She had looked at him fixedly while he said these words, and then she had opened and shut her eyes in a very odd way. He now asked himself if it was probable—possible—conceivable—that she blamed Varick for her accident? He, Varick, evidently thought so.
And then, as he walked along the darkened corridor, there came over Dr. Panton a most extraordinary feeling—a feeling that he was not alone.
He stayed his steps, and listened intently. But the only sound he heard was the ticking of a clock. He walked on, and all at once there came a word repeated twice, quite distinctly, almost as if in his ear. It was a disagreeable, an offensive word—a word, or rather an appellation, which the clever young doctor had not heard applied to himself for a good many years. For, twice over, was the word "Fool!" repeated in a mocking voice, a voice to whose owner he could not at the moment put a name, and yet which seemed vaguely familiar.
Then he remembered. Why, of course, it was the voice of that crazy, unpleasant old woman who had called on him last spring! But how had Miss Pigchalke found her way into Wyndfell Hall? And where on earth was she?
He looked round him, this way and that; and his eyes, by now accustomed to the dim light thrown by a hanging lamp, saw everything quite distinctly. He was certainly alone in the corridor now. But Miss Pigchalke had as certainly been there a moment ago. He wondered if she could have hidden herself in a huge oak chest which stood to his right? Nay, there she could not be, for he remembered having been shown that it was full of eighteenth-century gala gowns.
And while he was looking about him, feeling utterly perplexed and bewildered, through a door which was ajar there suddenly passed out Lionel Varick.
"Is anyone in there?" asked the doctor sharply.
Varick started violently. "You did startle me!" he exclaimed. "No, there's no one in there—I came up to look for a book. But as I told them to delay dinner yet a little longer, would you mind if we went in and saw Bubbles together on our way downstairs? I feel I should rather like to get my first interview with her over—and with you there."
"I don't see why you shouldn't." But there was a doubtful ring in Dr. Panton's voice. He would, as a matter of fact, have very much preferred that Varick should not see the girl to-night, especially if there was the slightest truth in the other's suspicion that Bubbles believed him to have been in any way instrumental, however accidentally, in making her fall into the water.
His mind worked quickly, as minds are apt to work when faced with that sort of problem, and he decided that on the whole he might as well let Varick do as he wished.