Evidently the housemaid’s tale to Larry about the discharge of the servants was correct, and we explored the rest of the basement with more confidence that we were alone in it. It was quite deserted.
Presently, off the hall-way running the entire length of the basement floor, we found the stairs leading up to the floor above. Larry put up a restraining hand here, and we paused listening for several minutes and peering up into the darkness. But aside from the tiny creaks and soft thuds always to be heard at night in an old house, the floor above was as silent as the basement. I could hear my own heart thumping away as I listened.
At last Larry gave the signal and we began to creep silently upward. A board snapped suddenly underfoot and we both stopped and listened for a while, but nothing happened, and presently we started on again, raising and putting down each foot with infinite care until we stood in the big, carpeted hallway above, staring cautiously about us.
Larry had put out his torch when we started up the basement steps. But in the upper hall enough light filtered in from near-by arc-lights in the street to show us the dim outlines of furniture already familiar to me from several visits to Mrs. Fawcette’s house.
It was an eerie sensation standing there at night and in darkness, on such a search, in this hall which I had only known as a guest, when it was bright with lights and color and noisy with laughter and the babble of voices. But the object of my search and my anxiety over Natalie swept over me again, and I reached out in the darkness and touched Larry’s arm impatiently. He turned and put his lips against my ear.
“There’s nobody on this floor, I think,” he whispered. “But we’ll give a look round on the chance, sor. ’Tis a bad thing to lave any one at the back av ye, to cut off yer retrate maybe.”
We crept along the hall, peering into darkness that was, as I knew, drawing-room, dining-room, morning-room and study. But they were all deserted. We knew that there was some one in the house, in all probability, because of the light we had seen from the front. But evidently we had not many people to deal with, at any rate.
As before, we halted, listening, at the foot of the stairs which led up to the next floor. It was well after midnight by now and the street outside, and indeed the whole city, had grown quiet, but in spite of the stillness we could hear no sound from above.
“Come on, sor,” whispered Larry, and hand in hand we crept up the thickly carpeted stairs, keeping close to the wall where the steps were less likely to creak. And as we advanced the black darkness that was the upper hall seemed to creep down and envelop us like an intangible cloud.
But in spite of the sinister element with which my imagination endowed the darkness, the bedrooms, bathrooms and the library on that floor also were silent and untenanted. And with the urge of a growing impatience to have done with our search and be gone, we mounted another well-carpeted flight as silently as before.