Enemy's Kiss: Illustrated

By Evelyn M Winch

Evelyn Winch always has an original situation up her sleeve, and in Enemy's Kiss the heroine is faced with as ticklish a problem as you could wish. What is a girl to do when she suspects that the woman whom her widowed father intends to marry is in reality a crook and has murdered her previous Husband?

• Language: English
• Publisher: SAINT BEDE
• Release date: Mar 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9788832528985

Book preview

XLV

CHAPTER I

THE HAIRLESS SKULL

ALISON REDE, brushing her teeth in very cold water, raised her head from the basin to listen. Night, in an empty house, is always liable to produce strange and alarming sounds, but surely that had been a footstep? It must be her father at last!

Her mouth was full of pink soap flavoured with areca nut, so she could not call out, but the flooding sense of sheer relief was wonderful; never had she been through such a nerve-shaking experience.

For her father, usually so careful of her comfort, to change his plans by telegram at the last minute was bad enough. True, he had written to her that he was leaving London and was looking for a country place, yet it was totally unlike him to ask Alison to meet him at this lonely house at 11 at night, still more so to add, If I am late, wait there for me; for Robert Rede was the most precise and punctual of men, and he had always come to fetch her at Dover.

But if the telegram seemed odd, her arrival at this new home had been worse. The hired car which had brought her here from Warley Station was already halfway down the road before Alison had realised that the bell produced no answer. Groping her way to the back, she had grasped at last that the whole place was dark and empty.

Tired, cold, very wet and rather frightened, her first instinct had been to try and find some cottage nearby. But it was late; no friendly light showed anywhere along the dark road; her father's telegram had been explicit—wait there for me—and if she went exploring she might miss him when he arrived.

At 10 minutes to 11 on a pouring wet Autumn night, it seemed silly to attempt to walk a matter of six miles back to the station. Soaked and shivering, she had waited for 10 minutes in an open porch that gave her no protection from the driving rain. Then, with the aid of her pocket torch, she had managed to find a window ajar, and, with some difficulty, got herself and her small attaché case through it into the pantry.

But. thankful as she was to be under shelter, a hurried search of the house had failed to discover the main switch of the electric light.

By the pale beam of her small torch the empty house seemed strange and eerie. Waiting, expecting every moment to hear her father's car arrive, she had tried to keep her spirits up and to pretend that the whole affair was a vast joke.

To fill in time, she had unpacked her brush and sponge bag and had started to wash off some of the clinging dirt of Swiss and French trains. But now, rinsing her mouth, she could afford to admit that she had been scared!

Creak . . .

With the glass still in her hand, Alison stiffened. The muscles of her throat grew tight as she stood motionless, listening.

Some one was coming up the stairs outside the bath room, but—that was not her father's brisk, short, rather jerky tread.

Slow steps, stealthy, with a marked pause between each, as though the person outside was afraid of being heard . . .

Creak! Then a rattle and a faint, sharp squeak.

The girl stared into the looking glass above the basin, stared across her own shoulder, unable to move, paralysed with fear.

The door was opening!

Then she saw.

Her mouth stretched wide to scream as she spun around, but no sound came but a dull click far back in her throat. At the same instant she flung herself bodily against the door.

There was no key; she herself had seen all the house keys hanging, tied with string, on a hook in the pantry; left hanging there, no doubt, by the last tenants. There was no furniture in the small tiled bath room except a light stool, and Alison, although tall, was very slight.

She was shaking so much that the door rattled as she pushed herself against it, and she felt appallingly sick. She found herself wondering whether she could go on holding it against that thing which was trying to force the door open.

Thing! For the face which had showed for a moment in the doorway had looked barely human. Skull shaped and hairless, leaden-grey, even to the lifeless eyes which had glared at her from deep hollows and the mouth which gaped at her with toothless gums, it had been like a corpse, and for a moment Alison's common sense had wavered. She did not believe in ghosts, but—

Creak!

That came from a distance.

Was the creature going?

The pressure on the door had relaxed, but the girl did not dare to yield an inch. Suppose it was waiting for her to do that. She wanted to scream, yet felt that if she did the thing outside would know that she was frightened, might take heart.

