CHAPTER XXXII.

“THE DEED IN THE DARK.”

The house was dark as the grave; quiet as death. From somewhere a clock struck the hour with one solemn stroke, that clanged and echoed through the silent halls.

Mrs. Trelane, lying sleepless in her bedroom, where she had been sent like a beaten dog by one glance from Wray, sprang up with causeless terror. Only the remembrance of Ismay’s locked door kept her from running to the girl for companionship, but she dared not stand outside that door, even for one minute, and knock in vain, with perhaps those awful steps behind her.

Cowering in her pillows, she listened, but heard no more. Even to herself she would not own that what she feared was not so much the ghost, as what Marcus Wray might be going to do this night in the dark. For she had seen him look once at Cristiane that day, and the look held death in it.

Once, earlier in the night, she had fancied she heard the noiseless tread of cautious feet, as though people passed her door silently. She had looked out, then, and seen nothing but Ismay, pale as death itself, standing alone in the still lighted hall.

“What’s the matter?” the girl said. “Don’t say you want me, because I’m going to bed,” and she went into her room and locked the door carelessly, as though death and retribution were left outside.

There were quiet steps again now, but Mrs. Trelane’s fingers were in her ears, and she never heard them.

Marcus Wray and Cristiane had come up silently, he with a light in one hand, the other round Cristiane’s waist, that terror might not make her break away from him.

Frightened she was, but like a child who enjoys a game that startles it, but also a little afraid of the arm that was so grimly protective. It was amusing to be hunting ghosts at night with a man who was in love with you; but it was also, somehow, disquieting.

There was not a sound as they stood at the turn of the stairs, with only half a dozen more steps to mount to the hall the haunted room opened from. Wray stopped, candle in hand. It was no ghost-hunting that had brought him up here at the dead of night.

“Why didn’t you go on?” she whispered.

He kissed her, almost savagely.

“I don’t hear anything. I’m waiting for the music.”

“Oh, I’m frightened of it! I don’t want to hear it. Let us go down.” Their voices were echoing in the hall above as in a whispering gallery.

“Down!” The man held his candle aloft, and looked down the well of the stairs. Down, down, it went till his eye lost in the blackness the hard oak floor of the great hall below. There was no one to see him, and his face was the face of a devil. He set his candle on the stair.

“You can go down--presently,” he answered recklessly. He took a sharp sideways step so that she was pressed near the banister. Far below he saw the light of a candle. Thomas was carrying it, the old man was coming up-stairs. It was all the better; an accident, without a witness, sometimes smelled of murder. How slowly Thomas was mounting the stairs! If some one in the hall above had seen Wray’s face, the glare in his eyes, and caught their breath in swift horror, there might have been precisely the little sound that reached Cristiane’s ears.

“What was that? I heard a noise,” she whispered, gazing up the stairs with great, startled eyes.

“Nothing!” said Wray furiously. Thomas was nearly up now.

“Cristiane!” Wray cried at the top of his voice: “what are you doing up here? There’s no ghost, don’t run. For God’s sake, take care of those banisters--they’re rotten!” and with God’s name on his lips in the lie that was to make Thomas a witness who would clear him, he shoved her suddenly, savagely, against the banisters, that were frail as reeds with dry rot.

Cristiane screamed the long, wild cry of a woman in the last pinch of fear.

“Help me!” she shrieked again, and for one second his grasp of her relaxed. She had fallen flat on the stairs, still pressed against the banisters where they were socketed in the steps.

Wray put his shoulder against the rail; it cracked, crashed, with half the uprights, down into the awful depths below. Only half-against the splintered lower part Cristiane lay huddled.

With an inarticulate curse, Marcus Wray stooped to do deliberate murder, to pick up the girl, whose only sin was her wealth and her defenselessness. Thomas was not come yet; there was no witness.

But was there?

Who was that who stood just above him, in a curious white satin gown, marked with blood on the breast? Who stood dead-white through her flimsy gauze veil, her eyes burning like cold, green flames?

He looked, he sprang, kicking over the candle so that there was darkness. But in that one glance he had known her. It was Ismay who had played the ghost. Ismay who had seen him now! Beyond himself with rage and terror, he leaped after her in the dark. In the dark she ran, voiceless, weakened by the long strain on her, the horror of what she had been within an ace of allowing to be done.

A square of moonlight marked the open door that was her safety. She leaped to it, but Marcus Wray was quicker still. Her flying dress caught round her feet as he seized it. She fell headlong on the hard, oak threshold, her head striking it with a dull and awful sound.