“Good night.”
The Kentish slow train was late. The police car had punctured a tyre half a mile from Deepacres Halt and they had missed their connection with the express. At every station the slow train halted, breathing long steamy sighs which were echoed by Alleyn.
“What’s biting you, Inspector?” asked Nigel cheerfully.
“I don’t know.”
“I’ve never seen you so jumpy.”
“That fellow Campbell was told to keep his wits about him, Fox?”
“Yes, Mr. Alleyn.”
“Good God, we’re stopping again!”
IV
Roberta’s heart beat so thickly that she wondered if it alone had awakened her. She lay with her eyes opened upon blackness. She could not see so much as the form of the curtains that hung beside her head or the shape of her hand held close to her eyes. For a moment she was confused. The memory of this room was gone from her. She had no sense of her position or of her invisible surroundings but felt as though she had opened her eyes on nothingness. She dared not put out her hand lest the wall should not be there. Now she was wide awake. She remembered her room and knew that round the curtains on her left side she should be able to see the fire. She touched the curtain, so close yet invisible, and it moved. Somewhere beyond her bed glowed a point of redness. The fire was almost dead; she had slept a long time. Outside it was still raining and the wind still moaned in the chimney but neither the wind nor the rain had awakened Roberta. She knew that some one had walked past her door. She began to reason with herself, telling her thumping heart that there was no cause for fear. Perhaps it was the man on guard in the house, making some cold round of inspection. Yet even while she sought in panic for comfort she knew, so densely woven are the strands of thought, that the footstep in the passage was the secondary cause of her alarm and that it was another sound that had horrified her dreams and rushed her upwards into wakefulness. She lay still and waited, tingling, for full realization. Presently it came. Beneath her, beyond the mattress of her bed, the carpet on the floor, the floor itself, the ceiling below the floor — beyond all these, there was a sound that fretted the outer borders of her hearing. It had a kind of rhythm. It suggested some sort of harsh movement with which Roberta was familiar. At the moment when she recognized it, it ceased, and she was left with a picture of a hand and a saw. Then she remembered that underneath her bedroom was the green drawing-room.