Then, suddenly, I leaned over to the Chief and whispered in his ear. “Chief, this must be just about over the room of the voices. We turned to the left once, you know, and then to the right again. And we’ve gone just about that far.”
“By Jove, you’re right,” the Chief whispered back. “Well, here goes, anyway!” And he stepped forward, tried the handle gently and then abruptly flung open the door.
Our eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness, and the bright light revealed by the open door blinded us for a moment. But as we grew accustomed to the glare we realized that we were staring into a regular laboratory. Glass jars, retorts, burners, queer-looking glass vessels and huge metal tanks something like those used for compressed air lined the walls on all four sides. And there were other types of apparatus with which I was totally unfamiliar.
But we had no time and no inclination for studying the inert contents of the room. For in the center of the floor stood a figure, impassively facing us, that struck a distinct chill to my heart at least. And by the way the others stopped in their tracks, I imagine they felt the same.
It was the figure of a man, tightly bandaged from neck to foot in black silk, so that only the face showed. But such a face!
Without the eyes, the thin, pallid countenance, hairless and deeply lined, seemed to express an abysmal melancholy, but a melancholy that held no human warmth. The mouth was thin and wide, the nose high arched and almost hooked, and the cheekbones unusually high. The face shadowed forth, to me at least, standing, staring in the doorway, inhuman composure, inhuman cruelty out of sheer indifference rather than sensuality, and an inhuman weariness.
But beneath heavy brows looked out eyes that caused the rest of the strange countenance to pale into insignificance. They were pale blue eyes, I think, and they had the flat quality of unglazed china. But in their depths leapt and glowed a strength, a force and a relentless ambition and conscious power that kept us standing there like a pack of children.
The pale eyes swept over us slowly, lingering on my face and then slowly swerving to the Chief. In that moment eye to eye I confess I felt an absurd desire to find a hole somewhere, crawl into it and pull it in after me. For the man’s gaze was positively hypnotic. But the moment his eyes left mine for the Chief, I tore my own eyes away from his face to his body and so broke the spell.
Each limb was wrapped tightly in spiral turns of soft black silk, and the same individual material and arrangement swathed his body. But limbs and body were slight enough and this style of dress enhanced this smallness. A moment after his eyes left mine he spoke—and we stood silent like children and listened.
“Ah, ——,” he said slowly, addressing the Chief by name, “so you have found me. Clayton was a good man for you because he is—fortunate. If it had not been for his good fortune and the fact that I was—badly served, the positions would certainly have been reversed—and before long. However, you have broken into my poor house and—I must leave it. Have you anything to say to me before I go?”