“Yes, to-night?”
“I dreamt I was back at school, and I thought I heard talking in the next dormitory. You know we are not allowed to talk, and I am—I mean I was a prefect. So I got up, and went to see what was the matter, and some one pulled the screen away, and there was such a light, and such a noise.” She put out a shaking hand, and Number Two patted it kindly.
“Very startling for you,” he said. “So you opened the door and came in and heard us all talking. Can you tell me what was being said?” His hand was on Renata’s wrist, and he felt the pulses leap. She spoke a shade too quickly:
“I don’t know.”
“Perhaps I can help you. Your father, you know, travels for a firm of chemists, a firm in which I and my friends are also interested. We were discussing a new aniline dye which, we hope, will capture the markets of the world. Now did you hear that word—aniline—or anything like it? You see I want to find out just what woke you. What tiresome questions we doctors ask, don’t we?”
He smiled, and Renata tried to collect her thoughts. They were in great confusion.
Aniline—annihilate—the two words kept coming and going. If her head had been clearer she would almost certainly have fallen into the trap which had been laid for her. Molloy stopped drumming on the table and clenched his hand. With all his strength he was praying to the saints in whom he no longer believed. Behind the screen twenty-three men waited in a dead silence. Renata was not frightened any more, but she was tired—oh, so dreadfully tired. Annihilate—aniline—the words and their similarity of sound teased her. She turned from them with a little burst of petulance.
“I didn’t hear anything like that. Oh, do let me go to bed! I only heard some one call out....”
“Yes?” said Number Two.
“He said, ‘The door, the door!’ and then there were all those lights.”