The Yellow Streak | Page 8

and Dr. Komain now
hastened. They hurried across the hall, where the big lamp of dulled
glass threw a soft yellow light, and entered the corridor through the
heavy oak door which shut it off from the hall. The corridor was wrapt
in silence. Halfway down, where the small passage ran to the garden
door, the electric light was burning.
Horace Trevert ran down the corridor ahead of the doctor and was the
first to reach the library door. He knocked sharply, then turned the
handle. The door was locked.

"Hartley!" he cried and rapped again. "Ha-a-artley! Open the door! It's
me, Horace!"
Again he knocked and rattled the handle. Not a sound came from the
locked room. There was an instant's silence. Horace and the doctor
exchanged an interrogatory look.
From behind the closed door came the steady ticking of a clock. The
silence was so absolute that both men heard it.
Then the door at the end of the corridor was flung open and Bude
appeared. He was running at a quick ambling trot, his heavy tread
shaking the passage,
"Oh? sir," he cried, "whatever is it? What has happened?"
Horace spoke quickly, incisively.
"Something's happened to Mr. Parrish, Bude," he said. "The door's
locked and he doesn't answer. We'll have to break the door down."
Bude shook his head.
"It's solid oak, sir," he began.
Then he raised his hand.
"Pardon me, gentlemen," he said, as though an idea had struck him. "If
we were to go out by the garden door here, we might get in through the
window. We could break the glass if needs be!"
"That's it!" exclaimed Horace. "Come on, Doctor!"
He dashed down the corridor towards the little passage. The doctor laid
a hand on Bude's arm.
"One of us had better stay here," he said with a meaning glance at the
closed door.

The butler raised an affrighted face to his.
"Go with Sir Horace, Bude," said the doctor. "I'll stay!"
Outside in the gardens of Harkings it was a raw, damp evening,
pitch-black now, with little gusts of wind which shook the naked
bushes of the rosery. The garden door led by a couple of shallow steps
on to a gravel path which ran all along the back of the house. The path
extended right up to the wall of the house. On the other side it flanked
the rosery.
The glass door was banging to and fro in the night wind as Bude, his
coat-collar turned up, hurried out into the darkness. The library, which
formed the corner of the new wing, had two windows, the one
immediately above the gravel path looking out over the rosery, the
other round the corner of the house giving on the same path, beyond
which ran a high hedge of clipped box surrounding the so-called
Pleasure Ground, a plot of smooth grass with a sundial in the centre.
A glow of light came from the library window, and in its radiance Bude
saw silhouetted the tall, well-knit figure of young Trevert. As the butler
came up, the boy raised something in his hand and there was a crash of
broken glass.
The curtains were drawn, but with the breaking of the window they
began to flap about. With the iron grating he had picked up from the
drain below the window young Trevert smashed the rest of the glass
away, then thrust an arm through the empty window-frame, fumbling
for the window-catch.
"The catch is not fastened," he whispered, and with a resolute thrust he
pushed the window up. The curtains leapt up wildly, revealing a
glimpse of the pleasant, book-lined room. Both men from the darkness
without saw Parrish's desk littered with his papers and his habitual
chair beyond it, pushed back empty.
Trevert turned an instant, a hand on the window-sill.

"Bude," he said, "there's no one there!"
"Best look and see, sir," replied the butler, his coat-tails flapping in the
wind.
Trevert hoisted himself easily on to the window-sill, knelt there for an
instant, then thrust his legs over the sill and dropped into the room. As
he did so he stumbled, cried aloud.
Then the heavy grey curtains were flung back and the butler saw the
boy's face, rather white, at the open window.
"My God," he said slowly, "he's dead!"
A moment later Dr. Romain, waiting in the corridor, heard the key turn
in the lock of the library door. The door was flung open. Horace
Trevert stood there, silhouetted in a dull glow of light from the room.
He was pointing to the open window, beneath which Hartley Parrish
lay on his back motionless.
CHAPTER IV
BETWEEN THE DESK AND THE WINDOW
Hartley Parrish's library was a splendid room, square in shape, lofty
and well proportioned. It was lined