Page:Richard Marsh--The joss, a reversion.djvu/149

Rh In my anxiety to obey her, I gave it too sudden a jerk, the flame was extinguished.

“There! I suppose you’ll say that you burned that to an end. If you go on wasting them at this rate we shall be in a fix indeed. How do you know that those aren’t all the matches we have got?”

“There are some more upon the mantelpiece—I saw them.”

“You saw the boxes; you didn’t see the matches; they may be empty. For all you can tell rats may be as fond of matches as they are of candles. Now, do be careful; don’t let that go out. Nearer; the way you shiver and shake is trying, my love. I never knew there was so much flicker in a match before. What’s it say? Someone’s been writing with the point of a pin; you want a microscope to read it. Of course! Let it go out just as I was beginning to see. You are a treasure! This time do try to let us have a light on the subject as long as you can.”

She held the paper within an inch of the tip of her nose, and I held a match as close as I dared. She began to decipher the writing.

“‘Put the key to the front and the key to the back under the door, and you shall be released. Until you do you will be kept a prisoner. And the fate of the doomed shall be yours. You child of disobedience!’ This is pretty; very pretty, on my word. There’s a style about the get-up of the thing which suggests that the person who got it up wasn’t taught writing in England; but if it wasn’t written by a woman, I’m a Dutchman.”

“Then it was she.”

“She? What do you mean? That’s right! By all means let the light go out at the moment it’s most wanted. Perhaps you’ll tell me what you mean by ‘she’ in the dark.”

“Pollie, after you had gone to sleep I had a visitor.”