There was a short pause.
“We look to be in the same boat, Miss Loment.”
“Then it was there?”
“Not there, but near there. It was outside the door of that room they call the East Room these days. It used to be Ulf’s Tower. Did you get as far?”
“Yes. And what was it you heard?”
“Heard? . . . Oh, I guess you’re referring to the sound in that passage? No, it wasn’t that, Miss Loment.”
“Then what was it? Tell me what happened?” She spoke quickly.
“Nothing happened. We were talking of sensations, weren’t we? . . . I’m an artist, Miss Loment, and that means a bundle of live nerves. My mind gets troubled maybe ten or twenty times a day, without my ever guessing what for. This one was what you might call a bad ‘seismic disturbance,’ and there’s no more to it.”
“Perhaps you think my questions are prompted by inquisitiveness? It isn’t that. My aunt may be buying Runhill Court, and, if she does, I shall have to live there; so you see my interest is quite legitimate.”
Sherrup watched her professionally. The quivering nostrils, the nervous mouth, the peculiar expression of the grey-black eyes, fascinated without satisfying him. Her character possessed an important quality which he was unable to locate on her features. It was contained only in that quiet, pleasant, yet metallic and foreign-toned voice.
“I can’t tell you much,” he said at length, and then there was another silence.
Isbel glanced around her rather guiltily. “Still, I feel you can tell me something. Can’t we talk it over together, somewhere? Obviously it’s out of the question here.” She laughed, without conviction. “I know it sounds terribly melodramatic, still you understand my point of view, don’t you?”
“I shall feel honoured and delighted. But you’ll sure be disappointed when you see how little I have to hand over, Miss Loment . . . and another thing — I’m away to-morrow morning, as I told your friend.”
“By what train?”
“Eleven a.m.”
She pondered. Marshall would depart for town three hours earlier than that.
“Let us fix up something. Can you be outside the turnstiles of this pier to-morrow morning at ten o’clock sharp? That would allow you ample time to catch your train.”
“Right. Ten sharp. I’ll be there.”
“I rely on you, mind.”
“Oh, I keep my appointments, Miss Loment,” said the American.
Isbel was about to say something else, when turning her eyes, she observed Marshall approaching. During his absence his chair had been appropriated by a pale, stout, flabby lady of uncertain age, with a drooping mouth, and eyes which positively snapped; the usurpation had passed unnoticed by the others.
Sherrup rose. “I’ll quit. You take my seat, Mr. Stokes — I’ll have a turn along the front till luncheon.”
Next morning Isbel breakfasted early with Marshall, and saw him depart for the station. As he intended returning to Brighton for the following week-end, the car and the major portion of his belongings were left behind.
At ten o’clock she was outside the West Pier, Sherrup, who already waited there, immediately came up to her, raising his hat and removing the cigar from his mouth.
“Let’s walk towards Hove,” she suggested. “It’s less crowded that way.”
He assented in dry silence.
“It was most kind of you to come out of your way for me,” began Isbel. “After all, we are total strangers.”
“Now, don’t say that; I feel as if I’d known you quite a long time . . . My cigar doesn’t worry you any?”
“No, please . . . ”
“All right. Now let’s get to business. Time’s short, Miss Loment. Well, now I’m here for, I conclude, is to specify my sensations at Runhill on Saturday. There wasn’t anything else, was there?”
“It won’t embarrass you?”
“Oh well, I’m not easily embarrassed . . . Now, I told you where it all happened. Outside the door of that East Room. Honestly, that was one of the things I came to see. I could have just kicked myself when I found that lock fast.”
“First of all — you did hear the sound in that corridor, didn’t you? My friends didn’t — that’s why I ask.”
“Yes, I heard it. like the far-away scrape of a double-bass.”
“Yes, yes — it was like that. I couldn’t identify the sound it reminded me of, but that was it.”
“It’s tough to explain, but it might be in the nature of a flow from that East room to another part of the house.”
“Caused by what?”
“I can’t say. But is that what was troubling you?”
“It was so horribly uncanny. I can almost hear it still.”
“Anyway, we’ll quit that, and come to my experience. It isn’t a mile long. While I stood outside that door, just after trying to burgle the lock — for I had my knife out to it — a kind of smell came wafting over me of a sudden . . . Now, I don’t want you to smile, Miss Loment. There needn’t be anything funny in a smell. I know, and you know, that a smell can be the powerfullest variety of sensation, when it sets out to be. You can’t kill a man by a sight or a sound, but I wouldn’t like to say you couldn’t kill him with some smells, and not always disagreeable ones at that. That just shows the superior sensitiveness of the nose as an organ. I would like for somebody to take that up as an art . . . Well, this particular odour was of the delirious species. It was like the epitome of a spring day in the woods — all the scent of the pines, and the violets, and the rich, moist, dark brown soil, and whatever else comes carried to you by the breezes — only, all double-distilled, as if it was the spillings of a bottle of a new sort of women’s perfume . . . ”
“And then?”
“Call to mind where I smelt it all, Miss Loment. In a dark, dusty, airless corridor of an ancient house, which god’s air hasn’t blown through for centuries . . . I jumped— nearly. Then it passed away quite suddenly again. I figure it didn’t last all told more than ten seconds. But after it was gone I stood there kind of transfigured, like a man that has just seen a vision. It wasn’t till it quitted that I saw its importance. It was like a waft from another world . . . that house is alive, Miss Loment.”
“Is that the whole?”
“That’s all.”
“It’s very, very strange. But still I don’t quite see why it should have suggested that music to you?”
“Yes, now, why did it? But somehow it did. I can’t explain it to myself. The suggestion thought has gone, and I can’t recover it . . . The orchestra was tuning up. Something big was going to happen. Something like that. You mustn’t press the resemblance too close. Any kind of big symphonic music might have done, but I just chose that — it must have seemed more appropriate.”
Isbel tried unsuccessfully to put indifference into her voice as she asked the question:
“I’m going to make what you may consider a very singular inquiry, Mr. Sherrup. Was your reason for playing that music the fact that the passage of the ascending scales suggested to you the idea of a mysterious gigantic staircase?”
He blew out a cloud of smoke, at the same time looking at her from the corner of his eye.
“Why should that be?”
“I