a thief ... breaking in.”