'He wants help. We ought to have a doctor at once.'
'Then fetch one--fetch one!'
That there was anything about the request which was at all unreasonable, seemingly Miss Broad did not pause to consider; she was too preoccupied with her own troubles and his. But to Miss Bewicke the difficulty of the errand forcibly occurred.
'You forget--' she began. Then stopped, for she remembered how easy it was, in the other's situation, to forget all things save one. She knit her brows and thought, the result of her cogitations being a series of disjointed sentences.
'They can hardly be such brutes, when they know. And yet it was they who put him there. I wonder! Do I dare?'
It seemed that she essayed her courage. She went to the door, and, for a moment, listened. Then turned the key, opened it an inch or two. What she saw and heard increased her valour, especially what she heard. The drawing-room was empty. Loud voices came through the open door of the bedroom--her own bedroom on the opposite side--sounds which did not speak of peace.
'I do believe they're fighting.'
She stole on tiptoe a foot or two into the empty room, then stopped in a flutter as of doubt--what might not happen if they caught her?--then tiptoed further, till she had reached the centre of the room. Again she paused. If she was seen, it was a long way back to the haven of comparative safety she had quitted. But the noise, if anything, grew louder. From some of the words which reached her, she judged it possible that they were too much occupied with their own proceedings to pay heed to anything else. She perceived that, by some stroke of good fortune, the key was outside the door. She screwed her courage to the sticking-point, forming a sudden resolution. Darting forward, thrusting the door to quickly, she turned the key, then, when the key was turned, the deed done, the three gentlemen trapped, she leaned against the wall, went white, seemed on the verge of fainting.
She went still whiter when the handle was turned within, and Mr Horace Burton's voice was heard demanding that the door be undone.
'If they should get out!'