He spun down the polished floor of the drawing-rooms and disappeared. Vance waited impatiently. Although the June sky outside was still full of daylight it was dark already in the hall with its sombre panelling and heavy oak stairs. Now and then he heard the croak of the Eaglewood motor and he wondered how much longer Miss Spear would deign to wait. Between the motor calls the silence was oppressive. What could young Spear have done with his cigarette case? Once Vance thought he heard the banging of a window in the distance. Could it be that he had forgotten to close the windows in the library? But he was sure he had not; and the sound took on the ghostly resonance of unexplained noises. Perhaps that silly Laura Lou was right to be scared—as dusk fell it became easier to believe that the Willows might be haunted. Vance started back across the echoing parquet to the library; but halfway he met Lorry returning.

"Couldn't find the damn thing," he grumbled. "Got the keys, eh?" Vance said he had, and they moved toward the door. On the threshold Lorry paused, and turned to him again with Halo's smile. "You haven't got ten dollars you don't know what to do with? Like a fool I let Lewis and Frenside keep me up half the night playing poker… . Well, that's white of you. Thanks. Settle next week. And don't mention it to Halo, will you? The old people are down on poker … and on everything else I want to do." Vance turned the key in the front door, and the two walked through the long grass to the gate.

Vance felt grown-up and important. It put him at his ease with Lorry's sister to have a secret between men to keep from her.

Part 3

Chapter 1

Vance turned over slowly, opened his eyes, pushed back his rumpled hair, and did not at first make out where he was.

He thought the bed was a double one, black walnut with carved ornaments and a pink mosquito net, on the wall facing him a large photograph of a fat man with a Knights of Pythias badge and a stiff collar, and a gramophone shrieking out the Volga Boat Song somewhere below.

Then the vision merged into the more familiar one of his neat little room at Euphoria, of college photographs and trophies on the walls, and the sound of early splashing in the white-tiled bathroom at the end of the passage. But this picture also failed to adapt itself to his clearing vision, and gradually he thought: "Why, I'm back at Paul's Landing," and the sloping ceiling, the flies banging against the pane, the glimpse, outside, of a patch of currant bushes backed by sultry blue woods, came to him with mingled reassurance and alarm. "What the hell—" he thought.