Late that night Thane was telling John how Enoch died and how his remains were to be disposed of. He had to tell someone. It was a weight on his mind and he was tormented with misgivings about his own conduct. When he came to the key he remembered having it in his pocket still and produced it associatively. John took it out of his hand and continued to regard it thoughtfully long after the narrative was finished. “Was I right?” Thane asked, anxiously.
“Admirable!” said John, a little off the point as it seemed to Thane. He added thoughtfully: “The fate that amuses itself with our lives knew what it wanted when it tangled you in.”
“Seems there’s a lot as I don’t know,” said Thane, a faint edge to his voice.
“It’s hard to get at,” said John. He continued: “This place, if you know, was founded by General Woolwine, my great grandfather, whose partner was a younger man named Christopher Gib, this Enoch’s father.”
So he began, as if opening a book. Some of it was missing, parts were illegible, yet the shape of the drama stood vividly forth. When he came to the end—to where the invisible writing stopped,—it was sudden and for a moment bewildering, almost as if they had[270] forgotten who they were and had been unexpectedly let down in the middle of a story. They sat a while musing.
“To be continued by the three of us,” said John. “I should like to know what is in that room.”
“Let’s go see,” said Thane.
He had come to the hotel only to talk to John and was returning to the mansion. John went with him.
Enoch’s body lay where it was in the second floor bed chamber. They passed it without stopping and went on to the third floor. On the landing was a little table with a lighted glass lamp, which John took up.
“That would be it,” he said, indicating a certain doorway. The key fitted the lock, but to their surprise the bolt was already drawn. John held the light. Thane went first. He had but crossed the threshold when he started back, recoiled rather, with a movement so sudden and involuntary that John immediately behind him was thrown off his balance, and dropped the lamp, which burst and harmlessly petered out. They were then in darkness. There was no other light on that floor.
“Match,” said Thane, now standing quietly.
John had matches and he divided them by a sense of touch. Each struck one and held it out.
What had startled Thane was the figure of a woman. As they saw her now in the flickering light of their matches she stood at the other side of the room, her back to the wall, facing them. John recognized her at once as the woman who met him in the front doorway, holding an oil light over her head, the night he[271] came seeking Agnes and encountered Enoch at the gate. She was dishevelled. Her thick black hair had fallen on one side and her face was distorted and swollen from weeping. Her eyes were alight with a kind of wild animal defiance. As they approached her she began to move along the wall, sideways, her arms a little spread. In one hand she held a coil of small rope.
“Who are you?” Thane asked.
She did not speak, but continued slowly to edge along the wall, staring at them angrily. They lit fresh matches from the dying ones and pursued her in this way, asking her who she was and what she did there, and she answered only with that wild look, until with more presence of mind than they were able to summon she had worked herself to a position between them and the open door. Their matches gave out and she disappeared in the dark. They heard her go down the back stairway.
“We’ll have to get a light,” said John.
They groped their way downstairs, both absurdly unnerved, found some candles and returned to the room. Both had the same thought. From what they had glimpsed of the interior in the light of their matches by a kind of marginal vision it seemed quite empty. And so it was. There was no trace of what had been there, except dust, which on the floor showed evidence of much moving about. The only object of any kind was a key that evidently the woman had dropped. It was a duplicate of the on............