The Girl In The Cellar by Patricia Wentworth Page A

frightened me—dreadfully.’
    He considered that, holding her hand in a strong tight clasp, only half aware of what he was doing or of the fact that what would have hurt her at a time of full security was in her present state something which she would not be without. In the end he spoke.
    ‘You don’t remember him?’
    ‘No—not at all. I don’t believe I had ever seen him before.’
    ‘Then why should he speak to you like that?’
    ‘I don’t know. I really don’t.’
    He looked at her with the same frowning gaze. When she had seen it before it had set her wondering what she had said or done to anger him. Now in a strange sort of way she knew the frown for what it was, a deep concern for her, a deepening interest.
    He said abruptly, ‘Listen to me! I don’t like leaving you here, but I don’t see any way out of it—not at present. All the same I don’t like it very much, but you should be all right if you do just what I say. Now listen! You’re not to go out of sight of another person—old Clarke in the garden—one of the people in the house. You’re not to go out by yourself—do you hear?’
    ‘Yes, I hear, but—’
    ‘There isn’t any but. You do what you’re told, and you’ll be safe!’ He repeated the word, ‘Safe. That’s what you want to be, isn’t it? And at present I can’t protect you, because I don’t know enough. I’ve got to find out who you are, how you come into this business, how to make you safe. And you’ve got to help. You can do that in two ways. You can do just what I say—never be out of sight of someone you can call to for help. And if you remember anything—anything at all—ring me up and tell me what it is. I think your memory will come back. Don’t strain, don’t try to remember. That’s not the way. But if you do remember anything, ring me up at once. Here’s an address that will find me within an hour or two.’ He let go of her hand and wrote on a leaf torn from a scrubby notebook. ‘These people will know where I am and what I am doing. You can speak freely to them.’
    ‘To anyone who answers the telephone?’
    ‘Yes. And there’ll be someone there always. It’s this end you’ll have to look out for. Don’t talk to anyone here. Lilian’s all right, but she’s a fool. And Harriet—oh, they’re all right, but they haven’t as much sense as you could put on a threepenny bit. So you won’t tell them anything—nothing at all! Is that understood?’
    She said, ‘Yes.’ It was more than an agreement. It was a promise, and he took it as such.
    He said, ‘All right. Then we’ll be getting back. I haven’t too much time.’
    She didn’t say it aloud, but it came up in her with a kind of shaking strength.
    ‘Too much time—no, there isn’t too much time at all.’
    Afterwards she was to wish that she had said it to him.
    CHAPTER 17
    It seemed no time at all until he was gone. The day went by and the night came. She went up to bed early. There was a kind of hush upon her spirits. Looking back on it afterwards, it seemed strange to her. It was as if everything waited, she didn’t know for what. She only knew that there was nothing she could do about it—nothing except wait. Deep in her mind the question asked itself, ‘What am I waiting for?’ and every time that happened something moved quickly in those under places and shut it away.
    By the time that coffee had been drunk and the tray removed she was so tired that sleeping and waking seemed to be part of a pattern in which she moved uncertainly, with now one side of her awake and on the point of knowing what there was to be known about herself, about the dead girl, about the man who had threatened her; and now another side, not seen but dimly felt, pressing in, just not realized, but certain, sure, and inevitable. Except momentarily, there was no fear. She was able to talk.
    There was a long period during which Lilian talked interminably about Christmas cards—how they must be certain to