The monkey trees on the upper terrace, too, were visible outside against the sky, and the solemn crests of the wellingtonias on the terraces below.  The enormous dock on the mantelpiece ticked very slowly, as though its machinery were running down, and I made out the pale round patch that was its face.  Resisting my first inclination to turn the lights up—­my hand had gone so far as to finger the friendly knob—­I crossed the room so carefully that no single board creaked, nor a single chair, as I rested a hand upon its back, moved on the parquet flooring.  I turned neither to the right nor left, nor did I once look back.

I went towards the long corridor filled with priceless objets d’art, that led through various antechambers into the spacious music-room, and only at the mouth of this corridor did I next halt a moment in uncertainty.  For this long corridor, lit faintly by high windows on the left from the verandah, was very narrow, owing to the mass of shelves and fancy tables it contained.  It was not that I feared to knock over precious things as I went, but, that, because of its ungenerous width, there would be no room to pass another person—­if I met one.  And the certainty had suddenly come upon me that somewhere in this corridor another person at this actual moment stood.  Here, somehow, amid all this dead atmosphere of furniture and impersonal emptiness, lay the hint of a living human presence; and with such conviction did it come upon me, that my hand instinctively gripped the pistol in my pocket before I could even think.  Either some one had passed along this corridor just before me, or some one lay waiting at its farther end—­withdrawn or flattened into one of the little recesses, to let me pass.  It was the person who had opened the door.  And the blood ran from my heart as I realized it.

It was not courage that sent me on, but rather a strong impulsion from behind that made it impossible to retreat:  the feeling that a throng pressed at my back, drawing nearer and nearer; that I was already half surrounded, swept, dragged, coaxed into a vast prison-house where there was wailing and gnashing of teeth, where their worm dieth not and their fire is not quenched.  I can neither explain nor justify the storm of irrational emotion that swept me as I stood in that moment, staring down the length of the silent corridor towards the music-room at the far end, I can only repeat that no personal bravery sent me down it, but that the negative emotion of fear was swamped in this vast sea of pity and commiseration for others that surged upon me.

My senses, at least, were no whit confused; if anything, my brain registered impressions with keener accuracy than usual.  I noticed, for instance, that the two swinging doors of baize that cut the corridor into definite lengths, making little rooms of the spaces between them, were both wide-open—­in the dim light no mean achievement.  Also that the fronds of a palm plant, some ten feet in front of me, still stirred gently from the air of someone who had recently gone past them.  The long green leaves waved to and fro like hands.  Then I went stealthily forward down the narrow space, proud even that I had this command of myself, and so carefully that my feet made no sound upon the Japanese matting on the floor.