I stepped into a fair-sized hall of modern build, paved with red tiles and lit with a small hanging-lamp.  To right and left were doors leading to the ground-floor rooms.  Along the wall by my shoulder ran a line of pegs, on which hung half-a-dozen hats and great-coats, every one of clerical shape; and full in front of me a broad staircase ran up, with a staring Brussels carpet, the colours and pattern of which I can recall as well as I can to-day’s breakfast.  Under this staircase was set a stand full of walking-sticks, and a table littered with gloves, brushes, a hand-bell, a riding-crop, one or two dog-whistles, and a bedroom candle, with tinder-box beside it.  This, with one notable exception, was all the furniture.

The exception—­which turned me cold—­was the form of a yellow mastiff dog, curled on a mat beneath the table.  The arch of his back was towards me, and one forepaw lay over his nose in a natural posture of sleep.  I leant back on the wainscotting with my eyes tightly fixed on him, and my thoughts sneaking back, with something of regret, to the storm I had come through.

But a man’s habits are not easily denied.  At the end of three minutes the dog had not moved, and I was down on the door-mat unlacing my soaked boots.  Slipping them off, and taking them in my left hand, I stood up, and tried a step towards the stairs, with eyes alert for any movement of the mastiff; but he never stirred.  I was glad enough, however, on reaching the stairs, to find them newly built, and the carpet thick.  Up I went, with a glance at every step for the table which now hid the brute’s form from me, and never a creak did I wake out of that staircase till I was almost at the first landing, when my toe caught a loose stair-rod, and rattled it in a way that stopped my heart for a moment, and then set it going in double-quick time.

I stood still with a hand on the rail.  My eyes were now on a level with the floor of the landing, out of which branched two passages—­one turning sharply to my right, the other straight in front, so that I was gazing down the length of it.  Almost at the end, a parallelogram of light fell across it from an open door.

A man who has once felt it knows there is only one kind of silence that can fitly be called “dead.”  This is only to be found in a great house at midnight.  I declare that for a few seconds after I rattled the stair-rod you might have cut the silence with a knife.  If the house held a clock, it ticked inaudibly.

Upon this silence, at the end of a minute, broke a light sound—­the tink-tink of a decanter on the rim of a wine-glass.  It came from the room where the light was.

Now perhaps it was that the very thought of liquor put warmth into my cold bones.  It is certain that all of a sudden I straightened my back, took the remaining stairs at two strides, and walked down the passage as bold as brass, without caring a jot for the noise I made.