He rose a little unsteadily from his chair, and seemed to drag his long limbs with an effort across the room to a cabinet at the farther end. Opening a drawer in this cabinet, he produced, from amidst some specimens of strata and fossils, a large-sized geological hammer.
He brandished it for a moment over his head, then paused with his finger on his lip.
“Hush!” he said, “we shall have the fools creeping in to peep at us if we don’t take care.” And to Loveday’s horror he suddenly made for the door, turned the key in the lock, withdrew it and put it into his pocket.
She looked at the clock; the hands pointed to half-past seven. Had Griffiths received her note at the proper time, and were the men now in the grounds? She could only pray that they were.
“The light is too strong for my eyes,” she said, and rising from her chair, she lifted the green-shaded lamp and placed it on a table that stood at the window.
“No, no, that won’t do,” said Mr. Craven; “that would show everyone outside what we’re doing in here.” He crossed to the window as he spoke and removed the lamp thence to the mantelpiece.
Loveday could only hope that in the few seconds it had remained in the window it had caught the eye of the outside watchers.
The old man beckoned to Loveday to come near and examine his deadly weapon. “Give it a good swing round,” he said, suiting the action to the word, “and down it comes with a splendid crash.” He brought the hammer round within an inch of Loveday’s forehead.
She started back.
“Ha, ha,” he laughed harshly and unnaturally, with the light of madness dancing in his eyes now; “did I frighten you? I wonder what sort of sound you would make if I were to give you a little tap just there.” Here he lightly touched her forehead with the hammer. “Elemental, of course, it would be, and—”
Loveday steadied her nerves with difficulty. Locked in with this lunatic, her only chance lay in gaining time for the detectives to reach the house and enter through the window.
“Wait a minute,” she said, striving to divert his attention; “you have not yet told me what sort of an elemental sound old Sandy made when he fell. If you’ll give me pen and ink, I’ll write down a full account of it all, and you can incorporate it afterwards in your treatise.”
For a moment a look of real pleasure flitted across the old man’s face, then it faded. “The brute fell back dead without a sound,” he answered; “it was all for nothing, that night’s work; yet not altogether for nothing. No, I don’t mind owning I would do it all over again to get the wild thrill of joy at my heart that I had when I looked down into that old man’s dead face and felt myself free at last! Free at last!” his voice rang out excitedly—once more he brought his hammer round with an ugly swing.
“For a moment I was a young man again; I leaped into his room—the moon was shining full in through the window—I thought of my old college days, and the fun we used to have at Pembroke—topsy turvey I turned everything—” He broke off abruptly, and drew a step nearer to Loveday. “The pity of it all was,” he said, suddenly dropping from his high, excited tone to a low, pathetic one, “that he fell without a sound of any sort.” Here he drew another step nearer. “I wonder—” he said, then broke off again, and came close to Loveday’s side. “It has only this moment occurred to me,” he said, now with his lips close to Loveday’s ear, “that a woman, in her death agony, would be much more likely to give utterance to an elemental sound than a man.”