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Godfrey kicked the pieces to either side and slipped between them, Simmonds after him. Then, in a sort of trance, I staggered to it, and after a moment's aimless fumbling, was out in the hall again. I reached the stairhead in time to see Godfrey try the front door, and then turn along the lower hall leading to the back of the house.
See they get plenty lights on at the stairhead and in the passage and the room on the left of it ready." She was gone in another moment, and Evelyn hastily carried out her instructions and then waited with what patience she could assume. At last there was a rattle of wheels outside, followed by a voice giving orders, and then a tramp of feet.
On a level with the floor on every stairhead there was a low window which resembled a deep, square venthole, while in lanterns fastened to the walls flaring gas jets crudely illuminated the surrounding squalor and gave out a glowing heat which, as it mounted up the narrow stairwell, grew ever more intense.
Then with a yell, assured that in the narrow stairhead the enemy could not use their weapons, the two charged their pikes into the obscurity, and thrust and thrust, and thrust again, in the cruelty of rage and fear. What they struck, or where they struck, they could not see; but their ears told them that they did not strike in vain.
Hawksley smiled and laid a finger on his lips. "I wanted to know," he whispered. "There's another way down from this Matterhorn. Come with me. Off the living room is a storeroom. I found the key in the lock the other day and investigated. I still have the key. Now, then, there's a door that gives to the main loft. At the other end is the stairhead.
This time I could be in no doubt; some one was lifting the trap above the stairhead slowly, cautiously, and all but silently. Yet to my ears, attuned to trifling disturbances, the trap creaked and groaned noisily. Nayland Smith waved to me to take a stand on the other side of the opened door behind it, in fact, where I should be concealed from the view of any one descending the stair.
"I'll pervide ye with a lifeboat, bless yer heart!" And in the dim light of the saloon stairhead lamp, Luke and Agatha were left facing each other. "Why did you not let me know you were coming?" he asked sharply. He looked round with haggard eyes; they were quite alone. "I had no time. We just caught the boat by an hour." She was singularly quiet.
The door stood ajar, and facing it was another door, wide open, through which a ray of the evening sun slanted across the stairhead. Kirstie, with her bundle in one hand and the other upon the hasp, turned to look down upon the minister, to make sure she was entering the right chamber.
No sooner had she done this than she hastened to make the bed in her own chamber and all restablished it and set it in such order as if none had lain there that night; after which she dressed and tired herself, as if she had not yet gone to bed; then, lighting a lamp, she took her clothes and seated herself at the stairhead, where she proceeded to sew and await the issue of the affair.
Hasamurti would have spread a banquet there on the floor, but Yasmini led them up-stairs, holding Tess by the hand, turning to the right at the stairhead into a room all cream and golden, lighted by hanging lamps that shone through disks of colored glass.
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