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lonely and sad. She had a sudden longing for Tom, and his solid, kindly face and reassuring smile. It was foolish of her to have come up here in the middle of the night. If she lingered, perhaps even her first unfounded fears about Dragon House would come back.
    She would hurry back to bed, and the sanity that a sound sleep would bring.
    She paused at the door to switch out the light, then turned the knob and found that the door was locked!
    It couldn’t be! After a moment, in which all her apprehensive fear invaded her so that she was abruptly shivering, she switched on the light again and examined the door calmly. The lock must have caught. With a little manipulation it would open.
    But it did not open. It really was locked. Cressida remembered now the faint sound she had heard. It must have been someone turning the key—someone who had crept silently up the stairs, knowing she was there.
    This was absurd, of course. What possible satisfaction could anyone get from locking her in a dead girl’s room? It must be a mistake.
    But Cressida, remembering the furtive sound at the door, knew soberly that it was not a mistake. Someone, either mischievously or maliciously, had decided to lock her into Lucy’s room.
    It was not a joke to be appreciated, and she did not intend to take it calmly. She began, without hesitation, to bang on the door and call out,
    “Whoever is out there—come and open this door! I don’t intend to stay here all night. Come along please!”
    Then she waited. There was no sound. It might have been that she was the only person in the whole house. Here she stood in this charming petrified room, the only thing alive…
    Impatiently, and trying to control her panic, Cressida banged on the door again. Then she tried rapping with her heel on the floor, but the thick carpet muffled this sound. She went to the window and threw it open, and stepped on the narrow balcony with its elaborate wrought-iron railing intertwined into the shape of the vine leaves. It was a long way down to the narrow strip of garden. Leaning over, she could see that all the windows of the house were dark. No one on this side kept a solitary vigil, chuckling at the thought of the girl locked in the room upstairs. What lights would be showing on the other side? Arabia’s? Miss Glory’s, from her lonely splendour in the ballroom? Perhaps Jeremy Winter’s, but they, deep in the basement, would not show.
    The room directly under this was one of Arabia’s. At this time Arabia would be in her bedroom, sleeping, no doubt, and probably deaf to any calls. Next to her rooms were those of Mrs. Stanhope and Dawson, but they too might possibly be out of earshot and sound asleep.
    There was someone awake, of course. That was the person who had crept up the stairs and locked her in. It suddenly occurred to Cressida that what she was doing was probably exactly what that person had hoped for and, in a nasty sadistic way, was enjoying. Probably whoever it was liked to scare a girl and hoped she would presently have hysterics.
    That, she could have told the practical joker, was one thing she never had, and even a night alone in this room would not give them to her. If it came to that, what was so impossible about spending a night here? The room was comfortable, even luxurious. By daylight she would have no difficulty in attracting anyone’s attention. Miss Glory would be pottering in and out of the garden. Arabia or Mrs. Stanhope would hear her calling. It was only a matter of passing the hours until daylight, and those could best be passed in sleep.
    Cressida hesitated only a moment before stretching out on the turned-down bed. She did not get between the sheets. Something—was it the thought of sacrilege?—stopped her from doing that. She lay rather stiffly on the coverlet, and switched off the rosy bedside light.
    But then the darkness leapt on her. The silence was so deep it was terrifying. No, it wasn’t completely silence.
    There was a