No movement, no creaking, in the dense shadow: as though the gallery itself were holding its breath. A window-frame rattled in the rising wind. Somebody had turned those lights out very recently. He had that feeling which sometimes comes to those who sit in old houses with darkness beyond the door: a feeling that the darkness shut him off from human kind, and that he must not venture beyond the light of his own fire lest there should be things he would not like to see. And always, irrationally, his mind would go back to the door of King Charles's Room just across the way. He had been standing here, in this spot, almost in this attitude, when he heard this morning the sound that had brought about his first meeting with Katharine Bohun. This morning, when Louise Carewe in her delirium had tried to strangle…
It was something like that sound, yet with a different quality. Somebody's words came back to his mind in describing the scene last night when X had tried to push Marcia Tait down the steep dangerous staircase of King Charles's Room: "A sound like a giggle," when the candle went out. You had only to think of the insensate fury with which the murderer had smashed in Marcia Tait's skull to walk warily when unexpected darkness came. For there grew on him an irrational conviction that the murderer was prowling now. Who was it? Who…?
He stepped across the gallery, touched the door of the King's Room, and almost jumped out of a crawling skin when heavy footsteps creaked far down the gallery.
"Who's been turnin' all the lights out?" sounded H. M.'s reassuring growl. "Man can't see the edge of his glasses in front of his, face. Hey! See if you can find a switch, Masters."
Something clicked, and a dull glow sprang up. H. M. and the chief inspector stopped as they saw him.
"Hullo!" said H. M. He lumbered down and blinked sourly on his nephew. "What's the matter with you, hey? Burn me, you got a funny look on your face!" He craned his neck round and saw Katharine in the doorway. "You and the little gal playin' games? Evenin', Miss."
"Did you hear anything?"
"Hear anything? You got the wind up, son. I've been hearin' queer noises all day, and most of 'em come from my own head. I'm tired and I want a large brandy and nobody under the Almighty's canopy could get me into tails tonight even if I had 'em along. But there's something I've got to do. "
"We'll see," said Bennett. He opened the door of the room, reached quickly round to switch on the lights, and braced himself as he stepped inside.
Nothing. King Charles's Room, John Bohun's room, lay heavy and swept clean now: the clothes put away, the gray carpet significantly scrubbed at one spot near the big center table. The heavy black velvet draperies were drawn back from the windows, and moved slightly in a strong draught.