Think of it! To be calmly greeted in that fashion, in a room into which I had blundered, clad grotesquely as I was, and with that dead thing hanging above us! Idiotically enough I tried to get out an answer to the man, but I found my tongue staggering about among my teeth and doing nothing in the way of shaping words. So I stared at him with, I suppose, a very white face, and pointed to that which hung above us.
"He's very quiet, sir," said the old man, getting to his feet slowly. "I was afraid at first—I didn't understand. I was afraid of him. Think of that!" He laughed again with a laughter that was ghastly.
"Cut—cut him down!" I stammered in a whisper, holding on to the edge of the mantelshelf and beginning to feel a horrible nausea stealing over me.
He shook his head. "I can't touch him—I'm afraid again," said the old man, and backed away into a corner.
What I should have done within a minute or two I do not really know, if by chance I could have kept my reason at all, but I heard someone moving in the house, and coming towards the room in which I stood. I did not think of my danger; everything was so far removed from the ordinary that it was as though I moved and walked in some dream, from which presently, with a shudder and a sigh of relief, I should awake. Therefore, even when I heard footsteps coming towards the room I did not move, nor did it seem strange that whoever came seemed to step with something of a jaunty air, singing loudly as he moved, with a rather fine baritone voice. In just such a fashion a man flung open the door and marched straight into the room, and stopped there, surveying the picture we made, the three of us—one dead and two alive—with a pair of very bright, keen eyes.
He was a tall, thin man, with sleek black hair gone grey at the temples. He had a cleanly-shaven face, much lined and wrinkled at the corners of the eyes and of the mouth; and when he presently spoke I discovered that his lips parted quickly, showing the line of his white teeth, and yet with nothing of a smile. It was as though the lips moved mechanically in some still strong mask; only the eyes were very much alive. And after his first glance round the room I saw that his eyes rested only on me.
"Who are you? What do you want?" he demanded sharply.
I did not answer his question; I pointed weakly to the hanging man. "Aren't you going—going to do anything with him?" I blurted out.
He shrugged his shoulders. "He's dead; and the other one,"—he let his eyes rest for a moment on the old man—"the other one is as good as dead for anything he understands. The matter is between us, and perhaps I'd better hear you first."
"I can't—not with that in the room!" I whispered, striving to steady my voice.