Guided in the darkness by a slight breeze which still came through the window, though the door was now shut, I shuffled across the uncarpeted floor, groping with hands held out before me as I moved.
In a moment I brushed against a table, then struck my shin on something which proved to be the leg of a chair lying over-turned on the floor. I pushed it out of the way, but had gone on no more than three or four steps when I caught my foot in a rug which had got twisted in a heap round the fallen chair. I disentangled myself from its coils, only to slip and almost lose my balance by stepping into some spilled liquid which lay thick and greasy on the bare boards.
The warm hopefulness which I had brought into this dark, silent room was chilled and dying now.
“I’m afraid there’s been a struggle here,” I thought. And if there had been a struggle—what of the treaty?
There seemed to be a good deal of the spilled liquid, for as I felt my way along, more anxious than ever for light, the floor was still wet and slippery; and then, in the midst of the puddle, I stumbled over a thing that was heavy and soft to the touch of my foot.
A queer tingling, like the sting of a thousand tiny electric needles prickled through my veins, for even before I stooped and laid my hand on that barrier which was so heavy and yet so soft as it stopped my path, I knew what it would prove to be.
It was as if I could see through the dark, to what it hid. But though there was no surprise left, there was a shock of horror as my fingers touched an arm, a throat, an upturned face. And my fingers were wet, as I knew my boots must be. And I knew, too, with what they were wet.
I’m ashamed to say that, after the first shock of the discovery, my impulse was to get away, and out of the whole business, in which, for reasons which concerned others even more than myself, it would be unpleasant to be involved, just at this time especially. I could go downstairs now, past the sleeping concierge, and with luck no one need ever know that I had been in this dark room of death.
But as quickly as the impulse came, it went. I must stop here and search for the treaty, no matter what happened, until I had found it or made sure it was not to be found; I must not think of escape. If there were matches in the room, well and good; if not, I must go elsewhere for them, and come back. It was a grim task, but it had to be done.
Somehow, I got to the mantelpiece; and there luckily, among a litter of pipes and bottles and miscellaneous rubbish, I did lay my hand on a broken cup containing a few matches. I struck one, which showed me on the mantel an end of a candle standing up in a bed of its own grease. I lighted it, and not until the flame was burning brightly did I look round.