Psyche by Phyllis Young Page B

side under a low white cot.
    â€œMum—Mum?” a small voice whispered.
    The black bag was set down on the blue carpet. The man’s hand went to his pocket. An instant later small legs thrashed beneath blue blankets, and small hands plucked ineffectually at a dark, suffocating terror, while the sweet, sickening odour of choloro-form drifted through the room.
    Repressing an almost overwhelming need to cough, the man waited until he felt the small body go limp. He snapped open the lid of the black bag; snatched a down comforter from the foot of the cot, folded it, placed it in the bottom of the bag; straightenedthe child’s now unresisting arms and legs; rolled her in her blankets, and laid her in the bag. The lid was shut and locked. A grubby envelope was placed on the empty cot. A small pillow was dropped out of the open window—a red herring to confuse a privileged class for whose intelligence he had no respect—and he was ready for the second, and in a sense, most nerve-wracking part of his scheme.
    The nursery door opened and closed again. The lamp in the hall at the mouth of the west corridor cast a distorted shadow as he crossed into the east wing. In another bedroom, the black bag between his legs, his fingers working like lightning, he attached a chrome bracket to exposed wires hanging from a hole in a dove-grey wall. Using no tool other than a screw-driver, he completed the task in less than two minutes, but, when he left this room and its justification for his presence in the house, his thin lips were working and his face was a dirty ashen white.
    At the top of the back stairs he removed the cotton gloves, pulled his peaked cap low over his forehead, and lit a cheap, strong-smelling cigarette. The first inhalation of acrid smoke steadied him considerably, but its chief purpose was to cover any lingering smell of chloroform. In so far as he was capable of doing so, he had thought of everything.
    The cook was alone in the kitchen, and her back was toward him, a circumstance which made it possible for him to cover half the distance to the outside door before she turned and faced him directly.
    â€œâ€˜Night, Missis.” His voice did nothing to betray him, and the hand he lifted to his cap concealed his face adequately.
    The cook, affronted by the cigarette, found herself to some extent mollified by the respectful salute, and, outflanked for the second time in fifteen minutes, allowed the black bag to be carried out into the night.
    The man was sweating freely by the time he reached his car. The child had appeared delicate, even fragile, and her weight had come as an unpleasant surprise to him.
    He wedged the black bag on the floor between the back and front seats of the car, and climbed into the driver’s seat. The enginecaught, as it did not always, as soon as he put his foot on the accelerator, and he knew his first flash of triumph, but his supreme moment arrived when he reached the road, and, switching on the lights, rattled away toward his hide-out. Intoxicated by power, as he never had been by whiskey, he felt as though he had defeated the whole world single-handed. His fevered imagination conjuring up visions of barbaric luxury, he almost forgot that he had not yet exchanged his small, unconscious hostage for the thick packets of currency that he thought of as already his.
    Sharon rose from the dinner table, and, blowing out the candles, slipped her hand into Dwight’s as they walked into the hall
.
    In the long living-room the cocktail tray had been replaced by a silver coffee service, and fresh logs had been placed on the
fire.
    With scarcely perceptible hesitation, Sharon sat down and lifted the heavy coffee urn with a slender hand much stronger than it appeared to be. But, before she began to pour, Dwight, who missed very little where she was concerned, said, “The coffee can wait.”
    Her glance went to the teddy-bear beside her, and then to the man watching her