“I thought that your favourite paper was the Daily Flashlight?” Stella observed.

“That’s quite true, Stella.  It was,” Sir Chichester explained naively.  “But I have noticed lately a regrettable tendency to indifference on the part of the Flashlight.  The management is usually too occupied to converse with me when I ring it up.  On the other hand, I am new to the Harpoon.  Hallo!  Hallo!  This is Sir Christopher Splay speaking,” and he delivered his message.  “Thank you very much,” said Sir Chichester as he hung up the receiver.  “Really most courteous people.  Yes, most courteous.  What is their number, Stella?  I must remember it.”

Stella read it out again.

“Gerrard, one, six, two, double three,” and thus she, too, committed the number to memory.

CHAPTER XXIII

PLANS FOR THE EVENING

The library at Rackham Park was a small, oblong room, with a big window upon the garden.  It opened into the hall on the one side and into the dining-room on the other, and in one corner the telephone was installed.  At half-past eight on the night of the dance at Harrel, this room was empty and in darkness.  But a second afterwards the door from the hall was opened, and Joan stood in the doorway, the light shimmering upon her satin cloak and the silver embroidery of her frock.  She cast an anxious look behind her and up the staircase.  It seemed as if some movement at the angle made by the stairs and the gallery caught her eye, for she stepped back for a clearer view, and listened with a peculiar intentness.  She saw nothing, however, and heard nothing.  She entered the library swiftly and closed the door behind her, so that the room fell once more upon darkness save for a thread of gold at the bottom of the other door behind which the men of the party were still sitting over their wine.  She crossed the room towards the window, stepping cautiously to avoid the furniture.  She was quite invisible.  But for a tiny rustle of the lace flounces on her dress one would have sworn the room was empty.  But when she was half-way across a sudden burst of laughter from the dining-room brought her to a stop with her hand upon her heart and a little sob not altogether stifled in her throat.  It meant so much to her that the desperate adventure of this night should be carried through!  If all went well, as it must—­oh, as it surely must!—­by midnight she would be free of her terrors and distress.

The laughter in the dining room died down.  Joan stole forward again.  She drew away the heavy curtains from the long window, and the moonlight, clear and bright like silver, poured into the room and clothed her in its soft radiance.  She drew back the bolts at the top and bottom of the glass door and turned the key in the lock.  She touched the glass and the door swung open upon the garden, easily, noiselessly.  She drew it close again and leaving it so, raised her hands to the curtains at the side.  As she began carefully to draw them together, so that the rings should not rattle on the pole, the door from the hall was softly and quickly opened, and the switch of the electric lights by the side of the door pressed down.  The room leapt into light.