"Mlle. Celie is under control," she said. "We shall have to teach
her that it is not polite in young ladies to kick." She pressed
Celia down with a hand upon her back, and her voice changed. "Lie
still," she commanded savagely. "Do you hear? Do you know what
this is, Mlle. Celie?" And she held the flask towards the girl's
face. "This is vitriol, my pretty one. Move, and I'll spoil these
smooth white shoulders for you. How would you like that?"
Celia shuddered from head to foot, and, burying her face in the
cushion, lay trembling. She would have begged for death upon her
knees rather than suffer this horror. She felt Vauquier's fingers
lingering with a dreadful caressing touch upon her shoulders and
about her throat. She was within an ace of the torture, the
disfigurement, and she knew it. She could not pray for mercy.
She could only lie quite still, as she was bidden, trying to control
the shuddering of her limbs and body.
"It would be a good lesson for Mlle. Celie," Helene continued
slowly. "I think that if Mlle. Celie will forgive the liberty I
ought to inflict it. One little tilt of the flask and the satin of
these pretty shoulders--"
She broke off suddenly and listened. Some sound heard outside had
given Celia a respite, perhaps more than a respite. Helene set the
flask down upon the table. Her avarice had got the better of her
hatred. She roughly plucked the earrings out of the girl's ears.
She hid them quickly in the bosom of her dress with her eye upon
the door. She did not see a drop of blood gather on the lobe of
Celia's ear and fall into the cushion on which her face was
pressed. She had hardly hidden them away before the door opened
and Adele Rossignol burst into the room.
"What is the matter?" asked Vauquier.
"The safe's empty. We have searched the room. We have found
nothing," she cried.
"Everything is in the safe," Helene insisted.
"No."
The two women ran out of the room and up the stairs. Celia, lying
on the settee, heard all the quiet of the house change to noise
and confusion. It was as though a tornado raged in the room
overhead. Furniture was tossed about and over the room, feet
stamped and ran, locks were smashed in with heavy blows. For many
minutes the storm raged. Then it ceased, and she heard the
accomplices clattering down the stairs without a thought of the
noise they made. They burst into the room. Harry Wethermill was
laughing hysterically, like a man off his head. He had been
wearing a long dark overcoat when he entered the house; now he
carried the coat over his arm. He was in a dinner-jacket, and his
black clothes were dusty and disordered.