Furious now, I ran up to the door again, and drove my gloved fist through the glass in one of the curious, six-inch-wide window panes that ran the length of the door on either side. The shivered glass jingled sharply on the polished wood of the floor inside, and I thrust in my arm up to the elbow, hoping to get at the lock on the door within. As I did so footsteps came running in the distance.
"Here! Here! What's the matter with you?" cried an imperative voice.
I had heard it before, I remembered. It was that of the eminently respectable-looking servant who had so cleverly defended his master's reputation on the occasion of my former visit to the House by the Lock.
"If you're a burglar," remarked the voice, "you'd better go away while you can. I have a revolver, and my hand is on the trigger now."
"I am no burglar," I returned. "This is not exactly the time of night to expect such gentry, is it? But you've kept me waiting long enough. I wish to see your master and mistress, whom I happen to know are here this evening, and I don't mean to go away without doing it."
The man inside chuckled.
"Nice way of announcing yourself, ain't it, sir? But as it happens you'll have to go elsewhere to see my master and the new mistress. I don't know where they are–it ain't likely I should–but I do know they aren't in this house, where there isn't a solitary soul but me. As for the time of night, that's neither here nor there, so long as I'd chosen to go to bed; and I can't dress all of a minute to please anybody that likes to come banging at the door. You deserve to be had up for damaging the house, that you do, whoever you may be."
There was a ring of virtuous indignation in the voice, and for a few seconds' length I hesitated. Perhaps, after all, the fellow was telling the truth. I was very certain of his capacity for lying, but it might well be that Wildred and Karine had not really come here. Still—
Far away a door slammed sharply, and just in time to decide me. The man had lied. He had just told me that he was alone in the house, and this one sound had unmistakably proved the falsehood. It was not the sort of noise with which the wind shuts a door, even had the wind been violent enough to do so, and windows open to admit it. The latch had been lifted by a human hand.
The servant, who was entirely out of my sight, began talking hurriedly, jabbering any nonsense, as though to cover what had happened. I listened intently, and through his chattering I fancied that I could hear–subdued with distance and intervening walls–the sound of a woman's crying.