At about eleven o'clock, more than an hour before Herrick had forced an entrance, the since damaged touring-car, returning from its expedition of the morning, had drawn up before the gate of the yellow house. The night world was then still a world of wind and rain; the car was splashed as though it had passed through a flood, and Nicola, stiff, muddy and drenched, was not in a very good humor when he got no reply to his knock at the kitchen door. He had driven quietly and knocked quietly, but now he lost control of himself and began to hammer; catching hold of the knob impatiently, he felt it turn in his grasp and entered. The door had not been locked, though the kitchen was lighted. He thought he could hear, somewhere, some one knocking. He took the lamp and went up the back stairs; then it seemed to him that the knocking came from the front of the house. He retraced his steps. Yes, there was a light in the hall and the knocking came from the closet under the stairs.
The Pascoes were in desperate straits, and Nicola was alone. He drew his knife from the capacious foldings of his coat, and stepped a little behind the door as he flung it open. There stumbled out, and sank, gasping, at his feet, the figure of a woman. She brought with her, out of the reeking closet, a strong odor of ammonia. Nicola gave a grunt of amazement. Then, like Herrick afterward, he lifted his lamp, and stared about the closet. On the floor lay an empty quart bottle which had recently been full of household ammonia, a still soaking towel, and a large silk umbrella, the rod broken and the handle missing. With the point of this umbrella a pane of the little window overhead had been broken and a slant of the outside shutter forced open for air. Nicola could make nothing of it; he turned at length, and grouchily pulled the gasping woman to her feet. This woman was the gray-haired housekeeper, Mrs. Pascoe.
At ten o'clock she said she had gone to get something from the closet and, as she opened the door, she had smelled ammonia. Then a towel, soaking with it, had been pressed on her face. Before she could do more than struggle with that, she had been pushed into the closet and the door had clicked upon her. That was all she knew. She must have been unconscious part of the time.--At ten o'clock! What an eternity of despair, then, had Christina not lived through before she thus ruthlessly freed herself! And what, now, had become of her; under a dawn some seven hours later than when, leaving Nancy behind, she had rushed out of that house and sped away, along the storm-tossed road?