The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories
the person who was taking them was very close to the door. Already he
had topped the stairs and was shuffling almost silently across the bit
of landing.
The secretary slipped his hand into his pistol pocket and drew back
further against the wall, and hardly had he completed the movement when
the sounds abruptly ceased and he knew that somebody was standing just
outside the door and preparing for a careful observation through the
keyhole.
He was in no sense a coward. In action he was never afraid. It was the
waiting and wondering and the uncertainty that might have loosened his
nerves a little. But, somehow, a wave of intense horror swept over him
for a second as he thought of the bestial maniac and his attendant Jew;
and he would rather have faced a pack of wolves than have to do with
either of these men.
Something brushing gently against the door set his nerves tingling
afresh and made him tighten his grasp on the pistol. The steel was cold
and slippery in his moist fingers. What an awful noise it would make
when he pulled the trigger! If the door were to open how close he would
be to the figure that came in! Yet he knew it was locked on the inside
and could not possibly open. Again something brushed against the panel
beside him and a second later the piece of crumpled paper fell from the
keyhole to the floor, while the piece of thin wire that had accomplished
this result showed its point for a moment in the room and was then
swiftly withdrawn.
Somebody was evidently peering now through the keyhole, and realising
this fact the spirit of attack entered into the heart of the beleaguered
man. Raising aloft his right hand he brought it suddenly down with a
resounding crash upon the panel of the door next the keyhole--a crash
that, to the crouching eavesdropper, must have seemed like a clap of
thunder out of a clear sky. There was a gasp and a slight lurching
against the door and the midnight listener rose startled and alarmed,
for Shorthouse plainly heard the tread of feet across the landing and
down the stairs till they were lost in the silences of the hall. Only,
this time, it seemed to him there were four feet instead of two.
Quickly stuffing the paper back into the keyhole, he was in the act of
walking back to the fireplace when, over his shoulder, he caught sight
of a white face pressed in outline against the outside of the window. It
was blurred in the streams of sleet, but the white of the moving eyes
was unmistakable. He turned instantly to meet it, but the face was
withdrawn like a flash, and darkness rushed in to fill the gap where it
had appeared.
"Watched on both sides," he reflected.
But he was not to be surprised into any sudden action, and quietly
walking over to the fireplace as if he had seen nothing unusual he
stirred the coals a moment and then strolled leisurely over to the
window. Steeling his nerves, which quivered a moment in spite of his
will, he opened the window and stepped out on to the balcony. The wind,
which he thought had dropped, rushed past him into the room and
extinguished one of the candles, while a volley of fine cold rain burst
all over his face. At first he could see nothing, and the darkness came
close up to his eyes like a wall. He went a little farther on to the
balcony and drew the window after him till it clashed. Then he stood and
waited.
But nothing touched him. No one seemed to be there. His eyes got
accustomed to the blackness and he was able to make out the iron
railing, the dark shapes of the trees beyond, and the faint light coming
from the other window. Through this he peered into the room, walking the
length of the balcony to do so. Of course he was standing in a shaft of
light and whoever was crouching in the darkness below could plainly see
him. _Below?_--That there should be anyone _above_ did not occur to him
until, just as he was preparing to go in again, he became aware that
something was moving in the darkness over his head. He looked up,
instinctively raising a protecting arm, and saw a long black line
swinging against the dim wall of the house. The shutters of the window
on the next floor, whence it depended, were thrown open and moving
backwards and forwards in the wind. The line was evidently a thickish
cord, for as he looked it was pulled in and the end disappeared in the
darkness.
Shorthouse, trying to whistle to himself, peered over the edge of the
balcony as if calculating the distance he might have to drop, and then
calmly walked into the room again and closed the window behind him,
leaving the latch so that the lightest touch would cause it to fly open.
He relit the candle and drew a straight-backed chair up to the table.
Then he put coal on the fire and stirred it up into a royal blaze. He
would willingly have folded the shutters over those staring windows at
his back. But that was out of the question. It would have been to cut
off his way of escape.
Sleep, for the time, was at a disadvantage. His brain was full of blood
and every nerve was tingling. He felt as if countless eyes were upon him
and scores of stained hands were stretching out from the corners and
crannies of the house to seize him. Crouching figures, figures of
hideous Jews, stood everywhere about him where shelter was, creeping
forward out of the shadows when he was not looking and retreating
swiftly and silently when he turned his head. Wherever he looked, other
eyes met his own, and though they melted away under his steady,
confident gaze, he knew they would wax and draw in upon him the instant
his glances weakened and his will wavered.
Though there were no sounds, he knew that in the well of the house there
was movement going on, _and preparation_. And this knowledge, inasmuch
as it came to him irresistibly and through other and more subtle
channels than those of the senses kept the sense of horror fresh in his
blood and made him alert and awake.
