Something had fallen, crashingly, within the house.
It might be some object insecurely fastened which had been detached in the breeze from an open window. And, realising this, I waited and listened.
For some minutes the wind and the waves alone represented sound. Then my ears, attuned to this stormy conflict, and sensitive to anything apart from it, detected a faint scratching and tapping.
My room was the first along the corridor leading to the west wing, and therefore the nearest to the landing immediately above the hall. I determined that this mysterious disturbance proceeded from downstairs. At another time, perhaps, I might have neglected it, but to-night, and so recently following upon Lorian’s story of the attempt upon his father’s studio, I found myself keenly alive to the burglarious possibilities of Ragstaff.
I got out of bed, put on my slippers, and, having extinguished the candle, was about to open the door when I observed a singular thing.
A strong light—which could not be that of the moon, for ordinarily the corridor beyond was dark—shone under the door!
Even as I looked in amazement it was gone.
Very softly I turned the knob.
Careful as I was, it slipped from my grasp with a faint click. To this, I think, I owed my failure to see more than I did see. But what I saw was sufficiently remarkable.
Cloud-banks raced across the sky tempestuously, and, as I peered over the oaken balustrade down into the hall, one of these impinged upon the moon’s disc and, within the space of two seconds or less, had wholly obscured it. Upon where a long, rectangular patch of light, splashed with lozenge-shaped shadows spread from a mullioned window across the polished floor, crept a band of blackness—widened—claimed half—claimed the whole—and left the hall in darkness.