[Illustration: "HE STOOD SIDEWAYS, ... AND LOOKED AT ME OVER HIS LEFT
SHOULDER."]
I stood still, with a hand on the rail. My eyes were now on a level
with the floor of the landing, out of which branched two passages--one
by my right hand, the other to the left, at the foot of the next
flight, so placed that I was gazing down the length of it. And almost
at the end there fell a parallelogram of light across it from an open
door.
A man who has once felt it knows there is only one kind of silence
that can fitly be called "dead." This is only to be found in a great
house at midnight. I declare that for a few seconds after I rattled
the stair-rod you might have cut the silence with a knife. If the
house held a clock it ticked inaudibly.
Upon this silence, at the end of a minute, broke a light sound--the
_clink, clink_ of a decanter on the rim of a wine-glass. It came from
the room where the light was.
Now, perhaps it was that the very thought of liquor put warmth into my
cold bones. It is certain that all of a sudden I straightened my back,
took the remaining stairs at two strides, and walked down the passage,
as bold as brass, with out caring a jot for the noise I made.
In the doorway I halted. The room was long, lined for the most part
with books bound in what they call "divinity calf," and littered with
papers like a barrister's table on assize day.
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