Walter shows the way. They pass through the clerks’ office and reach the iron-bound door of the strong-room. The keyhole is rusty with age; and when Fenwick stoops and applies the key, there is a grating sound inside the lock like the grinding of teeth. As soon as the door is thrown open, Walter, with quick-beating heart, flings the light forward into the room; that strange fancy coming over him that his eyes will encounter the ghostly form of the old miser, as he had imagined him that afternoon, wrapped in the white shroud, dancing round his heap of gold. But finding nothing except dark walls, he boldly steps in. The high stool beside the old desk, where he has so often seen Silas Monk sitting and poring over large ledgers, is vacant, and the ledgers are lying about on the desk, closed.
‘Now,’ says Fenwick, ‘give me the lantern.’
Walter complies, and the detective flashes the light about from ceiling to floor. Suddenly the two men are startled by a stifled cry. Fenwick casts his lantern angrily upon Walter’s face, as though he suspects him of having uttered it. The clerk’s eyes are terror-stricken, and his face deadly pale.
‘What’s that?’ asks the detective.
Walter clutches at Fenwick’s wrist. ‘It is the cry which I heard this afternoon.’
‘What do you mean?’
The light of the lantern is still on Walter’s face as he answers: ‘I was seated at my desk. The cry came from this room; but I thought it was a fancy. At that moment Mr Armytage sent for me, and I was afraid, if I mentioned it, that the clerks would laugh at me.’
‘Why?’ asks Fenwick, with surprise. ‘Do you believe in ghosts?’
‘N—no,’ says Walter with some hesitation. ‘But that cry did seem rather ghostly too.’
‘Nonsense! It is Silas Monk.’