Nobody replied. It was a strange and curious thing that everybody seemed to be regarding the waxen blossoms in the same dull, sleepy, fascinating way. All eyes were turned upon them as eyes are turned upon some thrilling, repulsive performance. The silence was growing oppressive and painful. Geoffrey gave a little gasp and laid his hand upon his chest. "What is it?" he said. "There is a pain here like a knife. I am burning." Nobody took the faintest notice. Only Ralph seemed to be alive, and yet there was no kind of expression on his face. Heads were drawing nearer and nearer to the vases where the graceful flowers were grouped--those innocent looking blooms which were the emblems of all that was fair and fine and beautiful. What did it mean, what strange mystery was here? Nobody could speak, nobody wanted to speak; all were sinking, lulled and soothed into a poppyland sleep, even Geoffrey who seemed to be fighting for something he knew not what. Then Ralph reached out his hand to the foot of the table. His long, lean fingers were tangled in the strip of damask down the mahogany table on which lamps and decanters and glasses and dishes of fruit were placed. With a vigorous pull he brought the whole thing crashing on the polished floor, where two pools of paraffin made a blaze of the wreck that Ralph had caused. Then he slid over the floor and opened one of the windows, letting in the pure air fresh from the North Sea. CHAPTER XVII WHENCE DID THEY COME? In the darkness nobody spoke for a moment. Not one of them could have said anything for a king's ransom. Apart from the feeling of suffocation, the gradual poppy sleep of death that filled the room as a great wave suddenly engulfs some rocky cave, the dramatic horror of the darkness held them fast. At the same time there was something of a shock, a healthy shock in the plunge from light to gloom. A fitful purple gleam still flickered where the blazing paraffin had licked the hard oak polished floor; the breath of the sea breeze was bracing. It was Marion who first came to herself as one comes out of a horrid nightmare. "Oh, oh," she shuddered. "Who opened the window?" Nobody responded for a moment. Ralph had crept to Geoffrey's side. It was marvelous how he found his way in the intense darkness. "Say you did it," he whispered. "You must say you did it. Speak." "I suppose I did," Geoffrey murmured. "I seem to recollect something of the kind." "You have saved our lives," said Marion. "Will somebody ring the bell?" Servants came without much dismay or surprise. They were used to amazing things at Ravenspur. It would have caused no more than a painful sensation to come in some night after dinner and find the whole family murdered. "Bring more lamps," Ralph Ravenspur said quietly.