The Yellow Streak | Page 7

centre of the
lounge in the ruddy glow of the fire. Her face was deathly pale and she
was shuddering violently. She held her little cambric handkerchief
crushed up into a ball to her lips. Her eyes were fixed, almost glazed,
like one who walks in a trance.
She stood like that for an instant surveying the group--Lady Margaret, a
silver tea-pot in one hand, looking at her with uplifted brows. Horace,
who in his amazement had taken a step forward, and the doctor at his
side scrutinizing her beneath his shaggy eyebrows.
"My dear Mary "--it was Lady Margaret's smooth and pleasant voice
which broke the silence--"whatever is the matter? Have you seen a
ghost!"
The girl swayed a little and opened her lips as if to speak. A log,
crashing from the fire into the grate, fell upon the silence of the
darkening room. It seemed to break the spell.
"Hartley!"
The name came hoarsely from the girl. Everybody, except Lady
Margaret, sprang to his feet It was the doctor who spoke first.
"Miss Mary," he said, "you seem frightened, what ..."
His voice was very soothing.
Mary Trevert made a vague gesture towards the shadows about the
staircase.
"There ... in the library ... he's got the door locked ... there was a
shot ..."
Then she suddenly screamed aloud.

In a stride both the doctor and her brother were by her side. But she
motioned them away.
"I'm frightened about Hartley," she said in a low voice, "please go at
once and see what ... that shot ... and he doesn't answer!"
"Come on, Doctor!"
Horace Trevert was halfway to the big screen separating the lounge
from the outer hall. As he passed the bell, he pressed it.
"Send Bude to us, Mother, when he comes, please!" he called as he and
the doctor hurried away.
Lady Margaret had risen and stood, one arm about her daughter, on the
Persian rug spread out before the cheerful fire. So the women stood in
the firelight in Hartley Parrish's house, surrounded by all the treasures
which his wealth had bought, and listened to the footsteps clattering
away through the silence.
CHAPTER III
A DISCOVERY
Harkings was not a large house. Some three hundred years ago it had
been a farm, but in the intervening years successive owners had so
altered it by pulling down and building on, that, when it passed into the
possession of Hartley Parrish, little else than the open fireplace in the
lounge remained to tell of the original farm. It was a queer, rambling
house of only two stories whose elongated shape was accentuated by
the additional wing which Hartley Parrish had built on.
For the decoration of his country-house, Parrish had placed himself
unreservedly in the hands of the firm entrusted with the work. Their
architect was given carte blanche to produce a house of character out
of the rather dingy, out-of-date country villa which Harkings was when
Hartley Parrish, attracted by the view from the gardens, first discovered
it.

The architect had gone to his work with a zest. He had ripped up walls
and ceilings and torn down irrational matchwood partitions,
discovering some fine old oak wainscot and the blackened roof-beams
of the original farmstead. In the upshot he transformed Harkings into a
very fair semblance of a late Jacobean house, fitted with every modern
convenience and extremely comfortable. Furnished throughout with
genuine "period" furniture, with fine dark oak panelling and parquet
floors, it was altogether picturesque. Neither within nor without, it is
true, would a connoisseur have been able to give it a date.
But that did not worry Hartley Parrish. He loved a bargain and he had
bought the house cheap. It was situated in beautiful country and was
within easy reach by car of his town-house in St. James's Square where
he lived for the greater part of the week. Last but not least Harkings
was the casket enshrining a treasure, the realization of a lifelong wish.
This was the library, Parrish's own room, designed by himself and
furnished to his own individual taste.
It stood apart from the rest of the house at the end of the wing which
Parrish had constructed. The wing consisted of a single ground floor
and contained the drawing-room--which was scarcely ever used, as
both Parrish and his guests preferred the more congenial surroundings
of the lounge--and the library. A long corridor panelled in oak led off
the hall to the new wing. On to this corridor both the drawing-room and
the library gave. Halfway down the corridor a small passage ran off. It
separated the drawing-room from the library and ended in a door
leading into the gardens at the back of the house.
It was to the new wing that Horace Trevert