She must write a note. The imp¹ in the back of her mind laughed. In every story she had ever read when a runaway² wife decamped from home she left a note, generally on the pin-cushion. It was not a very original idea. But one had to leave something intelligible³. What was there to do but write a note? She looked vaguely⁴ about her for something to write with. Ink? There was none. Valancy had never written anything since she had come to the Blue Castle, save memoranda⁵ of household necessaries for Barney. A pencil sufficed for them, but now the pencil was not to be found. Valancy absently crossed to the door of Bluebeard’s Chamber⁶ and tried it. She vaguely expected to find it locked, but it opened unresistingly. She had never tried it before, and did not know whether Barney habitually⁷ kept it locked or not. If he did, he must have been badly upset to leave it unlocked. She did not realise that she was doing something he had told her not to do. She was only looking for something to write with. All her faculties⁸ were concentrated on deciding just what she would say and how she would say it. There was not the slightest curiosity in her as she went into the lean-to.

 

There were no beautiful women hanging by their hair on the walls. It seemed a very harmless apartment, with a commonplace little sheet-iron stove in the middle of it, its pipe sticking out through the roof. At one end was a table or counter crowded with odd-looking utensils⁹. Used no doubt by Barney in his smelly operations. Chemical experiments, probably, she reflected dully. At the other end was a big writing desk and swivel-chair. The side walls were lined with books.

 

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