Page:Richard Marsh--The joss, a reversion.djvu/147

Rh catch, you suggested piling up the furniture to keep it close? What do you mean, then, by saying that you don’t believe? you know it wasn’t.”

“Yes; I do know.”

“Well, it’s fastened now.” I could hear her, in the darkness, trying the handle again. “Sure enough, it’s locked; and, from the feel, it’s bolted too. Emily, we’re locked in.”

She was silent. I was silent, too, turning things over in my mind. It seemed, when she spoke again, as if she had been doing the same.

“But—who can have done it? It appears that I was right, that there was someone in those Bluebeard’s chambers—perhaps in both, for all we know. If someone could come and lock this door without waking us up, we ran a good risk of having our throats cut, or worse.” She lit another match. Apparently my continued silence struck her as peculiar. “Why don’t you say something—what’s the matter? Don’t you understand that we’re locked in; prisoners, my dear? Or are you too stupefied with terror to be able to utter a word?”

She held the match in front of her face. It gleamed on something white.

“What’s that upon your bodice?”

“My bodice?” She put up her hand. “Whyit’s a piece of paperpinned to my bodice! Where on earth!” Once more the match went out. “This truly is delightful. Never before did I realise how much we owe to candles. The thing is pinned as if it had been meant never to be unpinned. Where can it have come from? It can’t have fallen from the skies. It’s plain that there are ghosts about. It’s not easy to do a little job like this in the dark, my dear; but I’ve managed. I’ve also managed to jab my finger in half-a-dozen places with the pin. Emily, come here; light a match and hold it while I examine this mysterious paper. I can’t do every-