第99章

There was absolutely nothing he could knock over.He might have dropped a candle-stick if Therese had left him her own.That was possible, but then those thick mats - and then, anyway, why should he drop it? and, hang it all, why shouldn't he have gone straight on and tried the door? I had suddenly a sickening vision of the fellow crouching at the key-hole, listening, listening, listening, for some movement or sigh of the sleeper he was ready to tear away from the world, alive or dead.I had a conviction that he was still listening.Why? Goodness knows! He may have been only gloating over the assurance that the night was long and that he had all these hours to himself.

I was pretty certain that he could have heard nothing of our whispers, the room was too big for that and the door too solid.Ihadn't the same confidence in the efficiency of the lock.Still I...Guarding my lips with my hand I urged Dona Rita to go back to the sofa.She wouldn't answer me and when I got hold of her arm Idiscovered that she wouldn't move.She had taken root in that thick-pile Aubusson carpet; and she was so rigidly still all over that the brilliant stones in the shaft of the arrow of gold, with the six candles at the head of the sofa blazing full on them, emitted no sparkle.

I was extremely anxious that she shouldn't betray herself.Ireasoned, save the mark, as a psychologist.I had no doubt that the man knew of her being there; but he only knew it by hearsay.

And that was bad enough.I could not help feeling that if he obtained some evidence for his senses by any sort of noise, voice, or movement, his madness would gain strength enough to burst the lock.I was rather ridiculously worried about the locks.A horrid mistrust of the whole house possessed me.I saw it in the light of a deadly trap.I had no weapon, I couldn't say whether he had one or not.I wasn't afraid of a struggle as far as I, myself, was concerned, but I was afraid of it for Dona Rita.To be rolling at her feet, locked in a literally tooth-and-nail struggle with Ortega would have been odious.I wanted to spare her feelings, just as Iwould have been anxious to save from any contact with mud the feet of that goatherd of the mountains with a symbolic face.I looked at her face.For immobility it might have been a carving.Iwished I knew how to deal with that embodied mystery, to influence it, to manage it.Oh, how I longed for the gift of authority! In addition, since I had become completely sane, all my scruples against laying hold of her had returned.I felt shy and embarrassed.My eyes were fixed on the bronze handle of the fencing-room door as if it were something alive.I braced myself up against the moment when it would move.This was what was going to happen next.It would move very gently.My heart began to thump.But I was prepared to keep myself as still as death and Ihoped Dona Rita would have sense enough to do the same.I stole another glance at her face and at that moment I heard the word:

"Beloved!" form itself in the still air of the room, weak, distinct, piteous, like the last request of the dying.

With great presence of mind I whispered into Dona Rita's ear:

"Perfect silence!" and was overjoyed to discover that she had heard me, understood me; that she even had command over her rigid lips.

She answered me in a breath (our cheeks were nearly touching):

"Take me out of this house."

I glanced at all her clothing scattered about the room and hissed forcibly the warning "Perfect immobility"; noticing with relief that she didn't offer to move, though animation was returning to her and her lips had remained parted in an awful, unintended effect of a smile.And I don't know whether I was pleased when she, who was not to be touched, gripped my wrist suddenly.It had the air of being done on purpose because almost instantly another:

"Beloved!" louder, more agonized if possible, got into the room and, yes, went home to my heart.It was followed without any transition, preparation, or warning, by a positively bellowed:

"Speak, perjured beast!" which I felt pass in a thrill right through Dona Rita like an electric shock, leaving her as motionless as before.

Till he shook the door handle, which he did immediately afterwards, I wasn't certain through which door he had spoken.The two doors (in different walls) were rather near each other.It was as Iexpected.He was in the fencing-room, thoroughly aroused, his senses on the alert to catch the slightest sound.A situation not to be trifled with.Leaving the room was for us out of the question.It was quite possible for him to dash round into the hall before we could get clear of the front door.As to making a bolt of it upstairs there was the same objection; and to allow ourselves to be chased all over the empty house by this maniac would have been mere folly.There was no advantage in locking ourselves up anywhere upstairs where the original doors and locks were much lighter.No, true safety was in absolute stillness and silence, so that even his rage should be brought to doubt at last and die expended, or choke him before it died; I didn't care which.

For me to go out and meet him would have been stupid.Now I was certain that he was armed.I had remembered the wall in the fencing-room decorated with trophies of cold steel in all the civilized and savage forms; sheaves of assegais, in the guise of columns and grouped between them stars and suns of choppers, swords, knives; from Italy, from Damascus, from Abyssinia, from the ends of the world.Ortega had only to make his barbarous choice.

I suppose he had got up on the bench, and fumbling about amongst them must have brought one down, which, falling, had produced that rattling noise.But in any case to go to meet him would have been folly, because, after all, I might have been overpowered (even with bare hands) and then Dona Rita would have been left utterly defenceless.