In the cool of the evening I knocked at Dr. Crackenthorpe’s front door. No one answering—his one servant was gadding¹, probably—I tried the handle, found it to be on the latch² only, and walked in. The house was quiet as a desert, save that from the doctor’s private consulting-room, as he called it, issued a little, weak, snoring sound.

 

I paused in the dusky passage before tapping at the closed door of this room. The whole place was faintly stringent³ with the atmosphere that comes from a poor habit of ventilation—an atmosphere like that emitted from crumbling⁴ old leather-bound folios. A ragged⁵ strip of carpet, so trodden up its middle to the very string as to give the impression of a cinder-path running between dully flowering borders, climbed the flight of stairs before me, and stretched itself upon the landing above in an exhausted⁶ condition.

 

In a shallow alcove⁷ to one side of me stood a gaunt and voiceless old grandfather clock. A gas-browned bust⁸ of Pitt, rendered ridiculous by a perfect skull-cap of dust, stood on a bracket over a door opposite and a few anatomical prints of a dark and melancholy⁹ cast broke the monotony of the yellow walls.

 

Rendered none the less depressed¹⁰ in my errand by these dismal¹¹ surroundings, I pulled myself together and tapped roundly on the doctor’s door. No response followed. I knocked again and again, without result. At length I turned the handle and stepped of my own accord into the room.

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