She closed the door. Left by himself, Henry lifted his hand once more to the marble forehead of the figure.
For the second time, he was checked on the point of setting the machinery of the hiding-place in motion. On this occasion, the interruption came from an outbreak of friendly voices in the corridor. A woman’s voice exclaimed, “Dearest Agnes, how glad I am to see you again!” A man’s voice followed, offering to introduce some friend to “Miss Lockwood.” A third voice (which Henry recognised as the voice of the manager of the hotel) became audible next, directing the housekeeper to show the ladies and gentlemen the vacant apartments at the other end of the corridor. “If more accommodation is wanted,” the manager went on, “I have a charming room to let here.” He opened the door as he spoke, and found himself face to face with Henry Westwick.
“This is indeed an agreeable surprise, sir!” said the manager cheerfully. “You are admiring our famous chimneypiece, I see. May I ask, Mr. Westwick, how you find yourself in the hotel, this time? Have the supernatural influences affected your appetite again?”
“The supernatural influences have spared me, this time,” Henry answered. “Perhaps you may yet find that they have affected some other member of the family.” He spoke gravely, resenting the familiar tone in which the manager had referred to his previous visit to the hotel. “Have you just returned?” he asked, by way of changing the topic.
“Just this minute, sir. I had the honour of travelling in the same train with friends of yours who have arrived at the hotel—Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Barville, and their travelling companions. Miss Lockwood is with them, looking at the rooms. They will be here before long, if they find it convenient to have an extra room at their disposal.”
This announcement decided Henry on exploring the hiding-place, before the interruption occurred. It had crossed his mind, when Agnes left him, that he ought perhaps to have a witness, in the not very probable event of some alarming discovery taking place. The too-familiar manager, suspecting nothing, was there at his disposal. He turned again to the Caryan figure, maliciously resolving to make the manager his witness.
“I am delighted to hear that our friends have arrived at last,” he said. “Before I shake hands with them, let me ask you a question about this queer work of art here. I see photographs of it downstairs. Are they for sale?”
“Certainly, Mr. Westwick!”
“Do you think the chimneypiece is as solid as it looks?” Henry proceeded. “When you came in, I was just wondering whether this figure here had not accidentally got loosened from the wall behind it.” He laid his hand on the marble forehead, for the third time. “To my eye, it looks a little out of the perpendicular. I almost fancied I could jog the head just now, when I touched it.” He pressed the head inwards as he said those words.
A sound of jarring iron was instantly audible behind the wall. The solid hearthstone in front of the fireplace turned slowly at the feet of the two men, and disclosed a dark cavity below. At the same moment, the strange and sickening combination of odours, hitherto associated with the vaults of the old palace and with the bedchamber beneath, now floated up from the open recess, and filled the room.
The manager started back. “Good God, Mr. Westwick!” he exclaimed, “what does this mean?”
Remembering, not only what his brother Francis had felt in the room beneath, but what the experience of Agnes had been on the previous night, Henry was determined to be on his guard. “I am as much surprised as you are,” was his only reply.
“Wait for me one moment, sir,” said the manager. “I must stop the ladies and gentlemen outside from coming in.”
He hurried away—not forgetting to close the door after him. Henry opened the window, and waited there breathing the purer air. Vague apprehensions of the next discovery to come, filled his mind for the first time. He was doubly resolved, now, not to stir a step in the investigation without a witness.
The manager returned with a wax taper in his hand, which he lighted as soon as he entered the room.
“We need fear no interruption now,” he said. “Be so kind, Mr. Westwick, as to hold the light. It is my business to find out what this extraordinary discovery means.”
Henry held the taper. Looking into the cavity, by the dim and flickering light, they both detected a dark object at the bottom of it. “I think I can reach the thing,” the manager remarked, “if I lie down, and put my hand into the hole.”
He knelt on the floor—and hesitated. “Might I ask you, sir, to give me my gloves?” he said. “They are in my hat, on the chair behind you.”
Henry gave him the gloves. “I don’t know what I may be going to take hold of,” the manager explained, smiling rather uneasily as he put on his right glove.
He stretched himself at full length on the floor, and passed his right arm into the cavity. “I can’t say exactly what I have got hold of,” he said. “But I have got it.”
Half raising himself, he drew his hand out.
The next instant, he started to his feet with a shriek of terror. A human head dropped from his nerveless grasp on the floor, and rolled to Henry’s feet. It was the hideous head that Agnes had seen hovering above her, in the vision of the night!
The two men looked at each other, both struck speechless by the same emotion of horror. The manager was the first to control himself. “See to the door, for God’s sake!” he said. “Some of the people outside
