The Joss: a Reversion
Copyright© 2024 by Richard Marsh
Chapter 15: An Ultimatum.
What had happened I could not think, nor where I was. It was pitch dark. I had been roused from sound sleep, as it seemed, by someone falling over me, who was making vigorous efforts at my expense to regain a footing. I remonstrated.
“Who is it? what are you doing?”
“Emily!” returned a voice, in accents of unmistakable surprise.
It was Pollie. She was lying right across me, and, with sundry ejaculations, was using my body as a sort of lever to assist her in regaining her perpendicular. She was plainly as much astonished to find that it was me as I was to find it was her.
“You’ve been lying on the floor. Why have you been doing that?”
“Because I happen to have been lying on the floor that is no reason why you should tumble over me.”
“That’s good. How was I to see you in the middle of this brilliant illumination? I called out to you; as you did not answer I was beginning to be half afraid that the black bogies had swallowed you up. Have you been there all night?”
“I don’t know.” I wondered myself. “I suppose so.”
Raising myself to a sitting posture I found that I was stiff all over. I had not been accustomed to quite so hard a mattress. “Have you any idea what time it is?”
“I wish I had. So far as light is concerned all hours seem the same in here, but I’ll have that altered before another night comes on. I feel as if I had slept my sleep right out, so I expect that anyhow it’s morning.”
Her feelings were not mine. My eyelids were heavy. I felt generally dull and stupid, unrefreshed. She gave a little exclamation.
“I touched something with my foot. I believe it’s the matches. I thought I put them in my pocket; if so, they’ve dropped out since; they’re not there. Well found! It is!” She struck one. “Hallo, where’s the candle?”
I remembered that the one she had left alight had burned right out. But there had been others, three or four pieces of varying length. Every trace of them had vanished.
“Rats,” I suggested.
“That’s it; the little wretches have devoured them, wicks and tallow and all. When I got off the bed I heard them scurrying in all directions. Did we leave any ends downstairs?”
“I don’t think so. We brought up all there was to bring.”
“Then that’s real nice. For the present we shall have to live by matchlight.” As she spoke the one she held went out. “They don’t burn long; just long enough to scorch the tips of your fingers. Where’s the door?” She moved towards it by the glimmer of a flickering match. She tried the handle. “Why, it seems——” There was a pause. “It does seem——” The match went out, “Emily, it’s locked.”
“Locked!” I echoed the word.
“Yes, locked; I said locked, or—something. And it wasn’t anything last night.”
“No; I don’t believe it was.”
“You don’t believe! Don’t you remember that because there wasn’t a key, and the hasp wouldn’t catch, you suggested piling up the furniture to keep it close? What do you mean, then, by saying that you don’t believe? you know it wasn’t.”
“Yes; I do know.”
“Well, it’s fastened now.” I could hear her, in the darkness, trying the handle again. “Sure enough, it’s locked; and, from the feel, it’s bolted too. Emily, we’re locked in.”
She was silent. I was silent, too, turning things over in my mind. It seemed, when she spoke again, as if she had been doing the same.
“But—who can have done it? It appears that I was right, that there was someone in those Bluebeard’s chambers—perhaps in both, for all we know. If someone could come and lock this door without waking us up, we ran a good risk of having our throats cut, or worse.” She lit another match. Apparently my continued silence struck her as peculiar. “Why don’t you say something—what’s the matter? Don’t you understand that we’re locked in; prisoners, my dear? Or are you too stupefied with terror to be able to utter a word?”
She held the match in front of her face. It gleamed on something white.
“What’s that upon your bodice?”
“My bodice?” She put up her hand. “Why——it’s a piece of paper——pinned to my bodice! Where on earth——!” Once more the match went out. “This truly is delightful. Never before did I realise how much we owe to candles. The thing is pinned as if it had been meant never to be unpinned. Where can it have come from? It can’t have fallen from the skies. It’s plain that there are ghosts about. It’s not easy to do a little job like this in the dark, my dear; but I’ve managed. I’ve also managed to jab my finger in half-a-dozen places with the pin. Emily, come here; light a match and hold it while I examine this mysterious paper. I can’t do everything; and you don’t seem disposed to do anything at all.”
In endeavouring to do as she requested, I stumbled against her in the darkness.
“That’s right; knock me over; you’ve made me run the pin into my other finger. There, my love, are the matches; what you’re grabbing at is my back hair.”
Taking a match from the box which she thrust into my hand, I tried to light it at the wrong end; turning it round, a spark leaped into my eye. I dropped it, to rub my eye.
“Clever, aren’t you? Just the helpful sort of person one likes to be able to count upon when one is in a bit of a hole. Try again; if at first you don’t succeed, perhaps you will next time.”
I did. I held the flaming match as conveniently for her as possible; but, at best, it was not much of a light. Every few moments it went out; I had to light another. As I fumbled with them now and then, I was not always so expeditious, perhaps, as I should have been. Pollie grumbled all the while.
“Can’t you hold it steady? Who do you suppose can see if your hand keeps shaking?” It was not my hand which shook, it was the flame which flickered. “It’s queer paper; sort of cigarette paper, it seems to be; I never saw any like it—at least, so far as I can judge by the light of that match which you won’t hold steady. I wonder where it came from, and who it’s from. Emily, someone’s been playing pranks on us this night; I should like to know just what pranks they were. That’s right, let the match go out; can’t you keep it alight a little longer?”
“Thank you; it has burned my fingers as it is.”
I lit another.
“There is writing on it; I thought there was; I can see it now. Hold that match of yours closer.”
In my anxiety to obey her, I gave it too sudden a jerk, the flame was extinguished.
“There! I suppose you’ll say that you burned that to an end. If you go on wasting them at this rate we shall be in a fix indeed. How do you know that those aren’t all the matches we have got?”
“There are some more upon the mantelpiece—I saw them.”
“You saw the boxes; you didn’t see the matches; they may be empty. For all you can tell rats may be as fond of matches as they are of candles. Now, do be careful; don’t let that go out. Nearer; the way you shiver and shake is trying, my love. I never knew there was so much flicker in a match before. What’s it say? Someone’s been writing with the point of a pin; you want a microscope to read it. Of course! Let it go out just as I was beginning to see. You are a treasure! This time do try to let us have a light on the subject as long as you can.”
She held the paper within an inch of the tip of her nose, and I held a match as close as I dared. She began to decipher the writing.
“‘Put the key to the front and the key to the back under the door, and you shall be released. Until you do you will be kept a prisoner. And the fate of the doomed shall be yours. You child of disobedience!’ This is pretty; very pretty, on my word. There’s a style about the get-up of the thing which suggests that the person who got it up wasn’t taught writing in England; but if it wasn’t written by a woman, I’m a Dutchman.”
“Then it was she.”
“She? What do you mean? That’s right! By all means let the light go out at the moment it’s most wanted. Perhaps you’ll tell me what you mean by ‘she’ in the dark.”
“Pollie, after you had gone to sleep I had a visitor.”
To read the complete story you need to be logged in:
Log In or
Register for a Free account
(Why register?)
* Allows you 3 stories to read in 24 hours.