She glanced at the window. It was shut, and an old-fashioned Venetian blind with wooden slats hung over the curtainless panes. Below the window was a drop of 12 feet or more onto the macadamised road, for she had looked out, hoping to see the lights of her father's car, before she started to wash. But there was ivy on the wall and Alison Rede, 18 and a half, straight from school and fit, would have risked a scramble down the ivy.

What kept her squeezed against the door was not a fear of breaking her neck on the road, but the thought that if she turned her back to get out of the window she would be momentarily helpless if the door should open; at the mercy of those two lean,

greyish-yellow claws, if they came clutching at her from behind!

Even the bare thought made Alison's scalp tingle and little cold shivers run down her spine. For those hands had added the final touch of horror—one on the door, the other groping forward—hands without any nails . . .

I can’t stand here all night! she thought desperately. Oh, if only father'd come!

But though she strained her ears to catch the sound of a car coming along the road, there was nothing but a far-off barking of farm dogs and a faint creak, creak within the house, as though the thing outside was creeping away.

The sharp edge of the door panel was cutting into her knee, and the tense interval of silence played on her nerves. At one moment it seemed as though something were moving away along the passage, at the next she fancied that she could hear breathing just outside, which changed a moment after to the scuffling of mice.

Dared she open the door, make a bolt for the safety of the open road?

But the thought of that corpse-like face waiting for her, perhaps, at a dark turn of the passage daunted her courage, usually firm, and she shifted her weight to the other foot as she pressed hard against the door.

Don't be a coward! she scolded herself sternly. There aren’t any ghosts! It was a man, must have been a man. Probably some poor wretch of a tramp or something, looking for shelter from the rain and I scared blue at finding you here in an empty house! Take that stool and go on down and telephone to the police! Go on!

But it was much easier to scold herself than to force her panic stiffened limbs to act. Logical argument, generally a potent weapon

which Alison used on herself with good effect, failed her. Another faint, more distant creak made her hurl her body freshly forward, pressing on the door. A tramp, she told herself grimly, would not try to force his way in!

Then suddenly a new wave of sick horror caught her just below the breastbone. The light inside the bath room was fading! Her electric torch, lying on the glass shelf over the basin, had turned yellow. The battery was giving out!

There are moments when the human mind works at amazing speed. Alison, in the second while the orange-glowing wire inside the torch dimmed from yellow to red, thought with the swiftness of light. While one part of her mind argued, sensibly,

that she was safer inside the bathroom, even in the dark, than in the passages beyond, another part of her brain knew with complete certainty that she could not do it.

Better to chance a mad dash through the house, back through the pantry window to the open road, while the last spot of electricity lingered, than to face what might be hours and must seem a lifetime in the pitch dark, holding the door!

She kept her knee against the panel and leaned far back, reaching for the torch.

CHAPTER II

NEW DANGER

COMING in, exploring this empty house for any sign of her father, Alison had passed two pairs of stairs. One, leading off the long passage which ran straight from the front hall, was evidently the front stairs to the bed rooms; the other, cut off by a baize door, came down outside the pantry door and ran directly outside the bath room.

An upper baize door with a spring to it cut this part of the house off from the front part, too. Those last three faint creaks had seemed to come from the front passage. Could she creep down these back stairs unseen and gain the window and the road? Safer, perhaps, to slip down the ivy—unless, guessing her intention, he had gone to wait down there in the dark road!

Snatching at her courage, Alison released the door. Cautiously, trembling, she opened it a little way and peered out. The faint glow of the torch showed her an empty passage, a white bed room door, a tiny square of window with the rain pouring

down it and the far baize door, shut. The way was clear!

For no more than a second she listened, breathless, but now it seemed as if the whole house held its breath, too. There was no sound at all, even the mice were still. And there was the stairway, close at hand, dark but empty.

Alison ran.

She had reached the turn of the stairs when the torch went out. The black dark seemed to hit her, knocking out her breath; It was like going blind. But her hand tightened on the stair-rail and she went on, running, two steps at a time.

She suffered, in those few seconds, the most primitive of all emotions—a fear fine-drawn to the point of battle, in which every nerve and muscle is strained to the utmost, ready to fight. Her foot found the lower passage level with a jerk that hurt.

Creak! Pit-a-pat. . . .

