Page:Belloc Lowndes--The chink in the armour.djvu/223

Rh Wachner would probably be glad to dine out, the more so that no proper meal seemed to have been prepared by that unpleasant day-servant. Why, the woman had not even laid the cloth for her employers' supper!

Sylvia looked instinctively round for paper and envelopes, but there was no writing-table, not even a pencil and paper, in the little drawing-room. How absurd and annoying!

But, stay—somewhere in the house there must be writing materials.

Treading softly, and yet hearing her footsteps echoing with unpleasant loudness through the empty house, Sylvia Bailey walked past the open door of the little kitchen, and so to the end of the passage.

Then something extraordinary happened.

While in the act of opening the door of Madame Wachner's bed-room, the young Englishwoman stopped and caught her breath. Again she had suddenly experienced that unpleasant, eerie sensation—the sensation that she was not alone. But this time the feeling was far more vivid than it had been in the dining-room.

So strong, so definite was Sylvia's perception of another presence, and this time of a human presence, in the still house, that she turned sharply round—

But all she saw was the empty passage, cut by a shaft of light thrown from the open door of the kitchen, stretching its short length down to the entrance hall.

Making a determined effort over what she could but suppose to be her nerves, she walked through into the Wachners' bed-room.

It was very bare and singularly poorly furnished, at