"What had Andor done?"
She waited for a moment with her ear glued to the front door until the last echo of the men's footsteps had completely died away in the distance, then she ran to the table. The tray was there, but no key upon it. With feverish, jerky movements she began to hunt for it, pushing aside bottles and mugs, opening drawers, searching wildly with dilated eyes all round the room.
The key was here, somewhere . . . surely, surely Andor had not played her false . . . he would not play her false . . . He was not that sort . . . surely, surely he was not that sort. He had come back from his errand—of course she had seen him just now, and . . . and he had said nothing certainly, but . . .
Well! He can't have gone far; and her father wouldn't hear if she called. She ran back to the door and fumbled at the latch, for her hands trembled so that she bruised them against the iron. There! At last it was done! She opened the door and peered out into the night. Everything was still, not a footstep echoed from down the street. She took one step out, on to the verandah . . . then she heard a rustle from behind the pollarded acacia tree and a rustle amongst its leaves. Someone was there!—on the watch!—Leopold!
She smothered a scream of terror and in a moment had fled back into the room and slammed and bolted the door behind her. Now she stood with her back against it, arms outstretched, fingers twitching convulsively against the wood. She was shivering as with cold, though the heat in the room was close and heavy with fumes of wine and tobacco: her teeth were chattering, a cold perspiration had damped the roots of her hair.
She had wanted to call Andor back, just to ask him definitely if he had been successful in his errand and what he had done with the key. Perhaps he meant to tell her; perhaps he had merely forgotten to put the key on the tray, and still had it in his waistcoat pocket; she had been a fool not to come out and speak to him when she heard his voice in the tap-room awhile ago. She had wanted to, but her father monopolized her about his things for the journey. He had been exceptionally querulous to-night and was always ready to be suspicious; also Béla had been in the tap-room with Andor, and she wouldn't have liked to speak of the key before Béla. What she had been absolutely sure of, however, until now was that Andor would not have come back and then gone away like this, if he had not succeeded in his errand and got her the key from Count Feri.
But the key was not there: there was no getting away from that, and she had wanted to call Andor back and to ask him about it—and had found Leopold Hirsch standing out there in the dark . . . watching.
She had not seen him—but she had felt his presence—and she was quite sure that she had heard the hissing sound of his indrawn breath and the movement which he had made to spring on her—and strangle her, as he had threatened to do—if she went out by the front door.
Mechanically she passed her hand across her throat. Terror—appalling, deadly terror of her life—had her in its grasp. She tottered across the room and sank into a chair. She wanted time to think.
What had Andor done? What a fool she had been not to ask him the straight question while she had the chance. She had been afraid of little things—her father's temper, Erös Béla's sneers—when now there was death and murder to fear.
What had Andor done?
Had he played her false? Played this dirty trick on her out of revenge? He certainly—now she came to think of it—had avoided meeting her glance when he went away just now.
Had he played her false?
The more she thought on it, the more the idea got root-hold in her brain. In order to be revenged for the humiliation which she had helped to put upon Elsa, Andor had chosen this means for bringing her to everlasting shame and sorrow—the young Count murdered outside her door, in the act of sneaking into the house by a back way, at dead of night, while Ignácz Goldstein was from home; Leopold Hirsch—her tokened fiancé—a murderer, condemned to hang for a brutal crime; she disgraced for ever, cursed if not killed by her father, who did not trifle in the matter of his daughter's good name. . . . All that was Andor's projected revenge for what she had done to Elsa.
The thought of it was too horrible. It beat into her brain until she felt that her head must burst as under the blows of a sledge-hammer or else that she must go mad.
She pushed back the matted hair from her temples, and looked round the tiny, dark, lonely room in abject terror. From far away came the shrill whistle of the engine which bore her father away to Kecskemét. It must be nearly half-past nine, then, and close on half an hour since she had been left here alone with her terrors. Yet another half-hour and . . .
No, no! This she felt that she could not endure—not another half-hour of this awful, death-dealing suspense. Anything would be better than that—death at Leopold's hands—a quick gasp, a final agony—yes! That would be briefer and better—and perhaps Leo's heart would misgive him—perhaps . . . but in any case, anything must be better than this suspense.
She struggled to her feet; her knees shook under her: for the moment she could not have moved if her very life had depended on it. So she stood still, propped against the table, her hands clutching convulsively at its edge for support, and her eyes dilated and staring, still searching round the room wildly for the key.
At last she felt that she could walk; she tottered back across the room, back to the door, and her twitching fingers were once more fumbling with the bolts.
The house was so still and the air was so oppressive. When she paused in her fumbling—since her fingers refused her service—she could almost hear that movement again behind the acacia tree outside, and that rustling among the leaves.
She gave a wild gasp of terror and ran back to the chair—like a frightened feline creature, swift and silent—and sank into it, still gasping, her whole body shaken now as with fever, her teeth chattering, her limbs numb.
Death had been so near! She had felt an icy breath across her throat! She was frightened—hideously, abjectly, miserably frightened. Death lurked for her, there outside in the dark, from behind the acacia tree! Death in the guise of a jealous madman, whose hate had been whetted by an hour's lonely watch in the dark—lonely, but for his thoughts.
Tears of self-pity as well as of fear rose to the unfortunate girl's eyes; convulsive sobs shook her shoulders and tore at her heart till she felt that she must choke. She threw out her arms across the table and buried her face in them and lay there, sobbing and moaning in her terror and in her misery.
How long she remained thus, crying and half inert with mental anguish and pain, she could not afterwards have told. Nor did she know what it was that roused her from this torpor, and caused her suddenly to sit up in her chair, upright, wide-awake, her every sense on the alert.
Surely she could not have heard the fall of footsteps at the back of the house! There was the whole width of the inner room and two closed doors between her and the yard at the back, and the ground there was soft and muddy; no footstep, however firm, could raise echoes there.
And yet she had heard! Of that she felt quite sure, heard with that sixth sense of which she, in her ignorance, knew nothing, but which, nevertheless, now had roused her from that coma-like state into which terror had thrown her, and set every one of her nerves tingling once more and pulsating with life and the power to feel.
For the moment all her faculties seemed merged into that of hearing. With that same sixth sense she heard the stealthy footsteps coming nearer and nearer. They had not approached from the village, but from the fields at the back, and along the little path which led through the unfenced yard straight to the back door.
These footsteps—which seemed like the footsteps of ghosts, so intangible were they—were now so near that to Klara's supersensitive mind they appeared to be less than ten paces from the back door.
Then she heard another footstep—she heard it quite distinctly, even though walls and doors were between her and them—she heard the movement from behind the acacia tree—the one that stands at the corner of the house, in full view of both the doors—she heard the rustle among its low-hanging branches and that hissing sound as of an indrawn breath.
She shot up from her chair like an automaton—rigid and upright, her mouth opened as for a wild shriek, but all power of sound was choked in her throat. She ran into the inner room like one possessed, her mouth still wide open for the frantic shriek which would not come, for that agonizing call for help.
She fell up against the back door. Her hands tore at the lock, at the woodwork, at the plaster around; she bruised her hands and cut her fingers to the bone, but still that call would not come to her throat—not even now, when she heard on the other side of the door, less than five paces from where she lay, frantic with horror, a groan, a smothered cry, a thud—then swiftly hurrying footsteps flying away in the night.
Then nothing more, for she was lying now in a huddled mass, half unconscious on the floor.