So he reassured his spirit as he stepped carefully into the midst of the holland-covered and moveless ghosts.  On the mantelpiece to the left there still stood the electric table-light, and by its side still lay the screwdriver....  He determined to pass straight through the drawing-room.  At the further edge of the carpet, on the parquet flooring between the carpet and the portiere leading to the inner hall, he noticed under the ray of his lamp footprints in the dust—­footprints of a man, and smaller footprints, either of a woman or a child.  He remained motionless, staring at them.  Then it occurred to him that during the days between the death of its tenant and the sealing-up the flat would probably not have been cleaned, and that these footprints must have been made months ago by the last persons to leave the flat.  Little dust would fall after the closing of the flat.  He was glad that he had thought of that explanation.  It was a convincing explanation.

Nevertheless he dared not proceed.  For on the other mantelpiece to the right there was a clock, and while staring in the ghostly silence at the footprints, he had fancied that his ear caught the ticking of the clock.  Imagination, doubtless!  But he dared not proceed until he had satisfied himself that his ears had deluded him; and, equally, he dared not approach the clock to satisfy himself.  He could only gaze at the reflection of the clock in the opposite mirror.  In the opposite mirror the hands indicated half a minute past nine; hence the clock was really at half a minute to three, and if it was actually going, it might be expected to strike immediately.  He waited.  He heard a preliminary grinding noise familiar to students of symptoms in clocks, and in the fraction of a second he was bathed from head to foot in a cold perspiration.

The clock struck three.

The next instant he walked boldly up to the clock and bent his ear to it.  No, he could hear nothing.  It had stopped.  He glared steadily at the hands for two minutes by his own watch; they did not move.

In the back of his head, in the small of his back, in his legs, little tracts of his epidermis tickled momentarily.  He wiped his face, and walked boldly away from the clock to the portiere, which he lifted with one arm.  Then he threw the light of his lamp direct on the dial, and glared at it again, fearful lest it should have taken advantage of his departure to resume its measuring of eternity.

Could a clock go for four months?  A clock could be made that would go for four months.  But this was not a freak-clock.  It was a large Louis Seize pendule, and he knew it to be genuine of his own knowledge; he had bought it.

He dropped the portiere between himself and the clock, and stood in the inner hall.  He had had as much of the drawing-room as was good for his nerves.

The inner hall was oblong in shape, and measured about twelve feet at its greatest width.  In front of him, as he stood with his back to the drawing-room, was a closed door, which he knew led into the principal bedroom of the flat.  To his right another heavy portiere divided the inner from the outer hall.  This portiere hung in straight perpendicular folds.  He wondered why the portieres had not been taken down and folded away.