The Fire Within Read Online Free PDF Page B

from the hall, holding it
very steadily. Then she sat down at the great littered desk and rang up
the exchange. She gave the number and they waited. After what seemed
like a very long time, Elizabeth heard David's voice.
    “Hullo!”
    “It is I—Elizabeth,” said Elizabeth Chantrey.
    “What is it?”
    “Can you come here at once? I want to see you at once. Yes, it is
very important—important and urgent.”
    Mary was in an agony of impatience. “What does he say? Will he come
at once?”
    But Elizabeth answered David and not her sister.
    “No, presently won't do. It must be at once. It 's really urgent,
David, or I would n't ask it. Yes, thank you so much. In my room.”
    She put down the receiver, rang off, and turned to Mary.
    “He is coming. Had you not better send Edward a message, or he will
be coming back here? Ring up, and say that you are staying with me for
an hour, and that Markham will walk home with you.”
    In Elizabeth's little brown room the silence weighed and the time
lagged. Mary walked up and down, moving
perpetually—restlessly—uselessly. There was a small Dutch mirror
above the writing-table. Its cut glass border caught the light, and
reflected it in diamond points and rainbow flashes. It was the
brightest thing in the room. Mary stood for a moment and looked at her
own face. She began to arrange her hair with nervous, trembling
fingers. She rubbed her cheeks, and straightened the lace at her
throat. Then she fell to pacing up and down again.
    “The room 's so hot,” she said suddenly. And she went quickly to the
window and flung it open. The air came in, cold and mournfully damp.
Mary drew half a dozen long breaths. Then she shivered, her teeth
chattered. She shut the window with a jerk, and as she did so David
Blake came into the room. It was Elizabeth he saw, and it was to
Elizabeth that he spoke.
    “Is anything the matter? Anything fresh?” Elizabeth moved aside, and
all at once he saw Mary Mottisfont.
    “Mary wants to speak to you,” said Elizabeth. She made a step
towards the door, but Mary called her sharply. “No, Liz—stay!”
    And Elizabeth drew back into the shadowed corner by the window,
whilst Mary came forward into the light. For a moment there was
silence. Mary's hands were clasped before her, her chin was a little
lifted, her eyes were desperately intent.
    “David,” she said in a low fluttering voice, “Oh, David—I was in
here—I heard—I could not help hearing.”
    “What did you hear?” asked David Blake. The words came from him with
a sort of startled hardness.
    “I heard everything you said to Edward—about Mr. Mottisfont. You
said it was poison. I heard you say it.”
    “Yes,” said David Blake.
    “And Edward took him the tea,” said Mary quickly. “Don't you see,
David—don't you see how dreadful it is for Edward? People who did n't
know him might say—they might think such dreadful things—and if there
were an inquest—” the words came in a sort of strangled whisper.
“There can't be an inquest—there can't. Oh, David, you 'll sign
the certificate, won't you?”
    David's face had been changing while she spoke. The first hard
startled look went from it. It was succeeded by a flash of something
like horror, and then by pain—pain and a great pity.
    “No, Mary, dear, I can't,” he said very gently. He looked at her,
and further words died upon his lips. Mary came nearer. There was a big
chair in front of the fireplace, and she rested one hand on the back of
it. It seemed as if she needed something firm to touch, her world was
shifting so. David had remained standing by the door, but Mary was not
a yard away from him now.
    “You see, David,” she said, still in that low tremulous voice, “you
see, David, you have n't thought—you can't have thought—what it will
mean if you don't. Edward might be suspected of a most dreadful thing.
I 'm sure you have n't thought of that. He might