Part 38 (1/2)
”Why, then,” Lord Ballina broke in suddenly--”why, then, it's this afternoon!” His voice had grown high and thin with excitement, and Levison saw once more a face from which all the color had ebbed, and hands that twitched with sudden realization.
Mimi Addington suddenly rose up from her seat with a curiously sinuous and panther-like movement.
”This afternoon!” she said. ”Then I shall sleep happy this night!”
”Oh, come, Mimi,” Lord Ballina said, ”you needn't go quite so far as that. As a matter of fact, I--er--confound it, I wish we'd let the chap alone!”
The woman had sunk back upon the divan. She stretched out one slender, white hand, covered with flas.h.i.+ng rings, and patted Levison upon the arm.
He shuddered at her touch, scoundrel as he was, but she did not see it.
Ballina was walking up and down the room, his feet making no sound upon the thick pile of the carpet. He snapped his fingers in an odd, convulsive fas.h.i.+on.
”I say, you know,” he said at length, ”I really don't like it. I wish to Heaven I'd never been mixed up in the affair. Supposing anything gets out?”
”Well, that's supposing me to be rather a bigger fool than I am,”
Levison answered, though the fear of the other had in some subtle way affected him, and all his own tremors of the morning were beginning to revive.
Then there was silence in the room for a time.
Although the morning had been bright and cheerful, the sun had become obscured shortly after midday, and a heavy gloom of fog above which thunder had muttered now and then had spread itself high up in the sky.
The oppression in the air had become much more marked during the last hour, and now, as the three people sat together, they were all experiencing it to the full.
For a long time n.o.body spoke at all, and when at length Mimi Addington made some casual observation, both the men started involuntarily. The woman's voice also was changed now. It was like the voices of her companions, loaded with sinister apprehension.
”When do you suppose,” Lord Ballina said, in a shaking voice--”when do you suppose that we shall know if anything has happened, Andrew? Have you made arrangements with your--er--er--friends to report to you about it?”
”I'm not mad!” Levison answered shortly. ”Hear! Why, if there's anything to hear you'll hear soon enough----What's that?”
He had started violently, and the perspiration was beginning to run down his face. A distant rumble of thunder breaking suddenly in upon the quiet of the room had startled him and betrayed more than anything else in what a state his nerves were.
”It's only thunder,” Mimi replied. ”Good Heavens, Andrew, you are enough to give one the jumps yourself! But if we're to know, how shall we know?”
”Why, it's very simple,” Levison answered. ”Don't you see that if anything has--er--happened, it'll be in the evening papers and in the streets within three-quarters of an hour from the time it's occurred.
There will be journalists with this man Joseph, of course, there always are wherever he goes. Well, the papers will be up here by the motors in half-an-hour after they're issued, and we shall hear the newsboys shouting it out all over the place.”
”There's an old man who sells papers at the corner of Florence Street, only a few yards away,” Mimi Addington broke in quickly. ”The boys on the bicycles come up and supply him with all the new editions as they come out. I often hear them shouting.”
”Then all we've got to do,” said Andrew Levison, ”is to wait until we hear that shouting.”
They sat waiting--three murderers--and as they sat there a presence stole into the room, unseen, but very real. The grisly phantom Fear was among them. Waiting!
CHAPTER XXII
THE HOUSE DESOLATE