Page:Sorrell and Son - Deeping - 1926.djvu/113

 of the big leather armchairs in the lounge, and had lit a pipe. A pile of illustrated papers lay on the copper-topped smoking table beside his chair, and he had been looking through them idly and with the inattention of a man who was weary. He wanted to go to sleep. The very silence and gloom of the big lounge invited him sleep. A clock ticked somewhere, and its ticking was the only sound to be heard as the minutes slipped away. The window of the office was closed, though the visitors' book lay open on the ledge.

Everybody was asleep, and Sorrell lay relaxed, thinking of all those comfortable sleepers up above, and of how good a thing bed was, and of how long it might be before he would be able to lock the door and go across the yard to his room in what had been a part of the old stables. Buck had a room over there, next to Ponds the garage attendant. The female members of the staff slept on the top floor in a little wing that jutted out from the main building.

Sorrell contemplated the image of George Buck. The fellow would be snoring; he could snore most aggressively, so much so that Ponds had spoken facetiously of fitting a silencer to the big man's proboscis. But Sorrell's thoughts revolted from the contemplation of the persecutor. Surely he had enough of Buck during the daytime without sitting there and brooding over him at night?

He closed his eyes; his head sank forward; he fell into a doze, but it was only for a minute. Something startled him into wakefulness; he sat up, listening; he fancied that he could hear a shuffling sound upon the stairs, but the sound was so indefinite that he could not be sure that he was not imagining it. He listened, head cocked. Then, something more definite reached him, the creaking sound made by a stair-tread under a cautious foot.

Sorrell got up. There were half a dozen possible explanations of the sound, legitimate explanations. He walked to the main door and tried the handle to make sure that it was locked. There was another door opening from the yard into the corridor leading to the kitchen and the service quarters, and Sorrell walked down the corridor. Both he and Buck had keys for this side-door, so that they could come in and out at any hour without calling on any of the rest of the staff. Sorrell paused half-way down the