“No, I should think not. Well, carry on. I’m bound this way.” He shouted the last words in a bristling wind, and set off walking toward the north.
“Good hunting,” I called after him.
I had now been on the roof for nearly five minutes and had equalled the span of time I spent there before. I returned to my chamber.
I laid my watch on the table and timed my own part of the programme, to make as near the proper rapprochement with Soames as I could. I allowed half a minute for divesting myself of coat and shirt, and as long again for my struggle with the oak chest and my mishap with the stool. (The handle of the chest was gone now; no use repeating that fracas.) Thirty seconds more of searching for a place to attach my strop, perhaps the remainder of the minute spent in that unhappy stropping (for luck and devilment I gave the curlicued bracket a jerk and a smash), fifteen seconds to stare like a fool at the place where I had formerly cut my finger, a few moments for crossing to the door and listening for Soames—
My heart missed a beat or two. Someone was climbing the stairs!
It was silly of me, of course, to be taken aback by the very thing I was waiting for, I had heard no one but Soames himself ascending at his proper time.
But the slam of the door down below and the deep brawling laughter which followed— Dear God! they, too, reverberated, and the sound of that inhuman mirth now held a ghastly message which it had not on the first occasion.
And early above the sound of the laughter had I heard a single sharp explosion, like the report of a firearm?
I leaped across to the window. This time there was no fan of light spreading from the Hall, but I saw indecipherable forms criss-crossing on the lawn, and the sound of conflicting cries floated up in the lapse of the wind.
To leave the chamber, to reach the stair-head, took but a second or two. Again I saw Soames green as an old statue, a grotesque caricature of Aquarius, stony-lipped with mortal fear, the little empty water-can dangling from his hand.