“It’s locked, but not bolted like the door in front,” he whispered. “I can manage this.”
Jim Frobisher heard the tiniest possible rattle of a bunch of keys as Hanaud drew it from his pocket, and then not a noise of any kind whilst Hanaud stooped above the lock. Yet within half a minute the door slowly opened. It opened upon a passage as black as that room above their heads. Hanaud stepped noiselessly into the passage. Jim Frobisher followed him with a heart beating high in excitement. What had happened in that lighted room upstairs and in the dark room behind it? Why didn’t Jean Cladel come down and open the door upon the street of Gambetta? Why didn’t they hear Nicolas Moreau’s soft whistle or the sound of his voice? Hanaud stepped back past Jim Frobisher and shut the door behind them and locked it again.
“You haven’t an electric torch with you, of course?” Hanaud whispered.
“No,” replied Jim.
“Nor I. And I don’t want to strike a match. There’s something upstairs which frightens me.”
You could hardly hear the words. They were spoken as though the mere vibration of the air they caused would carry a message to the rooms above.
“We’ll move very carefully. Keep a hand upon my coat,” and Hanaud went forward. After he had gone a few paces he stopped.
“There’s a staircase here on my right. It turns at once. Mind not to knock your foot on the first step,” he whispered over his shoulder; and a moment later, he reached down and, taking hold of Jim’s right arm, laid his hand upon a balustrade. Jim lifted his foot, felt for and found the first tread of the stairs, and mounted behind Hanaud. They halted on a little landing just above the door by which they had entered the house.
In front of them the darkness began to thin, to become opaque rather than a black, impenetrable hood drawn over their heads. Jim understood that in front of him was an open door and that the faint glimmer came from that open window on their left hand beyond the door.
Hanaud passed through the doorway into the room. Jim followed and was already upon the threshold, when Hanaud stumbled and uttered a cry. No doubt the cry was low, but coming so abruptly upon their long silence it startled Frobisher like the explosion of a pistol. It seemed that it must clash through Dijon like the striking of a clock.
But nothing followed. No one stirred, no one cried out a question. Silence descended upon the house again, impenetrable, like the darkness a hood upon the senses. Jim was tempted to call out aloud himself, anything, however childish, so that he might hear a voice speaking words, if only his own voice. The words came at last, from Hanaud and from the inner end of the room, but in an accent which Jim did not recognise.
“Don’t move! … There is something. … I told you I was frightened. … Oh!” and his voice died away in a sigh.
Jim could hear him moving very cautiously. Then he almost screamed aloud. For the shutters at the window slowly swung to and the room was once more shrouded in black.
“Who’s that?” Jim whispered violently, and Hanaud answered:
“It’s only me—Hanaud. I don’t want to show a light here yet with that window open. God knows what dreadful thing has happened here. Come just inside the room and shut the door behind you.”
Jim obeyed, and having moved his position, could see a line of yellow light, straight and fine as if drawn by a pencil, at the other end of the room on the floor. There was a door there, a door into the front room where they had seen the light go up from the street of Gambetta.
Jim Frobisher had hardly realised that before the door was burst open with a crash. In the doorway, outlined against the light beyond, appeared the bulky frame of Hanaud.
“There is nothing here,” he said, standing there blocking up the doorway with his hands in his pockets. “The room is quite empty.”
That room, the front room—yes! But between Hanaud’s legs the light trickled out into the dark room behind, and here, on the floor illuminated by a little lane of light, Jim, with a shiver, saw a clenched hand and a forearm in a crumpled shirtsleeve.
“Turn round,” he cried to Hanaud. “Look!”
Hanaud turned.
“Yes,” he said quietly. “That is what I stumbled against.”
He found a switch in the wall close to the door and snapped it down. The dark room was flooded with light, and on the floor, in the midst of a scene of disorder, a table pushed back here, a chair overturned there, lay the body of a man. He wore no coat. He was in his waistcoat and his shirt sleeves, and he was crumpled up with a horrible suggestion of agony like a ball, his knees towards his chin, his head forward towards his knees. One arm clutched the body close, the other, the one which Jim had seen, was flung out, his hand clenched in a spasm of intolerable pain. And about the body there was such a pool of blood as Jim Frobisher thought no body could contain.
Jim staggered back with his hands clasped over his eyes. He felt physically sick.
“Then he killed himself on our approach,” he cried with a groan.
“Who?” answered Hanaud steadily.
“Jean Cladel. The man who whispered to us from behind the window.”
Hanaud stunned him with a question.
“What with?”
Jim drew his hands slowly from before his face and forced his eyes to their service. There was no gleam of a knife, or a pistol, anywhere against the dark background of the carpet.
“You might think that he was a
