Джон Пристли - Benighted

She turned away, dazed after looking at the light, and groped her way round the next corner, feeling wet and cold now and apprehensive. Where was Penderel? For a moment she was completely bewildered by the total darkness and splashed on helplessly, like someone lost and blind. But she heard a noise coming from the right somewhere. It sounded like a horse moving in its stable. She pressed on vaguely in the direction of the sound and seemed to approach a long black bulk. These must be the coach-house and sheds he had mentioned. Yes, there was a glimmer of light further away on the left. She hastened towards it, heedless of the pools through which she had to splash, and a moment later found herself blinking in the sudden full glare of the electric torch. She had found him.

"Is that you?" she called, halting.

"Hello!" came his voice, and she hurried forward. "I was just coming back," he went on. "Sorry to have been such a time, but first I couldn't find the car and then I couldn't find the flask. I looked all round the back seat, then at last remembered I had passed it to Waverton and he had put it down and forgotten it, and it was on the front seat. Sorry to have kept you waiting."

She was hardly listening. They were in a kind of shed, and she was at his side, leaning against him, breathless. She felt all weak now. "Half a minute," she gasped, and straightened herself.

He put a hand on her arm, and with the other hand sent the light of the torch circling round the shed. "Hello, what's wrong?"

She waited a few moments. It didn't seem much now. He would think she was being silly. "Nothing much really," she told him. "Only it seemed so funny. While I was standing at the door, waiting for you, all the lights in the house suddenly went out."

"That's nothing," he interrupted. "They've been jumpy all the time. I've been expecting that. This home-made electricity's always going wrong, and a night like this just asks for it."

"All right, Mr. Wise Man. I thought of that too. But there's some more. Just after the lights went out, the door was banged in my face. I was locked out."

"That's queer certainly," he admitted. "Perhaps the wind though . . ."

"No, it wasn"t. Then I knocked, but nobody came. I was fed up standing there, waiting for you, so I set off to find you, and on the way I saw that man Morgan in the kitchen, fighting drunk. Phew!" She blew out her breath. "I want to sit down."

"Of course you do," he cried. "You want a drink too. Well, then, inside or out?"

"What do you mean? If it's the drink, I want it inside."

He turned her round and flashed the light forward. There was the car, which had been backed into the long shed. "We can perch on the step or running-board or whatever they call it, or we can get inside and be snug and talk it all out over the whisky. Just a minute," he added, moving forward. "I'll switch on the lights to make it cosier. Only the dims though, because it's Waverton's electricity, not mine. There you are."

"We'll sit inside," she decided.

"Right you are. Front or back?" he enquired, bowing and waving a hand towards the two doors.

She laughed. He was turning it all into fun again. "Oh, the back!" she cried. He held open the door and she climbed in and settled herself happily on the cushions. He sat down by her side and began to unscrew the flask.

"So they've shut us out, eh?" He was pouring the whisky into the little cup. "Well, that's nothing new, is it? We're always being shut out."

"I'm not." She took the cup he offered.

He laughed. "Aren't you? I am. Drink up, and then begin at the beginning and tell me all about it. Wait, though, I'll have a drink first. I don't suppose there's anything in it, I mean the business of the lights and the door, of course, but there might be, there's just a chance. If there were, it would be something horrible. Well, I drink your health, Gladys." He drained the cup. "I hope you don't mind my calling you that, as between fellow adventurers, you know, shut out, lost in the dark, draining the last flask."

"No, I don't mind. I like it." She felt warm now, snuggling in the seat and with the tiny fire of whisky somewhere inside her; and she found herself leaning against him a little, discovering a certain comfort in the suggestion of his neighbouring solidity. "But what do you mean by your something horrible?" she went on to ask. "Are you trying to frighten me?"

He was more serious now, though not entirely so. "No, I'm not. I tell you I don't suppose there's anything in it. But, I repeat, if there were, it would be something horrible. What I mean is, that this house we've crept into out of the dark might be all right – that is, so far as we're concerned, just for to-night, we'll say – and probably will be, but it's very queer, and if it goes wrong, it'll go wrong very badly. I feel it in my bones. Once off the track and there'll be something hellish let loose. You see, I've been brooding over it a bit, and I know more about it than you do."

"You're making it up," she cried. "You don't know any more than I do. You're trying to work it all up into something very exciting, just to pass the time. I know you."

"Perhaps I am. But listen. To begin with, there's old Sir Roderick."

"Who's he?"

"Exactly, who's he? You've never heard of him. But he's in there. He's the master of the house really and was once tremendously important, but is now very old and infirm and is somewhere upstairs, invisible and ungetatable. When you come to think of it, he's rather like God."

She pinched his arm. "You mustn"t," she told him, and meant it. It wouldn't do to say such things a night like this. He was worse than she was, and she would have to hold him in. He didn't seem to resent the pinch and she let her hand stay where it was, loosely grasping his arm.

"Then there's woman Femm," he continued. "You've seen and heard her. She might break out anywhere. I'm not sure now she didn't frighten Margaret Waverton. There's Morgan. You've just seen him – - "

"I have," she broke in, with conviction, "and I hope to God they've locked him in."

"There's man Femm, those bones that have dodged the police. I wonder what he'd been doing, by the way. Now the queer thing about him is that he's terrified, absolutely jangling with fear of something or somebody in the house. I noticed it, and he said he was afraid of Morgan getting drunk – - "

"If that's what it was, I don't blame him." She was very emphatic.

"But it wasn"t, that's the point. I'm positive it wasn"t. It was something, somebody else. In the house too. Perhaps it's Sir Roderick, who may be a kind of old horror."

She tightened her grip on his arm. "That's enough of that. I want to be able to go back there."

"All right. But you ought to have been telling your tale. Now you begin, and when you've finished, we'll go back and see what's really happened." He sank a little lower in his seat and rested his head on the cushions. She began her story of the lights and the door, and as she spoke her head gradually slipped down until at last her cheek was resting against his sleeve. Throughout there was at the back of her mind the thought of that great closed door and the surrounding darkness and the rain that could still be faintly heard beating against the roof of the shed. But there was a little roof of their own, the car's hood just above their heads, between them and that other roof, and they seemed to be in a queer tiny room, smelling of leather and petrol, that lodged them warmly and securely in the very centre of the night, just the two of them, talking so easily together. She wanted to give herself a shivering little hug – just as she used to do when she was a kid and the curtain went up at the theatre – and she hadn't felt like that for a long time. It was queer how excited and happy she was inside, simply because the two of them were there talking about strange things and all the time talking their own strangeness away.