Vera, unmindful of the chill wind and her coatless condition, paused only long enough to close the door, then hurried after Millicent. She had taken but a few steps beyond the house when her foot struck against something which whizzed ahead of her, and she caught the glint of moonlight on metal. Catching up with the small object, she stooped over and picked it up. It was a razor.
Vera’s heart beat with suffocating rapidity as she tore ahead. What fresh tragedy was impending? To her dismay she saw Millicent was gaining ground. What use to call—no one was near—and she needed every ounce of breath to overtake the flying figure. Millicent kept a fairly straight course, then, darting among a clump of laurel bushes, disappeared from view, but only for a moment, as Vera, circling the bushes, caught sight of her cutting across fields toward Thornedale, but instead of continuing her approach to the low, rambling hunting lodge, she doubled on her tracks and half slid down a steep embankment.
Vera, hampered by her unfamiliarity with the ground, was some minutes later in reaching the top of the embankment, and she halted abruptly on seeing Millicent, no sign of her recent haste discernible, seated at the bottom of the embankment, apparently resting at her ease. Shifting clouds temporarily obscured the moon, and Vera waited expectantly before attempting the descent, dropping to her knees behind a cluster of shrubs as she decided to call and ask Millicent to wait for her. But her intentions received a check as a figure turned the corner of the winding highway, and a voice addressed Millicent.
“Who is here?” The next instant an electric pocket torch played across her face, then flickered out as Hugh Wyndham exclaimed in deep astonishment, “Millicent!”
His cousin threw out her hand as if to ward off the censure she felt coming.
“The house was stifling, Hugh,” she explained hurriedly. “I simply had to come out,” rising. “I’ll walk back with you. My head feels better already.”
Wyndham gazed at her in undisguised concern. “I wish I had known—” he began, and broke off. “Come, Millicent.” And slipping his arm inside hers, he led her with gentle determination in the direction of her house. Vera, greatly relieved at having Wyndham take charge of his cousin, was about to rise from her cramped position and follow them, when the razor, which she still clutched, slipped from her grasp and slid down the embankment. Instinctively she reached for it, lost her balance and went plunging down to the roadway. In an instant she was on her feet, the razor once again in hand, and she started forward but, confused by her tumble, she did not realize that she was headed in the wrong direction until she had taken several steps.
“Hush!” he whispered. “No noise. Look——”
As she paused she became aware that someone was approaching swiftly down the road, and suddenly awakening to the fact that Millicent and Wyndham were out of sight in the opposite direction, and that it must be long after midnight, she made a few hesitating steps toward a hedge and stopped irresolutely; there was no reason why she should run away. She held up the razor and the sight of the burnished steel in the light from the moon, which had come from behind the obscuring clouds, reassured her. She was not without protection, but a sudden doubt assailed her; how was she to account for the possession of the razor? Millicent might have dropped it in her flight from the house—but why had Millicent carried a razor—it was a toilet article not usually possessed by women. Could it be that Millicent was striving to get rid of the razor surreptitiously? The police were still searching for the set of razors from which had been taken the razor used to kill Bruce Brainard—