The billiard-room door was just outside in the passage, and there could not be the least doubt that a game was going on. I could hear the click-click of the balls as plainly as possible. It surprised me a little, but it did not startle me. We had several staying in the house, and I supposed two of them had fancied a game. All the time that I was drinking the stout and munching my biscuit the game went on—click, click-click, click. Everybody has heard the sound hundreds of times standing outside the glass-pannelled door of a billiard-room and waiting for the stroke before entering. No other sound is quite like it.
Suddenly the sound ceased. The game was over. I had nothing on but my pyjamas and a pair of slippers, and I thought I would get upstairs again before the players came out. I did not want to stand there shivering and listening to complaints about the table. I locked the bar, and took a glance at the billiard-room door as I was about to pass it. What I saw made me stop short. The glass panels of the door were as black as my Sunday hat, except where they reflected the light of my candle. The room, then, was not lit up, and people do not play billiards in the dark. After a second or two I tried the handle. The door was locked. It was the only door to the room.
I said to myself: "I'll go on back to bed. It must have been my fancy, and there was nobody playing billiards at all." I moved a step away, and then I said to myself again: "I know perfectly well that a game was being played. I'm only making excuses because I'm in a funk."
That settled it. Having driven myself to it, I moved pretty quickly. I shoved in my pass-key, opened the door, and said "Anybody there?" in a moderately loud voice that sounded somehow like another man's. I am very much afraid that I should have jumped if there had come any answer to my challenge, but all was silent. I took a look round. The cover was on the table. An old screen was leaning against it; it had been put there to be out of the way. As I moved my candle the shadows of things slithered across the floor and crept up the walls. I noticed that the windows were properly fastened, and then, as I held my candle high, the marking-board seemed to jump out of the darkness. The score recorded was sixty-six—forty-eight.
I shut the door, locked it again, and went up to my room. I did these things slowly and deliberately, but I was frightened and I was puzzled. One is not at one's best in the small hours.
The next morning I tackled Silas.
"Silas," I said, "what do you do when gentlemen ask for the billiard-room?"
"Well, sir," said Silas, "I put them off if I can. Mr Harry directed me to, the place being so much out of order."
"Quite so," I said. "And when you can't put them off?"
"Then they just try it, sir, and the table puts them off. It's very bad. There's been no game played there since we came."