‘What’s that you’re saying?’ came up the muffled, querulous voice; ‘I can’t for the life of me hear, my boy.’
‘Nothing, nothing,’ came softly the answer from the foot of the stairs. ‘I was only speaking to myself.’
Deliberately, with candle held rigidly on a level with his eyes, Lawford pushed forward a pace or two into the airless, empty drawing-room, and grasped the handle of the door. He gazed in awhile, a black oblique shadow flung across his face, his eyes fixed like an animal’s, then drew the door steadily towards him. And suddenly some power that had held him tense seemed to fail. He thrust out his head, and, his face quivering with fear and loathing, spat defiance as if in a passion of triumph into the gloom.
Still muttering, he shut the door and turned the key. In another moment his light was gleaming out on the grey perturbed face and black narrow shoulders of his visitor.
‘You gave me quite a fright,’ said the old man almost angrily; ‘have you hurt your foot, or something?’
‘It was very dark,’ said Lawford, ‘down the stairs.’
‘What!’ said Mr Bethany still more angrily, blinking out of his unspectacled eyes; ‘has she cut off the gas, then?’
‘You got the note?’ said Lawford, unmoved.
‘Yes, yes; I got the note.... Gone?’
‘Oh, yes; all gone. It was my choice. I preferred it so.’