“Who’s there?” he cried; then his eye fell on Barrant, advancing swiftly from the darkness towards the light. “What do you want?” he said. “How did you get in?”
Barrant looked past him into the room. There was a litter of papers on the table and shelves, as he had last seen it, but it did not seem to him that anything had been disturbed. The door of the death chamber opposite was closed.
“What are you doing up here?” he said sternly.
Thalassa did not deign to parley. “What do you want?” he repeated, looking steadily at the detective.
“Did you hear what I said to you?” angrily demanded Barrant. “Were you not told not to interfere with these rooms in any way? You have no right up here.”
“More right than you have to come into a house like a thief,” retorted Thalassa coldly. “I have my work to do. The place must be looked after, whether I’m spied on or not.”
“I advise you not to take that tone with me,” replied the detective. “As you are here, you had better come into this room again, and shut the door behind you. I have some questions I want to put to you.”
Thalassa followed Barrant into the room and stood by the table, the rays of the swinging-lamp throwing his brown face into sharp outline. “What do you want to know?” he asked.
“I want you to tell me everything that happened in this house on the night your master was found dead.”
“There’s not much to tell,” began Thalassa slowly. “When it happened I was down in the cellar, breaking some coal. I heered my wife call out to me from the kitchen. I went up from the cellar, and she was standing at the kitchen door, shaking like a leaf with fright. She said there’d been a terrible crash right over her head in Mr. Turold’s study. I took a lamp and went upstairs, and knocked at the door, but I got no reply. I knocked three times as loud as I could, but there wasn’t a sound. At that I gets afeered myself, so I put on my hat and coat to go across to the churchtown to fetch Dr. Ravenshaw. Then a knock come to the front door, and when I opened the door there was the doctor and Mr. and Mrs. Pendleton.”