"Gentlemen," he began at length, with his lips close to the keyhole and in German, "please do not talk so loud. I can overhear all you say in the next room. Besides, it is very late, and I wish to sleep."
He paused and listened, but no answer was forthcoming. He turned the handle and found the door was locked. Not a sound broke the stillness of the night except the faint swish of the wind over the skylight and the creaking of a board here and there in the house below. The cold air of a very early morning crept down the pa.s.sage, and made him shiver. The silence of the house began to impress him disagreeably. He looked behind him and about him, hoping, and yet fearing, that something would break the stillness. The voices still seemed to ring on in his ears; but that sudden silence, when he knocked at the door, affected him far more unpleasantly than the voices, and put strange thoughts in his brain--thoughts he did not like or approve.
Moving stealthily from the door, he peered over the banisters into the s.p.a.ce below. It was like a deep vault that might conceal in its shadows anything that was not good. It was not difficult to fancy he saw an indistinct moving to-and-fro below him. Was that a figure sitting on the stairs peering up obliquely at him out of hideous eyes? Was that a sound of whispering and shuffling down there in the dark halls and forsaken landings? Was it something more than the inarticulate murmur of the night?
The wind made an effort overhead, singing over the skylight, and the door behind him rattled and made him start. He turned to go back to his room, and the draught closed the door slowly in his face as if there were someone pressing against it from the other side. When he pushed it open and went in, a hundred shadowy forms seemed to dart swiftly and silently back to their corners and hiding-places. But in the adjoining room the sounds had entirely ceased, and Shorthouse soon crept into bed, and left the house with its inmates, waking or sleeping, to take care of themselves, while he entered the region of dreams and silence.
Next day, strong in the common sense that the sunlight brings, he determined to lodge a complaint against the noisy occupants of the next room and make the landlady request them to modify their voices at such late hours of the night and morning. But it so happened that she was not to be seen that day, and when he returned from the office at midnight it was, of course, too late.
Looking under the door as he came up to bed he noticed that there was no light, and concluded that the Germans were not in. So much the better.
He went to sleep about one o"clock, fully decided that if they came up later and woke him with their horrible noises he would not rest till he had roused the landlady and made her reprove them with that authoritative tw.a.n.g, in which every word was like the lash of a metallic whip.
However, there proved to be no need for such drastic measures, for Shorthouse slumbered peacefully all night, and his dreams--chiefly of the fields of grain and flocks of sheep on the far-away farms of his father"s estate--were permitted to run their fanciful course unbroken.
Two nights later, however, when he came home tired out, after a difficult day, and wet and blown about by one of the wickedest storms he had ever seen, his dreams--always of the fields and sheep--were not destined to be so undisturbed.
He had already dozed off in that delicious glow that follows the removal of wet clothes and the immediate snuggling under warm blankets, when his consciousness, hovering on the borderland between sleep and waking, was vaguely troubled by a sound that rose indistinctly from the depths of the house, and, between the gusts of wind and rain, reached his ears with an accompanying sense of uneasiness and discomfort. It rose on the night air with some pretence of regularity, dying away again in the roar of the wind to rea.s.sert itself distantly in the deep, brief hushes of the storm.
For a few minutes Jim"s dreams were coloured only--tinged, as it were, by this impression of fear approaching from somewhere insensibly upon him. His consciousness, at first, refused to be drawn back from that enchanted region where it had wandered, and he did not immediately awaken. But the nature of his dreams changed unpleasantly. He saw the sheep suddenly run huddled together, as though frightened by the neighbourhood of an enemy, while the fields of waving corn became agitated as though some monster were moving uncouthly among the crowded stalks. The sky grew dark, and in his dream an awful sound came somewhere from the clouds. It was in reality the sound downstairs growing more distinct.
Shorthouse shifted uneasily across the bed with something like a groan of distress. The next minute he awoke, and found himself sitting straight up in bed--listening. Was it a nightmare? Had he been dreaming evil dreams, that his flesh crawled and the hair stirred on his head?
