University of Virginia Library

10. CHAPTER X.
OVERHEAD, WITHOUT.

Among the other treasures of Rubbish Palace,
I had inherited Stillfleet's liqueur-case. It was
on a generous scale, — a grand old oaken chest,
bristling with griffins' heads and claws, armed
with massive iron handles, and big enough to
hold all the favorite tipples of a royal household,
or to hide a royal pair if they heard a Revolution
coming up the stairs.

Stillfleet had traced the pedigree of his chest
to within three generations of Ginevra, in her
family. He had no doubt that this was the
identical coffer which that sportive lady had
made her coffin.

“Clip!” said Stillfleet, shutting down the lid
as he told me this legend in the afternoon.
“Clip! listen to that snap-lock! Fancy her
feelings! Taste that gin! `Geniévre' from
Ginevra's box. I like to keep my nectars in a
coffin; it 's my edition of the old plan of drinking
from a scull. Life is short. `Come, my lad,
and drink some beer!'”

To this grand sarcophagus I proceeded to seek
a restorative for Cecil Dreeme. Locksley's alternative,
“opodildoc,” was not at hand.

Lifting the heavy lid, instead of poor Ginevra's
bare bones, I found a joyous array of antique
flasks and goblets. They flashed at me as the
gas-light struck them, each with the merry wink
of a practised bacchanal. I saw the tawny complexion
of the brandy shining through a tall
bottle, old enough to have figured at the banquet
of the Borgia. Around this stately personage,
and gaping for the generous juices he might
impart, was a circle of glasses, the finest work
of the best days of Venice, clear and thin as
bubbles, and graceful as the cups of opening
flowers.

I took the decanter and a glass, and, thus
armed, followed Locksley into the corridor.

His prickly scare had so teazled the poor fellow
that he was now quite like a picture of Remorse
or Despair. It was entirely dark in the
building. Our single candle carried its little
sphere of light along with it. Beyond and overhead
might have been the vaults and chambers
of a cavern, for all we could see.

Passing Densdeth's padlocked door, we turned
toward the side staircase. I looked up and down
the well of the stairs. No oubliette ever showed
a blacker void. It almost seemed to my excited

imagination that we ought to hear the gurgle of
a drowning prisoner, flung down into that darkness
by us, his executioners.

“Awful black!” said Locksley, and the shadow
of his bristly hair on the wall stiffened with alarm.

By the dim gleam of the candle, the paint of
the wood and stucco of the walls of Chrysalis
changed to oak and marble. The sham antique
vanished. It became an actual place, not mere
theatrical scenery. Seen by daylight, the whole
edifice was so unreal and incongruous, that I
should not have been surprised to see a squad
of scene-shifters at work sliding it off and rolling
it up, and leaving Ailanthus Square nothing but
its bald brick houses to stare at. Now, as we
climbed up the stairs, torch-bearer ahead, cupbearer
behind, Chrysalis passed very well for a
murky old castle of the era of plots, masks, poison,
and vendetta.

“Yes,” thought I, “Locksley's three knocks
did announce a new act in my drama. Cecil
Dreeme is the new actor. He follows Densdeth
and Churm, he precedes Emma Denman. Is he
in the plot? Is he underplot, counterplot, or
episode? I hope, poor lonely fellow, that he has
not already passed off the stage, as Locksley
dreads. That would be a dismal opening of my
life in Chrysalis.”

The janitor now pushed open the partition-door

from the upper landing into the northern
corridor.

The haggard moon, in its last quarter, hung
just above a chimney of Mannering Place opposite,
like a pale flame struggling up from a furnace.
Its weird light slanted across the mullion
of the narrow window.

There was just enough of this feeble pallor to
nullify the peering light of Locksley's candle.
Ghostly, indeed, the spot appeared! My anxiety
and my companion's alarm were lively enough
to shape a score of ghosts out of a streak of
moonshine.

“To Let,” the tenant of the left-hand rooms,
had no business with us, nor we with him. On
the other side was the modest little card: —

Cecil Dreeme,
Painter.

Destiny had brought us together. I was about
to know him, alive or dead.

Alive or dead! That doubt in both our minds
made us hesitate an instant. Locksley looked up
to me for orders.

“Knock!” whispered I.

He knocked gently. If there were a sick man
within, his hearing, sharpened by silence, would
abhor a noise.

We both listened, without whisper or sigh.

Locksley deposited his candle on the floor and
put his ear to the keyhole. The low light flung
a queer, distorted shadow of him on the wall. It
seemed a third person, of impish aspect, not meddling
with our proceedings, but watching them
scornfully.

No answer. Not even the weak “Come in”
of an invalid.

Locksley “laid his fist to the door,” without
respect to his knuckles.

“Nothing,” whispered he, “except a sound of
emptiness.”

We now both knocked loudly, and gave the
door a rough shake, as if it merited ungentle
handling for obstructing the entrance of well-wishers.

After this uproar, dead silence again, except
a low grumble of echoes, turning over in their
sleep, to mutter anathemas at the disturbers of
their repose.

“Locksley,” I whispered, “we are wasting time.
Try your pass-key.”

He introduced the key. His shadow, exaggerated
and sinister, bent over him as he worked.

“I must pick it,” said he, turning to me with
a dogged burglar-look on his honest face. “His
key is in the lock inside. But I have n't been
poking into keyholes ever since I was knee-high
to a katydid for nothing.”

He took from his pocket a pair of delicate pincers.
He manipulated for a moment. Presently
I heard the key rattle and then drop inside.

That unlawful noise should awake any sleeper!
We paused and listened. No sound. Awe flowed
in and filled the silent stillness. Again we looked
at each other, shrinking from an interchange of
apprehension.

“I 'm afraid he is — not living,” Locksley
breathed at last.

“Don't stop! Open!”

He put in his pass-key and turned. The bolt
of the latch also yielded to this slight pressure.
The door opened a crack without warning. Our
candle, standing on the floor, bent its flame over,
peering through into the darkness within. Before
I could snatch it up, the inquisitive little
bud of fire had been dragged from its stem by
the draught. The candle was out.

By the pallid moonlight we could just see each
other's anxious faces. We could also see, through
the narrow crack of the door, that the same faint,
unsubstantial glimmer filled the room. This
ghostly light repelled me more than the darkness.
It could show the form, but not the expression
of objects; and form without expression
is death.

“I have matches,” whispered Locksley.

He drew one across the sole of his shoe. It

flashed phosphoric, illuminated the breadth of
sturdy cowhide upon which the janitor trod, and
went out.

“Take time with the next,” said I. “I must
go in at once.”