Yet, contemplating the vigil that lay before me in
silence and darkness, I cannot pretend that my frame
of mind was buoyant. I could not smoke; I must
make no sound.
As pre-arranged, I cautiously removed my boots, and
as cautiously tiptoed across the carpet and seated
myself in an arm-chair. I determined there to
await the arrival of Mr. Jonathan Martin’s friend,
which I knew could not now be long delayed.
The clocks were striking eleven when he arrived, and
in the perfect stillness of that upper corridor.
I heard the bustle which heralded his approach, heard
the rap upon the door opposite, followed by a muffled
“Come in” from Weymouth. Then, as
the door was opened, I heard the sound of a wheezy
cough.
A strange cracked voice (which, nevertheless, I recognized
for Smith’s) cried, “Hullo, Martin!—cough
no better?”
Upon that the door was closed again, and as the retreating
footsteps of the servant died away, complete silence—that
peculiar silence which comes with fog—descended
once more upon the upper part of the New Louvre Hotel.
THE VISITANT
That first hour of watching, waiting, and listening
in the lonely quietude passed drearily; and with the
passage of every quarter— signalized by
London’s muffled clocks—my mood became
increasingly morbid. I peopled the silent rooms
opening out of that wherein I sat, with stealthy,
murderous figures; my imagination painted hideous
yellow faces upon the draperies, twitching yellow hands
protruding from this crevice and that. A score
of times I started nervously, thinking I heard the
pad of bare feet upon the floor behind me, the suppressed
breathing of some deathly approach.
Since nothing occurred to justify these tremors, this
apprehensive mood passed; I realized that I was growing
cramped and stiff, that unconsciously I had been sitting
with my muscles nervously tensed. The window
was open a foot or so at the top and the blind was
drawn; but so accustomed were my eyes now to peering
through the darkness, that I could plainly discern
the yellow oblong of the window, and though very vaguely,
some of the appointments of the room—the
Chesterfield against one wall, the lamp-shade above
my head, the table with the Tulun-Nur box upon it.
There was fog in the room, and it was growing damply
chill, for we had extinguished the electric heater
some hours before. Very few sounds penetrated
from outside. Twice or perhaps thrice people passed
along the corridor, going to their rooms; but, as I
knew, the greater number of the rooms along that corridor
were unoccupied.
From the Embankment far below me, and from the river,
faint noises came at long intervals it is true; the
muffled hooting of motors, and yet fainter ringing
of bells. Fog signals boomed distantly, and train
whistles shrieked, remote and unreal. I determined
to enter my bedroom, and, risking any sound which
I might make, to lie down upon the bed.
