“Mr. Bradbury, sir,” he quavered.
“Your ears are not as sharp as they might be, Thrale,” said Mr. Bradbury, drily. “Pray, open the door to Mr. Craike and me, and tell your master that we have the honour to wait upon him in obedience to his wish.”
Thrale answered in that shaking voice of his—though his eyes looked keenly and wickedly at me, “To be sure, gentlemen, to be sure! Pray step inside!”—and opened the door slowly into the hall. It was a dark and gloomy vault; ere old Thrale closed the door, I caught a glimpse of a hall panelled all in oak, of canvases mouldering in mildewed frames, and of a wide black stairway opposite the door, leading up into darkness. If fanlight above the door or windows at the head of the stair should have lit the hall, all light was kept out by curtains, shutters, or netted ivy; the darkness of night fell with the closing of the door.
Mr. Bradbury, grasping my arm hurriedly, cried out, “Gad, how dark and cold this house is, Thrale! I’m not prepared to take my death of a chill waiting here till you announce us to your master. Go ahead of us, man, and show us into his room immediately—d’ye hear me?” He adopted a tone of brusque good humour, though well I understood his apprehension of what might yet befall me, if we were left standing in the dark. The dark hung mysterious all about us; I could feel cold draughts of air; I believed that I could hear furtive whisperings and footsteps, doors softly opening and closing, hangings waving; all this might have been the wind without. Certainly I heard Thrale chuckle behind me, as he locked the door and fixed the chain; he answered Mr. Bradbury, “As you wish, sir.”
“Strike a light, Thrale,—d’ye hear me?—a light. I’ve no mind to break a leg or my neck in the dark! A light, Thrale!”
“Certainly, sir,” Thrale’s answer floated back to us, as he flitted away in the dark.
“Why, damn the fellow, he’s leaving us after all,” gasped Mr. Bradbury. “Thrale, you hear me? Thrale! Come back, man!”
But there came no sound save of the whisperings, gliding footsteps, rustlings of hangings waving in the dark, or of the ghostly wind that seemed to haunt the House of Craike. Mr. Bradbury’s left hand grasped my arm; I understood that his right groped in his coat pocket for his pistol. The impress of the blackness and gloom of the house was upon me, while I had good cause to dread my uncle’s plotting; I stood straining my eyes and ears in the darkness, imagining that figures advanced upon us in the dark. Mr. Bradbury drew me back against the door, muttering, “By the Lord, if the old rogue’s not back presently, I’ll take upon me to make a dash for the stair and force my way into the master’s room.”
But he was silent, as a glimmer of light showed through the darkness. Thrale was returning, carrying a silver candlestick; his face was villainous and livid in the pale light.
“Where the deuce have you been, Thrale?” cried Mr. Bradbury. “Didn’t you hear me call after you?”