He then went to the club, ordered an early dinner for two, and invited his friend Huntington Andrews to go with him. He did not go into details.
Shortly before eight he stationed Andrews across the way from 7 East Seventy-seventh Street and told him:
“If I am not back here at eight-fifteen come in after me. If you don't find me go to my house and wait until ten. My man has instructions. See my father.”
Tom was Merriwether enough to have in readiness not only an extra revolver to give to his friend, but also a heavy cane and an electric torch. Also he drove Huntington to within a hair's-breadth of death by unsatisfied curiosity.
At one minute before eight Mr. Thomas Thome Merriwether went into the house of mystery, realizing for the first time how often the mystic number seven recurred. The Bible teemed with allusions to the seven stars, the seven seals, the seven-branched candlestick, the seven mortal sins. The Greeks had Seven Wise Men and Seven Sleepers, and the Pythagoreans saw magic in all the heptamerides. And there were seven notes of music and seven primary colors, and seven hills in the Eternal City. Also, it had never before occurred to him that he was born on the seventh day of the seventh month. And now it had its effect.
He tried the door. It opened when he turned the knob. The hall was dark, but he could descry the staircase. He grasped his revolver firmly and entered.
There was a smell of undusted floors and unaired walls. The darkness thickened with each step as he climbed, compelling him to grope. And because he groped there came to him that fear which always comes with uncertainty. It permeated his soul and was intensified, without becoming more concrete, by reason of the ghostly emptiness peculiar to all unoccupied houses. The absence of furniture served merely to fill the comers with shadows that bred uneasiness. People had been there; people no longer were! The house was empty of humanity, but full of other beings—impalpable suspects that made the flesh creep! It was like death—unseen, but felt with the senses of the soul.
There was no place, decided Tom, so fit to murder people in as an empty house. His adventure now took on an aspect of reckless folly. But though he felt in this ghostly house what might be called the ghost of fear, he also felt the impelling force of an intelligent curiosity. In this young man's soul was a love of adventure, a gambler's philosophy, a reserve force of cold intelligence and warm imagination such as is found in the great explorers, the great chemists, and the great buccaneers of dollars.
That was why in the year of grace 1913 Tom Merriwether stood in the middle of the second-story front room of a house situated in a very good street, only three doors from Fifth Avenue, with his left hand outstretched, and on the open palm of it a cross with a Greek name that meant Dispeller of Darkness—in a darkness that could not be dispelled. His right hand grasped the butt of an automatic.45 loaded with elephant-stopping bullets—but of what avail was that against a knock in the head from behind?
Listening for soft footsteps, he seemed to hear them time and again—and time and again not to hear them! People nowadays, he finally decided, do not want to take other people's lives—only their money. Whereupon he once more grew calm—and intensely curious! He had not one cent of money on his person. He had left it at home intentionally.