THE ROOF SPACES

As the fans in the circular aperture of the inner room rotated and permitted glimpses of the night, dim sounds drifted in thereby.  And Graham, standing underneath, was startled by the sound of a voice.

He peered up and saw in the intervals of the rotation, dark and dim, the face and shoulders of a man regarding him.  Then a dark hand was extended, the swift vane struck it, swung round and beat on with a little brownish patch on the edge of its thin blade, and something began to fall therefrom upon the floor, dripping silently.

Graham looked down, and there were spots of blood at his feet.  He looked up again in a strange excitement.  The figure had gone.

He remained motionless—­his every sense intent upon the flickering patch of darkness.  He became aware of some faint, remote, dark specks floating lightly through the outer air.  They came down towards him, fitfully, eddyingly, and passed aside out of the uprush from the fan.  A gleam of light flickered, the specks flashed white, and then the darkness came again.  Warmed and lit as he was, he perceived that it was snowing within a few feet of him.

Graham walked across the room and came back to the ventilator again.  He saw the head of a man pass near.  There was a sound of whispering.  Then a smart blow on some metallic substance, effort, voices, and the vanes stopped.  A gust of snowflakes whirled into the room, and vanished before they touched the floor.  “Don’t be afraid,” said a voice.

Graham stood under the vane.  “Who are you?” he whispered.

For a moment there was nothing but a swaying of the fan, and then the head of a man was thrust cautiously into the opening.  His face appeared nearly inverted to Graham; his dark hair was wet with dissolving flakes of snow upon it.  His arm went up into the darkness holding something unseen.  He had a youthful face and bright eyes, and the veins of his forehead were swollen.  He seemed to be exerting himself to maintain his position.

For several seconds neither he nor Graham spoke.

“You were the Sleeper?” said the stranger at last.

“Yes,” said Graham.  “What do you want with me?”

“I come from Ostrog, Sire.”

“Ostrog?”

The man in the ventilator twisted his head round so that his profile was towards Graham.  He appeared to be listening.  Suddenly there was a hasty exclamation, and the intruder sprang back just in time to escape the sweep of the released fan.  And when Graham peered up there was nothing visible but the slowly falling snow.

It was perhaps a quarter of an hour before anything returned to the ventilator.  But at last came the same metallic interference again; the fans stopped and the face reappeared.  Graham had remained all this time in the same place, alert and tremulously excited.

“Who are you?  What do you want?” he said.

“We want to speak to you, Sire,” said the intruder.  “We want—­I can’t hold the thing.  We have been trying to find a way to you—­these three days.”