STEP IN THE DARK. Ethel Lina White

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      CHAPTER THREE. THE COUNTESS LEAVES TOWN

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      Seared with horror at her vision, Georgia rushed back to the open window. Her dominant instinct was flight as she crawled out upon a ledge which encircled a pit of darkness. Although she had no sense of direction, she felt vaguely that it must lead her to the refuge of her room.

      She was shivering with cold and her legs were leaden from shock. Her glorious liberty-dream had spun away from her, leaving her stranded in the familiar nightmare of being unable to make progress. She knew that she must advance, yet her will to move was smothered in inertia. As she toiled on, she felt clogged and impotent, like an insect attempting to crawl over a sticky fly-paper.

      Her distress was increased by a gradual shrinkage of security. Hitherto, she had been swaddled in the protective cocoon of a dream, when she could not fall; but with her growing sense of altitude there came the threat of vertigo. Although her path was still mercifully obscured, she had recurring flashes of consciousness, when she could feel an iron grille under her bare feet.

      Suddenly she slipped and nearly overbalanced on the verge of a stair which wound downwards. It was narrow and spiralled so steeply that her head whirled from continuous turning. Slipping recklessly from step to step in her haste to reach each successive window, she always found the jalousies closed against her entrance.

      It was not until she had grown nearly frantic with fear of being shut out that she saw an open casement. Swinging herself across to the sill, she almost flung herself into the black interior of a room. As she stumbled blindly across it she collided violently with a chair, over which was hung a black gown, and then fell heavily across the bed, banging her head on the rail.

      She remembered no more until she became drowsily aware of unseen hands which stroked the sheet in position under her chin. Opening her eyes with an effort she met the gaze of a heavily-built woman with shoulder-long dark waved hair, which made her resemble a middle-aged schoolgirl. She wore a neat dark-blue overall, and looked both kind and capable.

      "You must excuse," she said in the fluent English of a War refugee; "but you were lying across the bed, with the bedclothes off you, as though you had the nightmare."

      Happily aware of sunshine speckling the ceiling, Georgia laughed in her relief.

      "I certainly had nightmare," she said. "I dreamed that the room had grown larger."

      Then she gave a cry of astonishment.

      "It is larger," she gasped.

      Although the room was not the vague and vast apartment of her dream, it was twice its former size. The part in which her bed was placed was formally furnished as a sitting-room, with a sofa and chairs upholstered in amber plush, a round walnut table and an ornate chiffonier. Over the marble mantelpiece, instead of the conventional mirror, was a framed painting of a snowy landscape.

      The other portion of the room contained her familiar bedroom suite. The bed, however, had been turned around to face another direction, which accounted for her failure to find the electric-light switch.

      The woman laughed at her bewilderment.

      "All is easily explained," she said. "I manage here, so Madame Vanderpant asked me to look after your comfort. I let myself in by my service-key after you were asleep, and found you hot—so hot, as if you had a fever. The room was like an oven, so I opened the sliding-doors of the salon. As you see, they are covered with wallpaper. That makes them invisible. Voilà."

      She gave a demonstration as to how they worked, and then smiled persuasively.

      "You understand, Madame," she said eagerly, "how lucky this is for you. The hotel was so full when you applied for your reservation that we had to give you the bedroom belonging to this vacant suite. Now you have proved its convenience, if you would like to engage it we can give you a ten per cent. discount on the price. There is also a bath, where you can be perfectly private."

      Although Georgia considered that such an assurance should be unnecessary, she nodded in agreement.

      "Then I will turn on the water at once," said the woman quickly, before she could change her mind. "You can have your bath before the waiter brings up your café complèt."

      Georgia raised her voice above the splashing of water.

      "Was I asleep when you came in last night?" she asked.

      "You slept even while I was wheeling your bed round to meet the current of air from the garden. We can keep it so now."

      "Thank you. It was very kind of you."

      "Oh, no, Madame, I am paid for service. It was Madame Vanderpant who arranged everything."

      "But I only met her last night for the first time."

      "That signifies nothing. She is a wealthy lady of rank, and such are often charitable."

      "Does she come here often?"

      "Not as often as we would wish. Will Madame ring for her breakfast?"

      The woman went to the door, but in spite of the hint Georgia persisted in her questions.

      "What time is she leaving? I should like to thank her."

      "Unfortunately, you are too late. They are on the point of departure."

      "Yes, the Count told me they were all going early to bed. Did they?"

      Georgia spoke impulsively in a vague hope of reassurance. She realised her blunder in discussing the hotel clients when the woman's face became blank.

      "So?" she commented. "Madame's bath will soon be filled."

      As she closed the door, Georgia shot the bolt and went into the bathroom. It was a gloomy little cell, lighted from the passage by a small window of blue-and-amber panes, across which fell the shadows of people passing outside.

      The traffic along the corridor was so continuous that she had the feeling that she was actually bathing in public, in spite of the housekeeper's pledge of privacy. Doubtful of snapping on the light without a curtain to screen the glass, she scrubbed and splashed in semi-darkness.

      As she was pulling on her bathrobe again, she heard the ringing of the telephone-bell and hurried back to her bedroom. Eagerly snatching up the receiver, in the hope of speaking to the Count, she was disappointed by her agent's СКАЧАТЬ