“Yes, yes.” Wyndham was in a fever of unrest, chafing one hand over the other. “Then will you call him? I’ll wait here until you return.”
Vera did not at once move down the hall. “Had I not better awaken Mrs. Porter?” she asked.
“No, no,” Wyndham spoke with more show of authority. “I will break the news to my aunt when you get back. The telephone is in the library. Go there.”
He was doubtful if she heard his parting injunction for, hurrying to the stairway, she paused and moved as if to enter Mrs. Porter’s boudoir, the door of which stood ajar; then apparently thinking better of her evident intention, she went noiselessly downstairs and Wyndham, listening intently, detected the faint sound made by the closing of a door on the floor below. Not until then did he relax his tense attitude.
Stepping back into Brainard’s bedroom he closed the door softly and stood contemplating his surroundings, his eyes darting here and there until each detail of the large handsomely furnished bedroom was indelibly fixed in his mind.
There was no sign of a struggle having taken place; the two high-backed chairs and the lounge stood in their accustomed places; the quaint Colonial dresser near the window, the highboy against the farther wall, and the bed-table were undisturbed. Only the bed with its motionless burden was tossed and tumbled.
Wyndham hastily averted his eyes, but not before he had seen the opened razor lying on the sheet to the left of Brainard and just beyond the grasp of the stiffened fingers. Drawing in his breath with a hissing noise, Wyndham retreated to his post outside the door and waited with ever increasing impatience for the return of Vera Deane.
The noise of the opening and shutting of a door which had reached Wyndham, contrary to his deductions, had been made not by the one giving into the library, but by the front door. Vera Deane all but staggered out on the portico and leaned against one of the columns. The cold bracing air was a tonic in itself, and she drank it down in deep gulps, while her gaze strayed over the sloping lawn and the hills in the background, then across to where the Potomac River wound its slow way between the Virginia and Maryland shores. The day promised to be fair, and through the clear atmosphere she could dimly distinguish the distant Washington Monument and the spires of the National Capital snugly ensconced among the rolling uplands of Maryland.
The quaint atmosphere of a bygone age which enveloped the old Virginia homestead had appealed to Vera from the first moment of her arrival, and she had grown to love the large rambling country house whose hospitality, like its name, “Dewdrop Inn,” had descended from generation to generation. Mrs. Lawrence Porter had elected to spend the winter there instead of opening her Washington residence.
Three months had passed since Vera had been engaged to attend Craig Porter; three months of peace and tranquillity, except for the duties of the sick room; three months in which she had regained physical strength and mental rest, and now—