And now there were four of them. The girl, Lombard, Armstrong and himself.
Very soon another of them would go... But it wouldn't be William Henry Blore. He'd see to that all right.
(But the revolver... What about the revolver? That was the disturbing factor - the revolver!)
Blore sat on his bed, his brow furrowed, his little eyes creased and puckered while he pondered the problem of the revolver...
In the silence he could hear the clocks strike downstairs.
Midnight.
He relaxed a little now - even went so far as to lie down on his bed. But he did not undress.
He lay there, thinking. Going over the whole business from the beginning, methodically, painstakingly, as he had been wont to do in his police officer days. It was thoroughness that paid in the end.
The candle was burning down. Looking to see if the matches were within easy reach of his hand, he blew it out.
Strangely enough, he found the darkness disquieting. It was as though a thousand age-old fears awoke and struggled for supremacy in his brain. Faces floated in the air - the judge's face crowned with that mockery of grey wool - the cold dead face of Mrs. Rogers - the convulsed purple face of Anthony Marston...
Another face - pale, spectacled, with a small straw-coloured moustache...
A face he had seen sometime or other - but when? Not on the island. No, much longer ago than that.
Funny, that he couldn't put a name to it... Silly sort of face really - fellow looked a bit of a mug.
Of course!
It came to him with a real shock.
Landor!
Odd to think he'd completely forgotten what Landor looked like. Only yesterday he'd been trying to recall the fellow's face, and hadn't been able to.
And now here it was, every feature clear and distinct, as though he had seen it only yesterday...
Landor had had a wife - a thin slip of a woman with a worried face. There'd been a kid too, a girl about fourteen. For the first time, he wondered what had become of them...
(The revolver. What had become of the revolver? That was much more important...)
The more he thought about it the more puzzled he was... He didn't understand this revolver business...
Somebody in the house had got that revolver...
Downstairs a clock struck one.
Blore's thoughts were cut short. He sat up on the bed, suddenly alert. For he had heard a sound - a very faint sound - somewhere outside his bedroom door.
There was some one moving about in the darkened house.
The perspiration broke out on his forehead. Who was it, moving secretly and silently along the corridors? Some one who was up to no good, he'd bet that!
Noiselessly, in spite of his heavy build, he dropped off the bed and with two strides was standing by the door listening.
But the sound did not come again. Nevertheless Blore was convinced that he was not mistaken. He had heard a footfall just outside his door. The hair rose slightly on his scalp. He knew fear again...
Some one creeping about stealthily in the night...
He listened - but the sound was not repeated.
And now a new temptation assailed him. He wanted, desperately, to go out and investigate. If he could only see who it was prowling about in the darkness.
But to open his door would be the action of a fool. Very likely that was exactly what the other was waiting for. He might even have meant Blore to hear what he had heard, counting on him coming out to investigate.
Blore stood rigid - listening. He could hear sounds everywhere now, cracks, rustles, mysterious whispers - but his dogged realistic brain knew them for what they were - the creations of his own heated imagination.
And then suddenly he heard something that was not imagination. Footsteps, very soft, very cautious, but plainly audible to a man listening with all his ears as Blore was listening.
They came softly along the corridor (both Lombard's and Armstrong's rooms were farther from the stair-head than his). They passed his door without hesitating or faltering.
And as they did so, Blore made up his mind.
He meant to see who it was! The footsteps had definitely passed his door going to the stairs. Where was the man going?
When Blore acted, he acted quickly, surprisingly so for a man who looked so heavy and slow. He tiptoed back to the bed, slipped matches into his pocket, detached the plug of the electric lamp by his bed, and picked it up winding the flex round it. It was a chromium affair with a heavy ebonite base - a useful weapon.
He sprinted noiselessly across the room, removed the chair from under the door handle and with precaution unlocked and unbolted the door. He stepped out into the corridor. There was a faint sound in the hall below; Blore ran noiselessly in his stockinged feet to the head of the stairs.
At that moment he realized why it was he had heard all these sounds so clearly. The wind had died down completely and the sky must have cleared. There was faint moonlight coming in through the landing window and it illuminated the hall below.
Blore had an instantaneous glimpse of a figure just passing out through the front door.
In the act of running down the stairs in pursuit, he paused.
Once again, he had nearly made a fool of himself! This was a trap, perhaps, to lure him out of the house!
But what the other man didn't realize was that he had made a mistake, had delivered himself neatly into Blore's hands.
For, of the three tenanted rooms upstairs, one must now be empty. All that had to be done was to ascertain which!
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