She raised her eyes quickly.  “But you have a key?” she whispered.  “Haven’t you got a key?” It was obvious that, to both, the unexpected check to their designs was fraught with danger.

“Yes, but—­” He looked towards the door.  “Yes—­I have a key.  Yes, you’re right!” he added, quickly.  “I’ll use it.  Wait, while I go inside.”

Filled with a new nervousness, oppressed by the loneliness, the silence about her, Eve drew back obediently.  The sense of mystery conveyed by the closed door weighed upon her.  Her susceptibilities were tensely alert as she watched Loder search for his key and insert it in the lock.  With mingled dread and curiosity she saw the door yield, and gape open like a black gash in the dingy wall; and with a sudden sense of desertion she saw him pass through the aperture and heard him strike a match.

The wait that followed seemed extraordinarily long.  Listening intently, she heard him move softly from one room to the other.  And at last, to her acutely nervous susceptibilities, it seemed that he paused in absolute silence.  In the intensity of listening, she heard her own faint, irregular breathing, and the sound filled her with panic.  The quiet, the solitude, the vague, instinctive apprehension, became suddenly unendurable.  Then all at once the tension was relieved..  Loder reappeared.

He paused for a second in the shadowy door-way; then he turned unsteadily, drew the door to, and locked; it.

Eve stepped forward.  Her glimpse of him had been momentary —­and she had not heard his voice—­yet the consciousness of his bearing filled her with instinctive alarm.  Abruptly, and without reason, their hands turned cold, her heart began to beat violently.  “John—­” she said below her breath.

For answer, he moved towards her.  His face was bereft of color; there was a look of consternation in his eyes.  “Come!” he said.  “Come at once!  I must take you home.”  He spoke in a shaken, uneven voice.

Eve, looking up at him, caught his hand.  “Why?  Why?” she questioned.  Her tone was low and scared.

Without replying, he drew her imperatively towards the stairs.  “Go very softly,” he commanded.  “No one must see you here.”

In the first moment she obeyed him instinctively; then, reaching the head of the stairs, she stopped.  With one hand still clasping his, the other clinging nervously to the banister, she refused to descend.  “John,” she whispered, “I’m not a child.  What is it?  What has happened?  I must know.”

For a moment Loder looked at her uncertainly; then, reading the expression in her eyes, he yielded to her demand.

“He’s dead,” he said, in a very low voice.  “Chilcote is dead,”

XXXIV

To fully appreciate a great announcement we must have time at our disposal.  At the moment of Loder’s disclosure time was denied to Eve; for scarcely had the words left his lips before the thought that dominated him asserted its prior claim.  Blind to the incredulity in her eyes, he drew her swiftly forward, and—­half impelling, half supporting her—­forced her to descend the stairs.