Free Dorothy Eden by Deadly Travellers Page A

large and white, floating behind it, seemed bloated and full of evil amusement.
    Kate couldn’t breathe. She struggled to her feet.
    “Sit down!” said Johnnie. “Lights in a minute.” But already she was making her way to the door. She tripped over a stool, and heard the grate of the table as Johnnie hurriedly pushed it back to follow her.
    “Kate, don’t panic!”
    “All is well, madame. The lights in one moment…”
    The twisting stairway, as black as a pit, was just ahead of her. Determinedly Kate groped towards it. Uncertainly she negotiated a step. Oh, for the stars, the clean night air.
    “Kate, you little idiot. Wait.”
    Another step… And then the light shone in her face, blinding her. She moved sharply backwards and lost her balance. The other voice calling “Kate!” seemed to come out of a dream…

SIX
    B UT IT WAS NOT a dream that she was in a taxi with Lucian. She opened her eyes slowly, because for some reason her head was aching intolerably, and saw his head silhouetted against the window.”
    “Lucian!” she said cautiously.
    He turned his head.
    “Hullo,” he said coolly.
    “You didn’t telephone.”
    “I couldn’t earlier, and then when I did you’d gone out.”
    Kate tried to sit upright. Pain stabbed her head.
    “How did you know where?”
    “The hotel porter told me. He heard the address you gave the taxi.”
    “Did you follow us?”
    “No.”
    There seemed no retort to that flat, unexplanatory answer. Kate let another street or two slide by before she said, without particular interest, “Where’s Johnnie? Why am I with you?”
    “Johnnie was decent enough to bow to my prior claim. Besides, he realized by then that you didn’t like that particular place.”
    “In the dark it seemed haunted. I had to get out. I just had to.” Her voice shook, as she remembered that claustrophobic horror, with the disembodied faces floating in the intermittent match-light.
    “Did I behave very stupidly?” she asked, with shame.
    “You gave your head a nasty bang on the stone steps. You seem to have a talent for getting into trouble.”
    “You frightened me, with that torch. It was you, wasn’t it?”
    “Coming to your rescue,” he said in his detached way.
    “But there wasn’t really anything happening, was there? You didn’t have to rescue me?”
    “From a case of claustrophobia, yes. Your friend Johnnie’s ideas for a gay evening didn’t work out so well, did they?”
    “Johnnie’s all right,” she said defensively. “It wasn’t like going out with a stranger. He works for Mrs. Dix, too. She told him to look after me. And I really was feeling a little morbid. I kept thinking about Francesca. I thought I saw her this afternoon.”
    “That’s absurd. Your aeroplane ticket has arrived, they told me at the desk. So catch that plane in the morning.”
    “I suppose so.”
    They had reached the hotel. Lucian paid the taxi-driver and helped her out. The soft night air swept about her face, reviving her. She wished vaguely that Lucian were not so cool and detached. He had been interested enough to find out where she had gone that evening, but only as a self-imposed duty. His manner remained aloof and rather chilling. If she were a trouble to him she wished he would go.
    “Good-night, Lucian. Thank you for bringing me home.”
    “Better now?”
    She nodded. “It was only fresh air I needed.”
    “And stop worrying about that child.”
    “I will when I know definitely where she is. I still keep thinking—”
    “She’s all right,” he said impatiently.
    “But you couldn’t know that, could you? You don’t even believe she exists.”
    He looked at her in the calculating way that was becoming a little repellent.
    “Lock your door tonight,” he added obscurely. “And catch that plane in the morning.”
    He was already going. She thought, for a dizzy moment, that all this had been imaginary.
    “Why must I lock my door?”
    “Foreign hotels! Here’s your