Page:Belloc Lowndes--The chink in the armour.djvu/315

305 his guest or to his wife. He took up the chair on which he had been sitting, and placed it out of the way near the door. Then he lifted the lighted lamp off the table and put it on the buffet.

As he did so, Sylvia, looking up, saw the shadow of his tall, lank figure thrown grotesquely, hugely, against the opposite wall of the room.

"Now take the cloth off the table," he said curtly. And his wife, gulping down the last drops of her coffee, got up and obeyed him.

Sylvia suddenly realised that they were getting ready for something—that they wanted the room cleared.

As with quick, deft fingers she folded up the cloth, Madame Wachner exclaimed, "As you are not taking any coffee, Sylvia, perhaps it is time for you now to get up and go away."

Sylvia Bailey looked across at the speaker, and reddened deeply. She felt very angry. Never in the course of her pleasant, easy, prosperous life had anyone ventured to dismiss her in this fashion from their house.

She rose, for the second time during the course of her short meal, to her feet

And then, in a flash, there occurred that which transformed her anger into agonised fear—fear and terror.

The back of her neck had been grazed by something sharp and cold, and as she gave a smothered cry she saw that her string of pearls had parted in two. The pearls were now falling quickly one by one, and rolling all over the floor.

Instinctively she bent down, but as she did so she heard the man behind her make a quick movement.