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Page 71
Researches made at an earlier hour had familiarized him with the
geography of the place. He found his way to the green-baize door
without difficulty and, stepping through, was in the hall, where
the remains of the log fire still glowed a fitful red. This,
however, was the only illumination, and it was fortunate that he
did not require light to guide him to the museum.
He knew the direction and had measured the distance. It was
precisely seventeen steps from where he stood. Cautiously, and
with avoidance of noise, he began to make the seventeen steps.
He was beginning the eleventh when he bumped into somebody--
somebody soft--somebody whose hand, as it touched his, felt small
and feminine.
The fragment of a log fell on the ashes and the fire gave a dying
spurt. Darkness succeeded the sudden glow. The fire was out.
That little flame had been its last effort before expiring, but
it had been enough to enable him to recognize Joan Valentine.
"Good Lord!" he gasped.
His astonishment was short-lived. Next moment the only thing that
surprised him was the fact that he was not more surprised. There
was something about this girl that made the most bizarre
happenings seem right and natural. Ever since he had met her his
life had changed from an orderly succession of uninteresting days
to a strange carnival of the unexpected, and use was accustoming
him to it. Life had taken on the quality of a dream, in which
anything might happen and in which everything that did happen was
to be accepted with the calmness natural in dreams.
It was strange that she should be here in the pitch-dark hall in
the middle of the night; but--after all--no stranger than that he
should be. In this dream world in which he now moved it had to be
taken for granted that people did all sorts of odd things from
all sorts of odd motives.
"Hello!" he said.
"Don't be alarmed."
"No, no!"
"I think we are both here for the same reason."
"You don't mean to say--"
"Yes; I have come here to earn the five thousand dollars, too,
Mr. Marson. We are rivals."
In his present frame of mind it seemed so simple and intelligible
to Ashe that he wondered whether he was really hearing it the
first time. He had an odd feeling that he had known this all
along.
"You are here to get the scarab?"
"Exactly."
Ashe was dimly conscious of some objection to this, but at first
it eluded him. Then he pinned it down.
"But you aren't a young man of good appearance," he said.
"I don't know what you mean. But Aline Peters is an old friend of
mine. She told me her father would give a large reward to whoever
recovered the scarab; so I--"
"Look out!" whispered Ashe. "Run! There's somebody coming!"
There was a soft footfall on the stairs, a click, and above
Ashe's head a light flashed out. He looked round. He was alone,
and the green-baize door was swaying gently to and fro.
"Who's that? Who's there?" said a voice.
The Efficient Baxter was coming down the broad staircase.
A general suspicion of mankind and a definite and particular
suspicion of one individual made a bad opiate. For over an hour
sleep had avoided the Efficient Baxter with an unconquerable
coyness. He had tried all the known ways of wooing slumber, but
they had failed him, from the counting of sheep downward. The
events of the night had whipped his mind to a restless activity.
Try as he might to lose consciousness, the recollection of the
plot he had discovered surged up and kept him wakeful.
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