The room was dark and silent, but outside the wind howled dismally and drove the rain with repeated a.s.saults against the rattling windows. How nice it would be--the thought flashed through his mind--if all winds, like the west wind, went down with the sun! They made such fiendish noises at night, like the crying of angry voices. In the daytime they had such a different sound. If only--
Hark! It was no dream after all, for the sound was momentarily growing louder, and its _cause_ was coming up the stairs. He found himself speculating feebly what this cause might be, but the sound was still too indistinct to enable him to arrive at any definite conclusion.
The voice of a church clock striking two made itself heard above the wind. It was just about the hour when the Germans had commenced their performance three nights before. Shorthouse made up his mind that if they began it again he would not put up with it for very long. Yet he was already horribly conscious of the difficulty he would have of getting out of bed. The clothes were so warm and comforting against his back. The sound, still steadily coming nearer, had by this time become differentiated from the confused clamour of the elements, and had resolved itself into the footsteps of one or more persons.
"The Germans, hang "em!" thought Jim. "But what on earth is the matter with me? I never felt so queer in all my life."
He was trembling all over, and felt as cold as though he were in a freezing atmosphere. His nerves were steady enough, and he felt no diminution of physical courage, but he was conscious of a curious sense of malaise and trepidation, such as even the most vigorous men have been known to experience when in the first grip of some horrible and deadly disease. As the footsteps approached this feeling of weakness increased.
He felt a strange la.s.situde creeping over him, a sort of exhaustion, accompanied by a growing numbness in the extremities, and a sensation of dreaminess in the head, as if perhaps the consciousness were leaving its accustomed seat in the brain and preparing to act on another plane. Yet, strange to say, as the vitality was slowly withdrawn from his body, his senses seemed to grow more acute.
Meanwhile the steps were already on the landing at the top of the stairs, and Shorthouse, still sitting upright in bed, heard a heavy body brush past his door and along the wall outside, almost immediately afterwards the loud knocking of someone"s knuckles on the door of the adjoining room.
Instantly, though so far not a sound had proceeded from within, he heard, through the thin part.i.tion, a chair pushed back and a man quickly cross the floor and open the door.
"Ah! it"s you," he heard in the son"s voice. Had the fellow, then, been sitting silently in there all this time, waiting for his father"s arrival? To Shorthouse it came not as a pleasant reflection by any means.
There was no answer to this dubious greeting, but the door was closed quickly, and then there was a sound as if a bag or parcel had been thrown on a wooden table and had slid some distance across it before stopping.
"What"s that?" asked the son, with anxiety in his tone.
"You may know before I go," returned the other gruffly. Indeed his voice was more than gruff: it betrayed ill-suppressed pa.s.sion.
Shorthouse was conscious of a strong desire to stop the conversation before it proceeded any further, but somehow or other his will was not equal to the task, and he could not get out of bed. The conversation went on, every tone and inflexion distinctly audible above the noise of the storm.
In a low voice the father continued. Jim missed some of the words at the beginning of the sentence. It ended with: " . . . but now they"ve all left, and I"ve managed to get up to you. You know what I"ve come for." There was distinct menace in his tone.
"Yes," returned the other; "I have been waiting."
"And the money?" asked the father impatiently.
No answer.
"You"ve had three days to get it in, and I"ve contrived to stave off the worst so far--but to-morrow is the end."
No answer.
"Speak, Otto! What have you got for me? Speak, my son; for G.o.d"s sake, tell me."
There was a moment"s silence, during which the old man"s vibrating accents seemed to echo through the rooms. Then came in a low voice the answer--
"I have nothing."
"Otto!" cried the other with pa.s.sion, "nothing!"
"I can get nothing," came almost in a whisper.
"You lie!" cried the other, in a half-stifled voice. "I swear you lie.
Give me the money."
A chair was heard sc.r.a.ping along the floor. Evidently the men had been sitting over the table, and one of them had risen. Shorthouse heard the bag or parcel drawn across the table, and then a step as if one of the men was crossing to the door.
