I partly lost my balance, lurched against a man, and heard his Lordship’s bitter plaint from the level of my knees. I blundered into the passage without disabling anyone else. Intuition kept me from blundering toward the front entrance; later I realized that would have been too obvious a way. I groped to the left, feeling along the right-hand wall.
I seemed to wake up in the dinner-room.
Someone else was in there. I heard an anxious whisper: “Bannerlee . . . Bannerlee . . . that you?”
I recognized a friend. “Yes.”
From the invisible a small, damp, clutching paw clasped my hand. “You gotta get out of this. Out the window. Snap into it.”
We were together on the east lawn, running. Thank God the moon had gone down. Thank God the servants were asleep.
“It’s a—wise egg that knows—its own rooster. Bannerlee, your offsprings—couldn’t spot you—as the bloke that finished Cosgrove. Step on it! I can—keep up.”
“What happened to the lights?”
“I happened to ’em—that’s all.”
We approached a black smudge across the greater dark: a band of trees. We entered into their depths. I stopped, held her back.