'He invited me to dine with him,' Lavendale explained, 'at eight o'clock punctually. I have been waiting outside for nearly half an hour.'
She glanced at the clock and Lavendale, with a little bow, passed on.
'Perhaps he meant me to go up to his room,' he remarked, addressing Jules. 'Do you know his number?'
'Eighty-nine in the Court, sir,' the man replied. 'Shall I send up?'
'I'll go myself,' Lavendale decided.
Jules bowed and, although Lavendale did not glance around, he felt that the girl's eyes as well as the man's followed him to the door. He rang for the lift and ascended to the fourth floor, made his way down the corridor and paused before number eighty-nine. He knocked at the door—there was no reply. Then he tried the handle, which yielded at once to his touch. Inside all was darkness. He turned on the electric light and pushed open the door of the sitting-room just in front.
'Mr. Hurn!' he exclaimed, raising his voice.
There was still no reply,—a strange, brooding silence which seemed to possess subtle qualities of mystery and apprehension. Lavendale had all the courage and unshaken nerves of youth and yet at that moment he was afraid. His groped along the wall for the switch and found it with an impulse of relief. The room was flooded with soft light—Lavendale's hand seemed glued to the little brass knob. He stood there with his back to the wall, his face set, speechless. Mr. Daniel H. Hurn was seated in an easy-chair in what appeared at first to be a natural attitude. His head, however, had fallen back, and from his neck drooped the long end of a silken cord. Lavendale took one step forward and then paused again. The man's face was visible now—white, ghastly, with wide-open, sightless eyes....
The valet, who was passing down the corridor, paused and looked in at the door.
'Is there anything wrong, sir?' he asked.