A thin spear of light cut the darkness ahead, showing her the half glass pantry door on her right, the lower baize door ahead—a beam of light spilt by the banisters above.

It was coming—running along the bath room passage, chasing her down the stairs!

Alison made a dart! The pantry door was not quite shut, it gave; a loose board creaked as she sprang through and the beam of light over head went off abruptly.

She slammed the door violently; throwing herself against it, she felt for a key and found none; she stretched up her right arm toward the wall to brace herself to take the strain.

She reached up her hand with all four fingers and the thumb spread and found them pressing flat against a man's face!

Her nerve broke.

In the recoil she screamed a hideous, shrill, bubbling shriek which rose and echoed wildly through the house as she fumbled for the door handle in a crazy effort to escape. A scream cut sharply at its highest point as a man’s hand closed expertly upon her face, the thumb and forefinger pinching her nostrils shut while the palm blocked her mouth.

Alison gave a gurgle and fainted.

That’s better. . . .

She became conscious of a very firm arm holding her tight, of rough tweed scraping her cheek and the rapid beating of her own heart.

Oh!

She tried to sit up. The flickering blue bead of light came from a lantern that was standing on the floor; by it she could see in faint outline an enamelled table under the window, a bunch of dirty brooms, all tied together, leaning drunkenly against a sink.

Memory came back and she gave a gasp. Shrinking, she writhed from the arms, which held her and slid free on hands and knees. Whirling around, found herself looking up into a pair of bright and quizzical blue eyes.

All right?

A pair of broad, tweed-covered shoulders, large friendly features, pleasantly red-tanned, dark hair that grew crisply off a wide forehead, keen eyes light as a bucket of sea water—this was no grisly ghost, but a mere man, reassuringly human and alive! Alison drew a deep sigh of relief and grew exceedingly indignant.

What exactly do you think you're doing?

It is not easy to show dignity on all fours, but she did her best.

He countered with an innocent What is going on here?

Considering you tried to kill me—

I didn't!

You tried to choke me!

Only to stop you yelling!

You'd absolutely no right to frighten me like that!

She struggled to her feet. She was still hot and panting with rage. Her round, childish face was flushed, her dark grey eyes sparkled with anger, although her soft mouth trembled and her knees felt like warm wax.

What’re you doing here anyway? she demanded: charged him fiercely with You must've climbed in through that window!

I did. He was standing, too, now, smiling at her. So did you for that matter!

That’s got nothing to do with it, said Alison haughtily. He had nice teeth when he smiled and two attractive dents beside his chin.

Do you always come in that way and then rush around screaming? His voice was deep and tinged with suppressed laughter.

I didn’t rush, she began, then changed her mind. No use bandying words—particularly as he was getting the best of the exchange. She turned purposefully to the door.

Where are you going? he asked quickly.

To ring the police!

She wrenched the door open. The lantern went out with a snap and the black dark closed on her like a swung curtain.

Oh! Involuntarily she gave a cry, clutching at the man.

All right. I’m here. His arm closed firmly round her. But listen. You’re not going through that door till you tell me what's up.

CHAPTER III

EXPLANATION

ALISON hesitated. There was a ring of authority in the man’s voice. In his old tweed coat, baggy flannels, with no hat, he had not looked like a burglar. but still— She tried to push his arm away but it held her the more firmly.

Come on now!

She yielded.

I—I was upstairs in the bath room and—and something tried to come in.

Something? What do you mean? Incredulously.

I don’t know. A dreadful looking sort, of man. Horrible, like a ghost. I was frightened and—

Are you alone here, then? He sounded more astonished.

Yes.

The instant she had said it she realised that it would have been better to pretend that there were servants in the house, sleeping. But now it was too late. He gave a faint whistle.

This is your house?

I don't know, she admitted. I suppose so.

You don't know? On the whole his astonishment was justified. She heard him grope for the switch, heard it click uselessly. The lantern glimmered again as he asked. Where’s the main switch?

I don't know. I’ve never been in the place before. He was looking at her with such disbelief that she went on quickly. I came here to meet my father. You see, I had a wire from him to come here and wait until he came. And now he hasn’t come— her voice trailed off lamely, and I don’t know what’s happened!