Celia, in her mind, could see them sitting about the round table in the darkness, Mme. Dauvray between the two women, securely held by them.  And she herself could not utter a cry—­could not move a muscle to help her.

Wethermill crept back on noiseless feet to the window, closed the wooden doors, and slid the bolts into their sockets.  Yes, Helene Vauquier was in the plot.  The bolts and the hinges would not have worked so smoothly but for her.  Darkness again filled the recess instead of the grey twilight.  But in a moment a faint breath of wind played upon Celia’s forehead, and she knew that the man had parted the curtains and slipped into the room.  Celia let her head fall towards her shoulder.  She was sick and faint with terror.  Her lover was in this plot—­the lover in whom she had felt so much pride, for whose sake she had taken herself so bitterly to task.  He was the associate of Adele Rossignol, of Helene Vauquier.  He had used her, Celia, as an instrument for his crime.  All their hours together at the Villa des Fleurs—­here to-night was their culmination.  The blood buzzed in her ears and hammered in the veins of her temples.  In front of her eyes the darkness whirled, flecked with fire.  She would have fallen, but she could not fall.  Then, in the silence, a tambourine jangled.  There was to be a seance to-night, then, and the seance had begun.  In a dreadful suspense she heard Mme. Dauvray speak.

CHAPTER XIX

HELENE EXPLAINS

And what she heard made her blood run cold.

Mme Dauvray spoke in a hushed, awestruck voice.

“There is a presence in the room.”

It was horrible to Celia that the poor woman was speaking the jargon which she herself had taught to her.

“I will speak to it,” said Mme. Dauvray, and raising her voice a little, she asked:  “Who are you that come to us from the spirit-world?”

No answer came, but all the while Celia knew that Wethermill was stealing noiselessly across the floor towards that voice which spoke this professional patter with so simple a solemnity.

“Answer!” she said.  And the next moment she uttered a little shrill cry—­a cry of enthusiasm.  “Fingers touch my forehead—­now they touch my cheek—­now they touch my throat!”

And upon that the voice ceased.  But a dry, choking sound was heard, and a horrible scuffling and tapping of feet upon the polished floor, a sound most dreadful.  They were murdering her—­ murdering an old, kind woman silently and methodically in the darkness.  The girl strained and twisted against the pillar furiously, like an animal in a trap.  But the coils of rope held her; the scarf suffocated her.  The scuffling became a spasmodic sound, with intervals between, and then ceased altogether.  A voice spoke—­a man’s voice—­Wethermill’s.  But Celia would never have recognised it—­it had so shrill and fearful an intonation.