Free Rolling Stone by Patricia Wentworth

next to the long glass door. All the sounds he had caught corroborated this. But the person who was cutting out the pane had come from inside the house to do it. Why? There was an easy answer to that, and Peter had no difficulty in supplying it. Act II was going to stage a burglary, and a burglary had got to be an outside job. The stage manager was a careful soul. Nothing would be left to chance, and very little to Spike Reilly. Afterwards he was to wonder what would have happened if he had run in then and there and caught the shadow in flagrante delicto with his treacled paper, and his professionally smashed-in pane of glass. It wouldn’t have been very easy to explain away. At the time, it simply never occurred to him to do anything of the sort. All that was in his mind was to play his part right through. He wanted to do that—to meet his fellow actors, to get the hang of the plot.
    He stood where he was and waited.
    The thing took a little time. He heard a clock strike inside the house, two faint strokes, and again the tinkle of falling glass. The shadow moved from the window and went back by the way that it had come. The glass door shimmered vaguely and fell to. He heard the key turn in the lock.
    Ten minutes went by. They passed at an intolerable slow, dragging pace. He looked at his watch and found that they had really gone. It was ten minutes past two, and Spike Reilly was now officially here.
    He walked up the steps and made his way along the terrace to where he had seen the shadow at his work, and he had no sooner reached the spot than he knew that the curtain was sliding back. Someone looked at him. Not a face, nor eyes, but someone there—aware of him—watching. A voice soft and muttering said, not in a whisper but also without sound,
    â€œGive your name.”
    He said, “Spike Reilly,” and immediately something was pushed at him through the square which had been robbed of its glass. It was a long roll—a canvas roll tied up with string at either end. The ends were about three feet apart—that was how he thought of it, feeling for it in the dark. An awkward thing to carry, an awkward thing to be seen with.
    He said, “What am I to do with it?” and the faint mutter from inside said,
    â€œPut it in the boot of your car. You will receive instructions.”
    Peter thought, “If I was really Spike Reilly, I’m hanged if I’d keep the corpse in my car.” As it was, it might lead to a useful contact. He left that vague, and said,
    â€œAll right. Anything else?”
    The voice said, “No—hurry!”
    He went away down the steps and into his cover again, because he wanted time to think. It was the devil and all playing a part like this in the dark.
    He waited to see if anything more would happen, but there was not so much as a flicker of light from behind any of those curtained or uncurtained windows. After the first few minutes he knew that that was what he was waiting for. If a light went on anywhere, he could mark the window, and it would be a clue. Man or woman, whoever was awake in that house with a light burning, it was to him or to her that the finger of certainty would be pointing.
    But there was nothing to point at—not so much as the flicker of a match. The house slept under its eaves in the shadow of the cloud-bank, and every window was black, and blank, and secret.

CHAPTER XII
    The morning broke upon discovery. A housemaid shrieked and scurried. The butler arrived—a thin, intelligent man, as efficient as he looked. Whilst reporting in person to Mr. Cresswell, he sent Robert the footman to telephone to the police.
    Descent of James Cresswell in a dressing-gown. Descent of Emily. Highly regrettable language on James’s part. Ineffectual tears from Emily. Descent of guests—Joseph Applegarth, Fabian Roxley, Basil Ridgefield—a male chorus of horror and sympathy.
    Because the Turner had gone.
    The frame leaned against