Читать «И никого не стало» онлайн - страница 70

Lombard went out. The other four sat watching each other.

He came back with a box of candles and a pile of saucers. Five candles were lit and placed about the room.

The time was a quarter to six.

II

At twenty past six, Vera felt that to sit there longer was unbearable. She would go to her room and bathe her aching head and temples in cold water.

She got up and went towards the door. Then she remembered and came back and got a candle out of the box. She lighted it, let a little wax pour into a saucer and stuck the candle firmly to it. Then she went out of the room, shutting the door behind her and leaving the four men inside. She went up the stairs and along the passage to her room.

As she opened her door, she suddenly halted and stood stock still.

Her nostrils quivered.

The sea… The smell of the sea at St Tredennick.

That was it. She could not be mistaken. Of course, one smelt the sea on an island anyway, but this was different. It was the smell there had been on the beach that day—with the tide out and the rocks covered with seaweed drying in the sun.

‘Can I swim out to the island, Miss Claythorne?’

‘Why can’t I swim out to the island?…’

Horrid whiney spoilt little brat! If it weren’t for him, Hugo would be rich… able to marry the girl he loved…

Hugo…

Surely—surely—Hugo was beside her? No, waiting for her in the room…

She made a step forward. The draught from the window caught the flame of the candle. It flickered and went out…

In the dark she was suddenly afraid…

‘Don’t be a fool,’ Vera Claythorne urged herself. ‘It’s all right. The others are downstairs. All four of them. There’s no one in the room. There can’t be. You’re imagining things, my girl.’

But that smell—that smell of the beach at St Tredennick… That wasn’t imagined. It was true.

And there was someone in the room. She had heard something—surely she had heard something…

'And then, as she stood there, listening—a cold, clammy hand touched her throat—a wet hand, smelling of the sea…

Ill

Vera screamed. She screamed and screamed—screams of the utmost terror—wild desperate cries for help.

She did not hear the sounds from below, of a chair being overturned, of a door opening, of men’s feet running up the stairs. She was conscious only of supreme terror.

Then, restoring her sanity, lights flickered in the doorway— candles—men hurrying into the room.

‘What the devil?’ ‘What’s happened?’ ‘Good God, what is it?’

She shuddered, took a step forward, collapsed on the floor.

She was only half aware of someone bending over her, of someone forcing her head down between her knees.

Then at a sudden exclamation, a quick ‘My God, look at that!’ her senses returned. She opened her eyes and raised her head. She saw what it was the men with the candles were looking at.

A broad ribbon of wet seaweed was hanging down from the ceiling. It was that which in the darkness had swayed against her throat. It was that which she had taken for a clammy hand, a drowned hand come back from the dead to squeeze the life out of her!