But, no matter how great the dread in the heart, the power of sleep will
eventually overcome it. Exhausted nature is irresistible, and as the
minutes wore on and midnight passed, he realised that nature was
vigorously asserting herself and sleep was creeping upon him from the
extremities.
To lessen the danger he took out his pencil and began to draw the
articles of furniture in the room. He worked into elaborate detail the
cupboard, the mantelpiece, and the bed, and from these he passed on to
the portraits. Being possessed of genuine skill, he found the occupation
sufficiently absorbing. It kept the blood in his brain, and that kept
him awake. The pictures, moreover, now that he considered them for the
first time, were exceedingly well painted. Owing to the dim light, he
centred his attention upon the portraits beside the fireplace. On the
right was a woman, with a sweet, gentle face and a figure of great
refinement; on the left was a full-size figure of a big handsome man
with a full beard and wearing a hunting costume of ancient date.
From time to time he turned to the windows behind him, but the vision of
the face was not repeated. More than once, too, he went to the door and
listened, but the silence was so profound in the house that he gradually
came to believe the plan of attack had been abandoned. Once he went out
on to the balcony, but the sleet stung his face and he only had time to
see that the shutters above were closed, when he was obliged to seek the
shelter of the room again.
In this way the hours passed. The fire died down and the room grew
chilly. Shorthouse had made several sketches of the two heads and was
beginning to feel overpoweringly weary. His feet and his hands were cold
and his yawns were prodigious. It seemed ages and ages since the steps
had come to listen at his door and the face had watched him from the
window. A feeling of safety had somehow come to him. In reality he was
exhausted. His one desire was to drop upon the soft white bed and yield
himself up to sleep without any further struggle.
He rose from his chair with a series of yawns that refused to be stifled
and looked at his watch. It was close upon three in the morning. He made
up his mind that he would lie down with his clothes on and get some
sleep. It was safe enough, the door was locked on the inside and the
window was fastened. Putting the bag on the table near his pillow he
blew out the candles and dropped with a sense of careless and delicious
exhaustion upon the soft mattress. In five minutes he was sound asleep.
There had scarcely been time for the dreams to come when he found
himself lying side-ways across the bed with wide open eyes staring into
the darkness. Someone had touched him, and he had writhed away in his
sleep as from something unholy. The movement had awakened him.
The room was simply black. No light came from the windows and the fire
had gone out as completely as if water had been poured upon it. He gazed
into a sheet of impenetrable darkness that came close up to his face
like a wall.
His first thought was for the papers in his coat and his hand flew to
the pocket. They were safe; and the relief caused by this discovery left
his mind instantly free for other reflections.
And the realisation that at once came to him with a touch of dismay was,
that during his sleep some definite _change_ had been effected in the
room. He felt this with that intuitive certainty which amounts to
positive knowledge. The room was utterly still, but the corroboration
that was speedily brought to him seemed at once to fill the darkness
with a whispering, secret life that chilled his blood and made the
sheet feel like ice against his cheek.
Hark! This was it; there reached his ears, in which the blood was
already buzzing with warning clamour, a dull murmur of something that
rose indistinctly from the well of the house and became audible to him
without passing through walls or doors. There seemed no solid surface
between him, lying on the bed, and the landing; between the landing and
the stairs, and between the stairs and the hall beyond.
He knew that the door of the room _was standing open_! Therefore it had
been opened from the _inside_. Yet the window was fastened, also on the
inside.
Hardly was this realised when the conspiring silence of the hour was
broken by another and a more definite sound. A step was coming along the
passage. A certain bruise on the hip told Shorthouse that the pistol in
his pocket was ready for use and he drew it out quickly and cocked it.
Then he just had time to slip over the edge of the bed and crouch down
on the floor when the step halted on the threshold of the room. The bed
was thus between him and the open door. The window was at his back.
He waited in the darkness. What struck him as peculiar about the steps
was that there seemed no particular desire to move stealthily. There was
no extreme caution. They moved along in rather a slipshod way and
sounded like soft slippers or feet in stockings. There was something
clumsy, irresponsible, almost reckless about the movement.
For a second the steps paused upon the threshold, but only for a second.
Almost immediately they came on into the room, and as they passed from
the wood to the carpet Shorthouse noticed that they became wholly
noiseless. He waited in suspense, not knowing whether the unseen walker
was on the other side of the room or was close upon him. Presently he
stood up and stretched out his left arm in front of him, groping,
searching, feeling in a circle; and behind it he held the pistol, cocked
and pointed, in his right hand. As he rose a bone cracked in his knee,
his clothes rustled as if they were newspapers, and his breath seemed
loud enough to be heard all over the room. But not a sound came to
betray the position of the invisible intruder.