I picked up the broom and through the sheer force of horror smashed one of the little panes.
“Help!” I cried. “Fire!…Fire!”
There was no response to my plea—only silence out there.
I went to the door…that heavy studded door which had so pleased Roma. I hammered on it. I turned the handle and shook it. But the horrible fact remained. I was locked in a burning cottage. Locked in!
I ran back to the window and shouted. I came back to the door and shook the handle. I could scarcely see now for the smoke was so thick that it was suffocating me.
Then my heart leaped with joy for I heard a shout from below.
I shouted out: “Here. I’m up here.”
Then the smoke and the heat were too much for me…I felt the overpowering suffocation.
Suddenly it seemed I was not alone. Something was wrapped about my face. Urgent hands were pulling at me.
“Quick! Run! Run with me. I can’t carry you.”
It was Alice’s voice. Alice’s hands…and I was being dragged through such heat that it was almost unbearable.
I was lying in the cool air and I heard voices.
“You’re all right. You’re all right.”
Then I was being lifted into a carriage I presumed, for I vaguely heard the distant clop-clop of horses’ hoofs.
“If it hadn’t been for Alice, heaven knows what would have become of you,” said Mrs. Lincroft.
I was in bed; the doctor had seen me, given me a sedative and Mrs. Lincroft orders that I was to sleep.
Alice had seated herself by my bed, like my good angel, determined that having saved my life she would continue to protect it.
“All you have to do is rest,” went on her mother. “You’ve had a nasty shock.”
So I obeyed and lay there thinking of Godfrey’s note and of Roma walking out of the cottage and never coming back…and of my being lured there and locked in that I might die.
Godfrey! I thought, and saw his face and it was Napier’s face…and they were both standing over me, laughing at me. “Trust no one,” said a voice in my mind. “No one at all.”
Alice whispered, “It’s all right now, Mrs. Verlaine. It’s all over now. You’re safe in bed.”
Alice was the heroine of the hour. She even looked exalted. But it was not only that; her eyebrows were a little singed and her left hand slightly burned where she had beaten out the flames which had caught my dress.
“She showed admirable presence of mind,” said Mrs. Lincroft, her eyes full of tears. “I’m so proud of my little girl.”
Alice said: “I didn’t do anything that anyone else wouldn’t do. I was going over to the vicarage to get my history book which I’d left there. I wanted it to do my homework. What a blessing that I’d left it behind that morning. And I saw the cottage was on fire so I ran to look…and then I heard Mrs. Verlaine shouting…”
John Downs, one of the gardeners at Lovat Stacy, had been in the neighborhood too. He had heard Alice shout that there was a fire and he had run after her to the cottage, but he would have been too late to save me, although he helped when he saw Alice dragging me from the place.
“Just in time,” everyone was saying it.
“My word, that Mrs. Verlaine has had a lucky escape. As for young Alice Lincroft, I reckon she deserves a medal.”
I was suffering from shock and kept in my bed for several days although otherwise I was not hurt. I had come through the fire miraculously. Alice had saved my life.
She sat by my bed during those days as though guarding me. I would awake from my troubled dozes to see her serene face at my bedside. She glowed; she was clearly delighted with the part she had played in my rescue. Who would not have been?
But there were other matters to consider.
People came to see me, among them Napier and Godfrey. Napier’s eyes haunted me long after he left. He looked so fearful, and the memory was like a dose of healing medicine. Godfrey came too. Godfrey…He too was full of concern but I remembered when I saw him that it was due to his note that I had gone to that cottage.
He sat by my bed and I said to him: “Why did you send the note?”
“What note?” he asked.
“The note asking me to meet you at the cottage.”
He looked helplessly about him.
“It’s been a terrible shock to poor Mrs. Verlaine,” said Mrs. Lincroft. “The doctor says she should rest for some days. She gets…nightmares. Anyone would.”
Godfrey looked bewildered and when I pressed about the note he changed the subject.
In less than a week I was recovered although I still dreamed of the cottage and as I slipped into unconsciousness I would often imagine I was in that upper room…locked in…while below a monster lurked waiting to destroy me. Sometimes I called out in these dreams and would awake in a cold sweat of fear.
The doctor said it was natural. I had had a terrible shock but my nightmares would diminish. In the meantime I should try not to think about my ordeal in the cottage.
I had looked for the note and could not find it but I asked Godfrey again for an explanation.
“I wrote no such note,” he declared.
“But I saw it. It was the reason I went to the cottage.”
He shook his head.
I went on in exasperation: “It was addressed to me and it said as far as I remember: ‘Dear C. Will you come to the cottage at 6:30 tonight? I have something important to tell you. G.W.’”
“I should never have written such a note.”
“Then who did?”
He stared at me in horror. “Where is this note?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I may have left it in my room. I may have put it into my pocket. But I can’t find it now.”
“A pity,” he said. “But you know my writing.”
“It’s the first note you’ve ever written to me. But I’ve seen your writing of course, and it didn’t occur to me that you hadn’t written it.”
“Caroline, if someone forged my handwriting…”
“If?” I demanded. “Are you suggesting that there was no note?”
“No…no…of course not.” He was a little embarrassed. “But…if…I mean someone must have sent that note to get you to the cottage.”
“That inference is obvious.”
“What does it mean?”
“It could mean,” I said, “that I am marked down as the next victim.”
“Caroline!”
“Well, I should have been, but for Alice.”
He nodded. “But, my dear Caroline, it’s…it’s frightening!”
“I agree with you,” I said coolly, for I could not forgive him for merely hinting that I might have imagined that note. “Roma…Edith…and now myself. Where is the connection? Is it because the person responsible for these two disappearances knows that I am trying to find the reason for them?”
“But who knows that you are doing this?” he asked. “I am the only one who does. You don’t think that I…”
I laughed and was almost immediately sober. “But, Godfrey, someone is trying to kill me. What can I do?”
“You could go away from here.”
“Go away!” I visualized my lonely life, shut away from Lovat Stacy, not knowing what was going on in that house which had become the background of my new existence. I knew that whatever happened I did not want that.
“I shall not go away,” I said vehemently. “I’ll take special care and the next time I receive a note suggesting a meeting place I shall insist on confirming it in the presence of witnesses.”