Page:Sorrell and Son - Deeping - 1926.djvu/114

 corridor; he had noticed something, a movement of cold night air. He found the door half open.

He remembered closing it less than an hour ago.

The possibilities grew more serious. He asked himself whether the open door had any connexion with that creaking stair-tread?

He turned and walked back towards the lounge, opening the swing-door cautiously, and closing it with a carefully restraining hand. He remembered that there would be a considerable amount of spare cash in the office safe. But if a prowler had entered the hotel why had he gone upstairs? To pilfer in the bedrooms?

Obviously he ought to investigate, and perhaps rouse Mr. Roland. Mr. Roland slept on the ground floor in a room that opened from his sitting-room, and Sorrell was moving towards the broad passage leading past the public rooms when he heard something more decisive. Screams, a womanis screams, faint and far away,—and coming from above!

His first thought was that he was weaponless. He ran back into the lounge, grabbed a poker from the fireplace, and made a dash for the stairs. He had reached the first landing and was switching on the lights when he heard a whole choir of voices coming from above. There was a man's voice, and an hysterical voice that belonged to the screamer, and the voices of other women. Obviously, something dramatic was happening up there. A burglar perhaps, caught and cornered by three or four frightened but eager women?

Sorrell dashed up, switching on lights. The voices seemed to come from the staffs' quarters, and he turned up the flight of stairs leading to the outjutting wing. He fancied that he recognized the voices. Lights were on up above. And then he came suddenly upon the scene, staged for him above the tread of the top step.

He paused, astonished.

He saw one of the chambermaids in her nightdress, with hair streaming, and he guessed that it was she who had been screaming. Her mouth was still voluble, but none of the others were paying any attention to what she said. He saw Mrs. Marks fully dressed; Mr. Roland in his blue and orange dressing-gown. George Buck in shirt and trousers.