Black as the Night
By Alice Farnham
"But somehow," said the housekeeper slowly, "somehow I don't rightly feel that creature is a dog."
Her pleasant face was troubled. Behind the steel spectacles, her eyes wore a puzzled, thoughtful look.
"It's—it's more as if she was human, somehow, human as you or me—but bad. Bad all the way through!"
The grocer's man, on his weekly visit to the lonely house by the sea, looked uneasily down at the great black beast stretched out in the doorway, its unwinking amber gaze on the white lane that led into the London highroad.
"Look at her now!" said the housekeeper in a low voice. "Watching that road, like a jealous woman! Oh, it's fair give me the creeps, I tell you—knowing what I know, and staying here night after night alone with that beast!"
The grocer's man edged behind the table.
"Oh, no fear of that! I've a good stout stick—you see it there in the corner—and I made sure to keep it handy. My husband will have me bring it. But it's not the likes of you and me she'd trouble with. And it's not her teeth I'm afraid of—it's the cunning mind of her, and what may happen now that his honeymoon's over and he's bringing his new wife home!"
The grocer's man brightened.
"Coming today, ain't they?"
Utterly indifferent, the dog continued to stare at the empty road that wound among the rocks, away from the cliff and the sea.
"Ah!" said the housekeeper darkly. "And stand in her shoes I wouldn't, not for a million pounds, George Ottey!"
She dropped her voice, almost as if afraid the dog might overhear.
"I remember what happened to his first wife, poor thing, right here on this very spot!"
"Suicide, wasn't it?" faltered the grocer's man. "Suicide, they called it. Only some said, accident."
"It was murder," said the housekeeper, half beneath her breath. "Murder down among those rocks, and no one the wiser but me! Murder—and I know the one who did it!"
Tine dog lifted its head then and looked at her steadily, its yellow' eyes alight with perfect intelligence. The upper lip lifted just a trifle over the sharp white teeth in a silent snarl; and then the dog turned its head back and once again lay motionless, watching the lonely road.
At its other end, in London, Moira Glenn stepped laughing into her new husband's car to begin a long journey.
By Charles' expression she could see that the laugh had been a mistake, but you can't just switch a laugh off in the middle—your face feels so foolish. Oh dear, that's the worst of marrying on such short acquaintance, she thought. I don't know which things I can laugh at and which I can't.
Charles' nice mouth set in rather a stubborn line. He was thin and dark and intensely serious, which w'as perhaps why lighthearted Moira loved him. That, and his wonderful skill as an artist, and the hint of tragedy in his past.
"I'm sorry it strikes you as ridiculous," he said stiffly. "Mrs. Bunty told me at the last minute she won't stay any longer than a week, and I can't very well let Jet starve just because—"
"Just because she has a rival," Moira
finished gravely. "All right, darling. It's Ho
