Footsteps in the Dark Read online

  Beside the fireplace a dark cavity yawned in the panelling.

  She scrambled up, and forgetting that Peter had gone through the door that led to the servants’ quarters, called to him. ‘Peter, come here quickly!’

  Then she remembered that he could not hear her, and she stood for a minute, looking at the gap in the panels. Not for worlds, she thought, would she venture inside until Peter came back, but sheer curiosity impelled her to tiptoe towards it, and try to peep in.

  It was so dark that she could only see that it seemed to be a narrow stone stairway, leading up in the thickness of the wall. The central lamp threw its light so that it only illumined the step immediately in a line with the opening, and the stone wall beyond. Margaret could not see more than the dim outline of another step leading downwards. She was half afraid that some horrible skeleton might be inside, but she could not perceive anything of that nature. Holding with one hand to the edge of the panel, she ventured to step just inside, in the hope of being able to see where the stairs led. Leaning her other hand against the wall she craned forward trying to pierce the darkness below her. She moved her right hand from the wall to feel ahead of her, wondering whether she was really standing on a staircase, or whether it was only another priest’s hole. Her hand did not, as she had half expected, encounter another wall, but to her annoyance a gold bangle that she wore and whose clasp she had been meaning to have strengthened, came undone, and fell with a tinkle on to the second step, which she could just perceive. Involuntarily she stooped to pick it up, but to reach it she had to let go of the panel she still held, and take one step down on to the second stair. Her fingers had closed on the bangle and she was about to step back on to the level of the library floor when she was startled to see the shaft of light cast by the lamp in the room disappearing. She turned like a flash, and saw to her horror that the panel was sliding noiselessly back into place.

  She flung herself forward, but she was too late. The panel had closed, and she was in utter darkness.

  In the terror of finding herself a prisoner she lost her head, and shrieked for her brother, beating wildly on the back of the panel, trying to tear it open. She only succeeded in breaking a finger-nail, and her panic grew. She screamed, ‘Help! help! Peter, Peter, Peter!’

  Somewhere below her she heard a soft, padding step, and the hush of a robe brushing against the wall. Like a mad woman she clawed at the panel. ‘Quick! oh quick! Peter, help!’

  Then in the darkness a gloved hand stole across her mouth, and an arm in a wide sleeve was round her, holding her in a vice.

  She tried to break free, to jerk her head away, but her arms were clamped to her sides and that horrible, gloved hand was like a gag over her mouth.

  She felt herself slipping into unconsciousness, and through the sudden roaring in her ears she heard as though from a great distance Peter’s voice calling: ‘Margaret, what is it? Where are you?’

  A low, inhuman chuckle sounded immediately above her head, and there was something so gloating and fiendish in that soft sound that terror such as she had never known seized her. Then the waves met over her head and she fainted.

  Fifteen

  AS HE CAME INTO THE HALL FROM THE SERVANTS’ WING Peter heard Margaret’s scream. It sounded muffled, but he heard her shriek his name, and crossed the hall in three bounds.

  ‘Margaret, what is it?’ he cried. ‘Where are you? Margaret! Margaret!’

  The room was empty, and no answering call came to him. He stared round, then sprang instinctively to the window, only to find that the falling bolt was as he had left it, just holding the double windows together. She could not have gone that way, and hardly knowing what he did he tore the curtains apart and dragged the big leather screen aside. But she was not in the room. Yet a moment before he had heard her voice coming from this direction: she could not have gone far!

  ‘Think! think!’ drummed his brain. ‘Don’t lose your head! Think!’

  He came back into the middle of the room, and as he once more glared round for some clue to her whereabouts his eye caught sight of a crumpled handkerchief lying near the wall beside the fireplace. Quickly he crossed to where it lay, and picked it up. It was one of the flimsy scraps of crêpe-de-chine she always used; he had returned it to her twice already this evening, for she invariably dropped it about.

  His thoughts raced. She had been sitting on the other side of the fireplace all the evening; if she had dropped her handkerchief here she must for some reason or other have moved to this spot after he had left the room. What could have taken her there? His eyes ran swiftly over that side of the room. Not a book, for the shelves were on the opposite wall; nor the coal-scuttle, for he had taken that away. She must have stepped close up to the wall, too, for the handkerchief had been touching the wainscoting. Light began to break on Peter. She hadn’t gone out by the window; she hadn’t gone by the door, since when she screamed he had just come back into the hall, and must have seen her had she left the room by that exit. There remained only one solution: somewhere in the room was a secret entrance that they had none of them discovered.

  He at once inspected the panelling, and went to the place where the handkerchief had lain, and sounded the panels all along that side of the fireplace. It was hard at first to detect a difference, but by dint of repeated banging on two panels he was almost sure that one had a different, and more hollow note. It was probably padded on the inside to disguise it, he guessed, and he began to feel all round the beading for any catch there might be. Some echo of Margaret’s frantic cry still seemed to sound in his ears, and his hands moved with feverish haste over the woodwork. She must have accidentally discovered the moving panel, and then – what had happened? A rather sickening fear stole into him; his fingers tore fruitlessly at the beading; he even set his shoulder to the panel in a vain attempt to break it down. His reason checked him once more. It was no use getting desperate: he must think, and think quickly. How had she discovered the panel? Not by design, that much was certain. By accident it must have been, and what could she have been doing that led her to put her hand on the spring that worked it?

  His gaze, searching the room, fell on the fire, which was now burning brightly. Of course! She had been lighting the fire! What a fool he was not to have remembered that earlier! He strode up to the grate, and as he bent to scrutinise it there flashed into his mind the recollection of the rosette that had moved to slide back the panel into the priest’s hole at the top of the stairs. If another such hole existed it was almost certain that it was worked by the same sort of device.

  He fell on his knees, wrenching and twisting at the carved surround of the grate. It was a garland in a design of apples and pomegranates and leaves. Inch by inch he went over it, his heart sinking as leaf after leaf, fruit after fruit remained immovable under his probing fingers. Then, when only one more cluster remained untested he found the wooden apple that turned, and almost let out a yell of triumph as it slid in his hold.

  His eyes were fixed on the panel he suspected, and even as he turned the apple, he saw it glide back to reveal the same dark cavity that had startled Margaret.

  He sprang to his feet. His only thought was to get to his sister; even had it entered his head in that moment of anxiety he would not have paused to fetch his revolver, upstairs, locked in a drawer of his dressing-table. Without stopping to consider he was through the aperture, and standing on the first step. ‘Margaret!’ he shouted. ‘Margaret, Margaret! Where are you?’

  There was a faint movement behind him, he started round, but just a second too late. Something struck him a stunning blow on the head, and he fell without a sound, sprawling down the narrow stairs. A moment later a cowled figure moved across the aperture, and then once more the panel slid back into place, and the library was empty and silent.

  Five minutes afterwards Bowers came into the room with the coal-scuttle. He looked round, rather surprised to see no one, but concluded that Peter and Margaret had either strolled out into the moonli