But he cut me short, pretending to misunderstand what I was about to say.
"In one instant so you shall. You shall be the first to break your mirror, as you suggested."
"As I suggested!"
"Only give us time, and all your suggestions shall be acted on. You will find, my dear Short, if you will only have a little patience, that the whole affair has been planned on the lines which you yourself laid down. Gentlemen, Mr Augustus Short, as our President, will lead the way."
I do not know exactly what happened. I fancy that Gardiner jerked my arm, anyhow, the mirror slipped from my grasp, and although I certainly did not "dash" it to the ground, directly it touched the floor it was shivered into fragments with quite an extraordinary amount of noise. My conviction is that those mirrors were specially and artfully arranged to smash with a kind of explosion directly they came into contact with a resisting substance. I caught myself stammering, while I was still bewildered by the din the thing had made,--
"So much for the bad luck a broken mirror is supposed to bring!"
I have a vague idea that the others did as I had done, but my impressions were of such a variegated hue that for some seconds I hardly knew what was taking place. I found myself in an apartment the lights of which were shaded by globes of a peculiarly ghastly green. The walls were hung in black. Mottoes sprawled across them. I noted two, "The Thirteen Club laughs at luck." "Down with all Omens." There was a table in the centre shrouded in the same funereal shade. One presumed that it was laid for dinner. But the articles upon it were of such an unusual sort, and were arranged in such fantastic forms, that the thing was but presumption. Gardiner, however, did what I suppose he considered his best to make the matter clear.
"I think, Mr President and Gentlemen, you will agree with me that this is a fitting environment for such a function as the inaugural dinner of the Thirteen Club."
I, for one, disagreed with him entirely. But at that instant I found myself without the capacity to say so. To be frank, the look of the whole thing had surprised me into speechlessness. Gardiner went on in a tone of voice which suggested that he was enjoying himself immensely. If that were the case then I am convinced that he in his enjoyment was singular.
"We find ourselves surrounded by the proverbial attributes of gloom. The lighting is uncanny, it lends to us all the attributes of sick men. The walls and tables are decked with the traditional trappings of the tomb. The only ornaments upon the festive board are skeletons, cross-bones, and skulls. You will notice that the knives are crossed. The drinking cups are of funereal ebony. Beside each chair is a black cat in a black wicker cage."