“Very well, my love, I won’t. I’ve only this remark to make—if the mystery doesn’t take that form, it takes another, and probably a worse one. And let me tell you this. My Uncle Benjamin was a curiosity while he lived—my mother used to say that there never was such a devil’s limb as he was, and she was his only sister, and disposed to look upon his eccentricities—and they were eccentricities—with a lenient eye; and it’s my belief that he was quite as big a curiosity when he died. There were spots in his eventful life—uncommonly queer ones—which he would not wish revealed to the public eye. Unless I’m wrong, some of them are inside there; we’re almost standing in their presence now, and I wish that we were quite.”
She rattled the poker against the panels as a kind of parting salute. I had rather she had not. Every time she made a noise—and she kept on making one—it set my nerves all tingling. What with the things she said, and the way that she went on, and everything altogether, I was getting into such a state that I was beginning to hardly know whether I was standing on my head or heels. As for Pollie, she seemed in the highest possible spirits. It was incomprehensible to me how she dared. And the way she kept on talking!
“Before I’m very much older I will get the other side of you, or I’ll know the reason why; the idea of not being allowed the free run of my own premises is a trifle more than I can stand. If I have to blow you down, I’ll get you open.”
Bang, bang, she went at it again.
“It sounds hollow, doesn’t it? Perhaps that’s meant by way of a suggestion, and is intended to let us understand that it’s only a hollow mystery after all. Well, we shall see—and you shall see too, if you have curiosity enough.”
I doubted if I had. I certainly had not just then. I wished, with all my heart, that she would come away from the horrid door, which presently she did, though not at all in the spirit I should have preferred, nor with the intentions I desired.
“There’s a second Bluebeard’s chamber upstairs. I may have better luck with that; perhaps it’s not guarded with sheet iron. Uncle Benjamin must have spent a fortune at the ironmonger’s if it is, which fortune should have been mine. We’ll go and see.”
I endeavoured to expostulate.
“Pollie, let’s leave it till to-morrow. What’s the use of making any more fuss to-night. I’m dying for want of sleep.”
“Are you?” She looked at me with what struck me as being suspicious eyes; though what there was to be suspicious about is more than I can pretend to say. “But don’t you see, my dear, that if you were to have that sleep for which you’re dying, before you wake from it you may be dead. That second Bluebeard’s chamber is next our bedroom. Suppose someone were to come out of it, while we were sunk in innocent repose, and——” She drew her thumb across her throat with a gesture which made me shudder. “That wouldn’t be nice, you know.”