There was something callous in her demeanour, a sort of bravado, which made me momentarily more uncomfortable. This was quite a new Pollie to me. She spoke as if we were enjoying ourselves, with an apparently entire unconsciousness of the frightful situation we actually were in. I was positively beginning to be afraid of her.
“Do let us go upstairs to the bedroom, Pollie, and lock ourselves in till the morning comes.”
She glanced at her watch.
“It’s morning now; the midnight chimes have sounded long ago. Would you like to have your throat cut in the silence of the night?”
“Pollie!”
“It wouldn’t be nice to wake up and find it slit from ear to ear, would it? So don’t be a goose. There’s a door locked downstairs and another up. Before I rest I’m going to do my best to find out why those two rooms are not open to me, their rightful owner. If it’s because they harbour cut-throats, it’s just as well that we should know as soon as we conveniently can. So I’m off on a voyage of discovery. You can go to bed if you like.”
Of course I went with her. It was a choice of two evils—frightful evils—but, under the circumstances, nothing would have induced me to go to bed by myself. I would far rather have had my throat cut with her than be eaten by rats alone. She began to hunt about the room.
“I’m looking for some useful little trifle which might come in handy in breaking down a solidly-constructed door or two. Here’s a poker, heavy make—there’s some smashing capacity in that; a pair of tongs; a fender—there’s a business end to a fender; furniture—I have heard of chairs being used as battering-rams before to-day. My mother used to tell of how once, when his landlady locked him out because he wouldn’t pay the rent of his rooms, my Uncle Benjamin burst his way into the house with the aid of a chair, snatched off a passing cart which was laden with somebody else’s goods, so I can’t see how he could object to my trying the same kind of thing in the house which was once his own. But I won’t—not yet. To begin with I’ll give the poker a trial, and you might take the tongs.”
I took the tongs, though the only thing against which I should be likely to use them would be rats, even if I ventured to touch them. Indeed, the mere idea of squelching a wriggling, writhing, squeaking rat between a pair of tongs made an icy shiver go all down my spine. Pollie whirled the poker round her head with a regular whoop. What had come to her I could not imagine. Her eyes flamed; her cheeks were flushed; she was transformed. I verily believe that if half-a-dozen men had rushed in at the door that very second, she would have flown at them with a shriek of triumph. I had always known that one of her worst faults was a fondness for what she called “a bit of a scrimmage,” and that in an argument very few people got the better of her; but I had never dreamed that she would go so far as she was going then. She seemed as if she were perfectly burning for someone to attack her.
Down the staircase she went, brandishing the poker over her head. I could not keep so close to her as I should have liked for fear of it. She stamped so as she descended that near the bottom she put her foot clean through one of the steps. No doubt the wood was rotten, but still she need not have insisted on treading as heavily as she possibly could. And as soon as she reached the passage, without giving me an opportunity to say a word, she dashed at the door of the room, which was locked, and hit it with all her might with the end of the poker. I expected to see her go right through it, but, instead of that, she gave a sort of groan, and down fell the poker with a clatter to the floor.