All was as still as a vault.
My eyes had now grown sufficiently accustomed to the dark to enable me to make out that I was on a wide landing on to which several rooms opened. I felt my way round and listened cautiously at each. Not a sound. Two of the doors were ajar, but each of the rooms was in darkness.
I hesitated when I reached the stairs again what to do. That stumbling footstep below had been full of unpleasant suggestion. But it was useless to stop where I was, so I continued my descent, more cautiously and slowly than before.
When I reached the next floor I paused again, waiting a long time and straining my ears for some clue to the baffling situation. Not hearing a sound, I again made a circuit of the landing, feeling my way by the wall. There were three doors here, and each was ajar, and all three rooms in darkness.
Feeling my way back to the stairs, I stumbled against a low pedestal placed at some little distance from the wall. There was a large plant on it and in preventing it from falling, the leaves shook with a rustling noise almost disconcerting in the dead stillness of the house.
I crouched as still as a statue behind it, listening and holding my breath again. Then I heard other rustling with a curiously regular beat or infinitesimal throbbing. For a long time this puzzled me; until at length I discovered that the throbbing was that of my own heart and the rustling due to the movement of my coat lapel against the stiff edge of my collar.
I crept on then to the stairs and descended, still using the same caution. I reached the bottom. I was now in the hall. The feel of the marble under my foot told me this.
I remembered the direction of the front door and turned toward it.
But I had not taken two steps in its direction before I was seized, a hand was pressed on my mouth before I could utter a sound, and my hands were wrenched back violently and pinioned behind me.