Nevertheless, in an expedition of this nature one must accept risks,

and therefore I knocked gently. There was no reply to the summons, and

I was cogitating upon my next move when, happening to press against

the door with my hand, I discovered that it was not latched. Without

weighing consequences, I quietly opened it, and with infinite caution

stepped into the hall, and pushed the door to. I did not latch it,

lest I might need to make a sudden exit--unfamiliar knobs and springs

are apt to be troublesome when one is in a hurry.

I was now fairly in the house, but the darkness was blacker than the

pit, and I did not care to strike a match. I felt my way along by the

wall till I came to a door on the left; it was locked. A little

further was another door, also locked. I listened intently, for I

fancied I could hear a faint murmur of voices, but I was not sure.

Then I startled myself by stepping on nothing--I was at the head of a

flight of stone steps; down below I could distinguish an almost

imperceptible glimmer of light.

"I'm in for it. Here goes!" I reflected, and I crept down the steps

one by one, and in due course reached the bottom. To the left was a

doorway, through which came the glimmer of light. Passing through the

doorway, I came into a room with a stone floor. The light, which was

no stronger than the very earliest intimation of a winter's dawn,

seemed to issue in a most unusual way from the far corner of this

apartment near the ceiling. I directed my course towards it, and in

the transit made violent contact with some metallic object, which

proved to be an upright iron shaft, perhaps three inches in diameter,

running from floor to ceiling.

"Surely," I thought, "this is the queerest room I was ever in."

Circumnavigating the pillar, I reached the desired corner, and stood

under the feeble source of light. I could see now that in this corner

the ceiling was higher than elsewhere, and that the light shone dimly

from a perpendicular pane of glass which joined the two levels of the

ceiling. I also saw that there was a ledge about two feet from the

floor, upon which a man would stand in order to look through the

pane.

I climbed on to the ledge, and I looked. To my astonishment, I had a

full view of a large apartment, my head being even with the floor of

that apartment. Lying on a couch was a woman--the woman who had

accosted me on Dover Pier--Carlotta Deschamps, in fact. By her side,

facing her in a chair, was Rosetta Rosa. I could hear nothing, but by

the movement of their lips I knew that these two were talking. Rosa's

face was full of pity; as for Deschamps, her coarse features were

inscrutable. She had a certain pallor, but it was impossible to judge

whether she was ill or well.




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