The House of the Arrow

by A. E. W. Mason

They crept over the mat of grass and weeds to the back of the house. A short flight of stone steps, patched with mould, descended from a terrace; at the back of the terrace were shuttered windows. But in the corner of the house, on a level with the garden, there was a door. Once more Moreau stooped, and once more a door swung inwards without a sound. But whereas the garden door had let through some gleam of twilight, this door opened upon the blackness of the pit. Jim Frobisher shrank back from it, not in physical fear but in an appalling dread that some other man than he, wearing his clothes and his flesh, would come out of that door again. His heart came to a standstill, and then Hanaud pushed him gently into the passage. The door was closed behind them, an almost inaudible sound told him that now the door was locked.

"Listen!" Hanaud whispered sharply. His trained ear had caught a sound in the house above them. And in a second Frobisher heard it too, a sound regular and continuous and very slight, but in that uninhabited house filled with uttermost blackness, very daunting. Gradually the explanation dawned upon Jim.

"It's a clock ticking," he said under his breath.

"Yes! A clock ticking away in the empty house!" returned Hanaud. And though his answer was rather breathed than whispered, there was a queer thrill in it the sound of which Jim could not mistake. The hunter had picked up his spoor. Just beyond the quarry would come in view.

Suddenly a thread of light gleamed along the passage, lit up a short flight of stairs and a door on the right at the head of them, and went out again. Hanaud slipped his electric torch back into his pocket and, passing Moreau, took the lead. The door at the head of the stairs opened with a startling whine of its hinges. Frobisher stopped with his heart in his throat, though what he feared he could not have told even himself. Again the thread of light shone, and this time it explored. The three found themselves in a stone-flagged hall.

Hanaud crossed it, extinguished his torch and opened a door. A broken shutter, swinging upon a hinge, enabled them dimly to see a gallery which stretched away into the gloom. The faint light penetrating from the window showed them a high double door leading to some room at the back of the house. Hanaud stole over the boards and laid his ear to the panel. In a little while he was satisfied; his hand dropped to the knob and a leaf of the door opened noiselessly. Once more the torch glowed. Its beam played upon the high ceiling, the tall windows shrouded in heavy curtains of red silk brocade, and revealed to Frobisher's amazement a room which had a look of daily use. All was orderly and clean, the furniture polished and in good repair; there were fresh flowers in the vases, whose perfume filled the air; and it was upon the marble chimney-piece of this room that the clock ticked.

The room was furnished with lightness and elegance, except for one fine and massive press, with double doors in marquetry, which occupied a recess near to the fireplace. Girandoles with mirrors and gilt frames, now fitted with electric lights, were fixed upon the walls, with a few pictures in water-colour. A chandelier glittering with lustres hung from the ceiling, an Empire writing-table stood near the window, a deep-cushioned divan stretched along the wall opposite the fire-place. So much had Frobisher noticed when the light again went out. Hanaud closed the door upon the room again.

"We shall be hidden in the embrasure of any of these windows," Hanaud whispered, when they were once more in the long gallery. "No light will be shown here with that shutter hanging loose, we may be sure. Meanwhile let us watch and be very silent."

They took their stations in the deep shadows by the side of the window with the broken shutter. They could see dimly the courtyard and the great carriage doors in the wall at the end of it, and they waited; Jim Frobisher under such a strain of dread and expectancy that each second seemed an hour, and he wondered at the immobility of his companions. The only sound of breathing that he heard came from his own lungs.

In a while Hanaud laid a hand upon his sleeve, and the clasp of the hand tightened and tightened. Motionless though he stood like a man in a seizure, Hanaud too was in the grip of an intense excitement. For one of the great leaves of the courtyard door was opening silently. It opened just a little way and as silently closed again. But some one had slipped in—so vague and swift and noiseless a figure that Jim would have believed his imagination had misled him but for a thicker blot of darkness at the centre of the great door. There some one stood now who had not stood there a minute before, as silent and still as any of the watchers in the gallery, and more still than one. For Hanaud moved suddenly away on the tips of his toes into the deepest of the gloom and, sinking down upon his heels, drew his watch from his pocket. He drew his coat closely about it and for a fraction of a second flashed his torchlight on the dial. It was now five minutes past twelve.