The Essential Edgar Wallace Collection. Edgar Wallace

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      Jean opened the door and stepped in, pulling up the saturated handkerchief until it covered nose and mouth. The place was deserted, and, without a moment's hesitation, she lifted the child, wrapped a blanket about it and crossed the lawn again. She went quietly up the stairs straight to Lydia's room. There was enough light from the dressing-room to see the bed, and unwrapping the blanket she pulled back the covers and laid him gently in the bed. The child was unconscious. The hideous marks of the disease had developed with remarkable rapidity and he made no sound.

      She sat down in a chair, waiting. Her almost inhuman calm was not ruffled by so much as a second's apprehension. She had provided for every contingency and was ready with a complete explanation, whatever happened.

      Half an hour passed, and then rising, she wrapped the child in the blanket and carried him back to the cottage. She heard the purr of the motor and footsteps as she flitted back through the trees.

      First she went to Lydia's room and straightened the bed, spraying the room with the faint perfume which she found on the dressing table; then she went back again into the garden, stripped off the dust coat, cap and handkerchief, rolling them into a bundle, which she thrust through the bars of an open window which she knew ventilated a cellar. Last of all she stripped her gloves and sent them after the bundle.

      She heard the voices of the nurse and attendant as they carried the child to the ambulance.

      "Poor little kid," she murmured, "I hope he gets better."

      And, strangely enough, she meant it.

      * * * * *

      It had been a thrilling evening for Lydia, and she returned to the house at Cap Martin very tired, but very happy. She was seeing a new world, a world the like of which had never been revealed to her, and though she could have slept, and her head did nod in the car, she roused herself to talk it all over again with the sympathetic Jean.

      Mrs. Cole-Mortimer retired early. Mr. Briggerland had gone up to bed the moment he returned, and Lydia would have been glad to have ended her conversation; since her head reeled with weariness, but Jean was very talkative, until----

      "My dear, if I don't go to bed I shall sleep on the table," smiled Lydia, rising and suppressing a yawn.

      "I'm so sorry," said the penitent Jean.

      She accompanied the girl upstairs, her arm about her waist, and left her at the door of her dressing-room.

      A maid had laid out her night things on a big settee (a little to Lydia's surprise) and she undressed quickly.

      She opened the door of her bedroom, her hand was on a switch, when she was conscious of a faint and not unpleasant odour. It was a clean, pungent smell. "Disinfectant," said her brain mechanically. She turned on the light, wondering where it came from. And then as she crossed the room she came in sight of her bed and stopped, for it was saturated with water--water that dropped from the hanging coverlet, and made little pools on the floor. From the head of the bed to the foot there was not one dry place. Whosoever had done the work was thorough. Blankets, sheets, pillows were soddened, and from the soaked mass came a faint acrid aroma which she recognised, even before she saw on the floor an empty bottle labelled "Peroxide of Hydrogen."

      She could only stand and stare. It was too late to arouse the household, and she remembered that there was a very comfortable settee in the dressing-room with a rug and a pillow, and she went back.

      A few minutes later she was fast asleep. Not so Miss Briggerland, who was sitting up in bed, a cigarette between her lips, a heavy volume on her knees, reading:

      "Such malignant cases are almost without exception rapidly fatal, sometimes so early that no sign of the characteristic symptoms appear at all," she read and, dropping the book on the floor, extinguished her cigarette on an alabaster tray, and settled herself to sleep. She was dozing when she remembered that she had forgotten to say her prayers.

      "Oh, damn!" said Jean, getting out reluctantly to kneel on the cold floor by the side of the bed.

      Chapter XIX

      Her maid woke Jean Briggerland at eight o'clock the next morning.

      "Oh, miss," she said, as she drew up the table for the chocolate, "have you heard about Mrs. Meredith?"

      Jean blinked open her eyes, slipped into her dressing jacket and sat up with a yawn.

      "Have I heard about Mrs. Meredith? Many times," she said.

      "But what somebody did last night, miss?"

      Jean was wide awake now.

      "What has happened to Mrs. Meredith?" she asked.

      "Why, miss, somebody played a practical joke on her. Her bed's sopping."

      "Sopping?" frowned the girl.

      "Yes, miss," the woman nodded. "They must have poured buckets of water over it, and used up all Mrs. Cole-Mortimer's peroxide, what she uses for keeping her hands nice."

      Jean swung out of her bed and sat looking down at her tiny white feet.

      "Where did Mrs. Meredith sleep? Why didn't she wake us up?"

      "She slept in the dressing-room, miss. I don't suppose the young lady liked making a fuss."

      "Who did it?"

      "I don't know who did it. It's a silly kind of practical joke, and I know none of the maids would have dared, not the French ones."

      Jean put her feet into her slippers, exchanged her jacket for a gown, and went on a tour of inspection.

      Lydia was dressing in her room, and the sound of her fresh, young voice, as she carolled out of sheer love of life, came to the girl before she turned into the room.

      One glance at the bed was sufficient. It was still wet, and the empty peroxide bottle told its own story.

      Jean glanced at it thoughtfully as she crossed into the dressing-room.

      "Whatever happened last night, Lydia?"

      Lydia turned at the voice.

      "Oh, the bed you mean," she made a little face. "Heaven knows. It occurred to me this morning that some person, out of mistaken kindness, had started to disinfect the room--it was only this morning that I recalled the little boy who was ill--and had overdone it."

      "They've certainly overdone it," said Jean grimly. "I wonder what poor Mrs. Cole-Mortimer will say. You haven't the slightest idea----"

      "Not the slightest idea," said Lydia, answering the unspoken question.

      "I'll see Mrs. Cole-Mortimer and get her to change your bed--there's another room you could have," suggested Jean.

      She went back to her own apartment, bathed and dressed leisurely.

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