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house."
She saw the look of triumph in Mr. Barcellos's dark eyes.
"I thought you would see reason," he said after a moment. "As it happens, your father
owes me a great favour in return for what I once did for him, and that is why I know that
if you tell him I am here he will beg me to accept his hospitality."
"I am quite certain . . . the room is not really what you . . . require," Vanessa protested
feebly with a last effort to prevent herself from being browbeaten.
"What I require is quite simple," Mr. Barcellos replied. "It is just a bed, together with
your promise. Miss Lens, that no-one will know I am here."
Vanessa's eyes widened.
"It is a secret?" she enquired.
"An important secret!" Mr. Barcellos answered. "You will not speak of me to anyone,
do you understand? No-one must know that I am your guest, not your friends, your
relations, your acquaintances, your shop-keepers no-one!"
"There is no reason why anyone should know of it," Vanessa answered.
Mr. Barcellos had spoken so forcefully that instinctively she had taken a step
backwards.
"Before you make up your mind that this is where you wish to be," she said, "I think I
must tell you that the room is very small... little more than an attic. It was used by my
maid, but it is up two flights and she now finds the stairs too much for her. She therefore
now has a bed downstairs, and it will be impossible for her to keep your room clean."
"I wish no-one to enter the room, and I shall keep it locked when I am not in it," Mr.
Barcellos said.
"But why?" Vanessa asked involuntarily,
"That is my business!" he answered abruptly. "All I require from you, Miss Lens, is a
roof over my head. I will take my meals outside."
That, at least, Vanessa thought, was a relief. At the same time, she felt anxious and
uncomfortable.
"Perhaps you had better see the room before you make up your mind?"
"I have already made it up," Mr. Barcellos replied. "I came here to be your father's
guest. In his absence you, as his daughter, have behaved correctly and in a manner I
should expect. There is no more to be said. Is the key to the room in the door?"
"Yes ... I think so," Vanessa said weakly.
"Very well, I will take up my valise," Mr. Barcellos said. "Then I shall go out. You
must give me a key to the front door. It may be very late before I return and I wish
no-one to sit up for me."
Vanessa hesitated.
She had an uncomfortable feeling what with Mr. Barcellos being able to walk in and
out of the house as he pleased, it was no longer her own.
She decided that she disliked everything about him: his aggressive manner; the
harshness of his voice as he spoke with a foreign accent; the look in his eyes and the
manner in which he was dressed.
She wanted to protest; to tell him that she had changed her mind and he could not
stay. Yet she felt he would not listen to her and would in fact do exactly as he wished to
do.
There was something so forceful about him that she felt as if he swept her aside; as if
she were completely inconsequential, no more than a piece of paper before a strong
wind.
"There is a key on the hall table!" she said.
He opened the door of the Sitting-Room and turned to give her what she felt
somehow was a sardonic bow.
"Thank you, Miss Lens. I assure you I shall be very little trouble in your house. When
you inform your father of my arrival, tell him that the debt is paid!"
"What... debt?" Vanessa asked nervously.
The mere word summoned up a vision of money.
"Your father will understand," Mr. Barcellos answered.
Then he had gone from the Sitting-Room and she heard his footsteps going up the
narrow staircase which led to the top of the house.
He had left a few minutes later. He could only just have put his valise down in the
bed-room. Vanessa was in the kitchen and she heard his footsteps cross the hall and the
front door close behind him.
"How could you have agreed, Miss Vanessa, to his staying here?" Dorcas asked. "It's
not right and proper with two unprotected women in the house."
"I really seemed to have no choice," Vanessa replied.
"You should've let me deal with him," Dorcas said.
"I doubt if he would have listened to you. Father owed him a debt."
"Money! Always money!" Dorcas exclaimed. "Did he tell you how much it was?"
"I somehow felt it was not that sort of debt," Vanessa answered, "but I may have been
wrong. He just intended to stay here, and nothing I could do or say would have had any
effect."
"The cheek of it!" Dorcas muttered to herself.
"Do you think I ought to go upstairs to see if the bed is made up?" Vanessa asked.
"It is," Dorcas answered. "I always felt I might get up those stairs again when my
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