Chapter 38

It was one of the raids which left hellish things behind it--things
hushed with desperate combined effort to restrain panic, but which
blighted the air people strove to breathe and kept men and women
shuddering for long after and made people waken with sharp cries from
nightmares of horror. Certain paled faces belonged to those who had seen
things and would never forget them. Others strove to look defiant and
cheerful and did not find it easy. Some tried to get past policemen to
certain parts of the city and some, getting past, returned livid and
less adventurous in spirit because they had heard things it was gruesome
to hear. Lord Coombe went the next morning to the slice of a house and
found the servants rather hysterical. Feather had not returned, but they
were not hysterical for that reason. She had probably remained at the
house to which she had gone to see the Zepps. After the excitement was
over, people like the Sinclairs were rather inclined to restore
themselves by making a night of it, so to speak.

As "to-morrow" had now arrived, Lord Coombe wished to see her on her
return. He had in fact lain awake thinking of plans of defence but had
so far been able to decide on none. If there had been anything to touch,
to appeal to, there might have been some hope, but she had left taste
and fastidiousness scattered in shreds behind her. The War, as she put
it, had made her less afraid of life. She had in fact joined the army of
women who could always live so long as their beauty lasted. At the
beginning of her relations with Lord Coombe she had belonged in a sense
to a world which now no longer existed in its old form. Possibly there
would soon be neither courts nor duchesses and so why should anything
particularly matter? There were those who were taking cataclysms lightly
and she was among them. If her airy mind chanced to have veered and her
temper died down, money or jewels might induce her to keep quiet if one
could endure the unspeakable indignity of forcing oneself to offer
them. She would feel such an offer no indignity and would probably
regard it as a tremendous joke. But she could no more be trusted than a
female monkey or jackdaw.

Lord Coombe sat among the gewgaws in the drawing room and waited because
he must see her when she came in and at least discover if the weather
cock had veered.

After waiting an hour or more he heard a taxi arrive at the front door
and stop there. He went to the window to see who got out of the vehicle.
It gave him a slight shock to recognise a man he knew well. He wore
plain clothes, but he was a member of the police force.

He evidently came into the house and stopped in the hall to talk to the
immature footman who presently appeared at the