Thus was hatched in my brain the notion of forcing an entrance into that banned house.  I was an idle boy, foot-loose and free to do whatever mad mischief presented itself.  Here was the house just across the street.

Neglected as it was, it remained the most pretentious edifice in the row, being large and flaunting a half-defaced coat of arms over the door.  Such a house might well boast two entrances.  I hoped it did, for there was no use in trying to batter down this door with the eye of the Rue Coupejarrets upon me.  I turned along the side street, and after exploring several muck-heaped alleys found one that led me into a small square court bounded on three sides by a tall house with shuttered windows.

Fortune was favouring me.  But how to gain entrance?  The two doors were both firmly fastened.  The windows on the ground floor were small, high, and iron-shuttered.  Above, one or two shutters swung half open, but I could not climb the smooth wall.  Yet I did not despair; I was not without experience of shutters.  I selected one closed not quite tight, leaving a crack for my knife-blade.  I found the hook inside, got my dagger under it, and at length drove it up.  The shutter creaked shrilly open.

A few good blows knocked in the casement.  I followed.

I found myself in a small room bare of everything but dust.  From this, once a porter’s room, I fancied, I passed out into a hallway dimly lighted from the open window behind me.  The hall was large, paved with black and white marbles; at the end a stately stairway mounted into mysterious gloom.

My heart jumped into my mouth and I cringed back in terror, a choked cry rasping my throat.  For, as I crossed the hall, peering into the dimness, I descried, stationed on the lowest stair with upraised bludgeon, a man.

For a second I stood in helpless startlement, voiceless, motionless, waiting for him to brain me.  Then my half-uttered scream changed to a quavering laugh, as my eyes, becoming used to the gloom, discovered my bogy to be but a figure carved in wood, holding aloft a long since quenched flambeau.

I blushed with shame, yet I cannot say that now I felt no fear.  I thought of the panic-stricken women, the doomed men, who had fled at the sword’s point up these very stairs.  The silence seemed to shriek at me, and I half thought I saw fear-maddened eyes peering out from the shadowed corners.  Yet for all that—­nay, because of that—­I would not give up the adventure.  I went back into the little room and carefully closed the shutter, lest some other meddler should spy my misdeed.  Then I set my feet on the stair.

If the half-light before had been full of eery terror, it was naught to the blackness now.  My hand on the rail was damp.  Yet I mounted steadily.

Up one flight I climbed, groped in the hot dark for the foot of the next flight, and went on.  Suddenly, above, I heard a noise.  I came to an instant halt.  All was as still as the tomb.  I listened; not a breath broke the silence.  It never occurred to me to imagine a rat in this house of the dead, and the noise shook me.  With a sick feeling about my heart I went on again.