Ah, what was that? His fingers closed on soft, heavy velvet
hangings. These could hardly be in front of a door, and yet--what else
could it be? He drew the hangings warily apart, and felt behind them. It
was a window; but it was shuttered in some way evidently, for he could
not see out.
Jimmie Dale stood motionless there for fully a minute. It seemed absurd,
preposterous, the conviction that was being forced home upon him--that
there were no rooms on the right-hand side of the corridor at all!
But that was not like the Tocsin, accurate always in the most minute
details. The room must be still farther along. He was tempted to use
his flashlight--but that, as long as he could feel his way, was an
unnecessary risk. A flashlight upstairs, where a sleeping-room door
might be ajar, or even wide open, where some one wakeful, THAT man
himself, perhaps, might see it, was quite another matter than a
flashlight in the closed and deserted library below!
He went on once more, still guiding himself by a light finger touch upon
the wall, passed another portiere similar to the first, and, after that,
another--and finally stopped by bringing up abruptly against the end
wall of the house. It was certainly very strange! There WERE no rooms
on the right-hand side of the corridor. And here, hanging across the end
wall, was another of those ubiquitous velvet portieres.
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