"Father, what"s in that? I must know," said Otto, with the first signs of determination in his voice. There must have been an effort on the son"s part to gain possession of the parcel in question, and on the father"s to retain it, for between them it fell to the ground. A curious rattle followed its contact with the floor. Instantly there were sounds of a scuffle. The men were struggling for the possession of the box. The elder man with oaths, and blasphemous imprecations, the other with short gasps that betokened the strength of his efforts. It was of short duration, and the younger man had evidently won, for a minute later was heard his angry exclamation.
"I knew it. Her jewels! You scoundrel, you shall never have them. It is a crime."
The elder man uttered a short, guttural laugh, which froze Jim"s blood and made his skin creep. No word was spoken, and for the s.p.a.ce of ten seconds there was a living silence. Then the air trembled with the sound of a thud, followed immediately by a groan and the crash of a heavy body falling over on to the table. A second later there was a lurching from the table on to the floor and against the part.i.tion that separated the rooms. The bed quivered an instant at the shock, but the unholy spell was lifted from his soul and Jim Shorthouse sprang out of bed and across the floor in a single bound. He knew that ghastly murder had been done--the murder by a father of his son.
With shaking fingers but a determined heart he lit the gas, and the first thing in which his eyes corroborated the evidence of his ears was the horrifying detail that the lower portion of the part.i.tion bulged unnaturally into his own room. The glaring paper with which it was covered had cracked under the tension and the boards beneath it bent inwards towards him. What hideous load was behind them, he shuddered to think.
All this he saw in less than a second. Since the final lurch against the wall not a sound had proceeded from the room, not even a groan or a foot-step. All was still but the howl of the wind, which to his ears had in it a note of triumphant horror.
Shorthouse was in the act of leaving the room to rouse the house and send for the police--in fact his hand was already on the door-k.n.o.b--when something in the room arrested his attention. Out of the corner of his eyes he thought he caught sight of something moving. He was sure of it, and turning his eyes in the direction, he found he was not mistaken.
Something was creeping slowly towards him along the floor. It was something dark and serpentine in shape, and it came from the place where the part.i.tion bulged. He stooped down to examine it with feelings of intense horror and repugnance, and he discovered that it was moving toward him from the _other side_ of the wall. His eyes were fascinated, and for the moment he was unable to move. Silently, slowly, from side to side like a thick worm, it crawled forward into the room beneath his frightened eyes, until at length he could stand it no longer and stretched out his arm to touch it. But at the instant of contact he withdrew his hand with a suppressed scream. It was sluggish--and it was warm! and he saw that his fingers were stained with living crimson.
A second more, and Shorthouse was out in the pa.s.sage with his hand on the door of the next room. It was locked. He plunged forward with all his weight against it, and, the lock giving way, he fell headlong into a room that was pitch dark and very cold. In a moment he was on his feet again and trying to penetrate the blackness. Not a sound, not a movement. Not even the sense of a presence. It was empty, miserably empty!
Across the room he could trace the outline of a window with rain streaming down the outside, and the blurred lights of the city beyond.
But the room was empty, appallingly empty; and so still. He stood there, cold as ice, staring, shivering listening. Suddenly there was a step behind him and a light flashed into the room, and when he turned quickly with his arm up as if to ward off a terrific blow he found himself face to face with the landlady. Instantly the reaction began to set in.
It was nearly three o"clock in the morning, and he was standing there with bare feet and striped pyjamas in a small room, which in the merciful light he perceived to be absolutely empty, carpetless, and without a stick of furniture, or even a window-blind. There he stood staring at the disagreeable landlady. And there she stood too, staring and silent, in a black wrapper, her head almost bald, her face white as chalk, shading a sputtering candle with one bony hand and peering over it at him with her blinking green eyes. She looked positively hideous.
"Waal?" she drawled at length, "I heard yer right enough. Guess you couldn"t sleep! Or just prowlin" round a bit--is that it?"
The empty room, the absence of all traces of the recent tragedy, the silence, the hour, his striped pyjamas and bare feet--everything together combined to deprive him momentarily of speech. He stared at her blankly without a word.