Part 3 (2/2)
And yet the door of this room had been locked. Also, when we had arrived, no light had been visible in any of the windows of the house, and the front door had been chained and bolted.
”Make yourselves quite at home,” our beautiful hostess said, and, as she spoke, she placed a box of cigars, newly opened, upon the table at my elbow. ”I am sorry,” she added, ”that I must leave you now.”
There was a curious expression in her eyes as she smiled down at us, an expression that later I came to know too well. Then, turning, she swept gracefully out of the room, closing the door behind her.
I looked across at Osborne. For some moments neither of us spoke. The mysterious house was still as death.
”Well, Jack,” I said lightly, though somehow I felt uneasy, ”what do you make of it, old man?”
”It is just as I thought,” he answered, taking a cigar out of the box and beginning to trim it.
”How do you mean--'just as you thought'?” I asked, puzzled.
”Gastrell is an impostor, and--and that isn't his wife.”
He did not speak again for some moments, being busily occupied in lighting his long cigar. Presently he leaned back, then blew a great cloud of smoke towards the ceiling.
Suddenly we heard a click, like the wooden lid of a box suddenly shut.
”Hullo!” he exclaimed suddenly, ”what's that?”
”What's what?”
”Why! Look!” he gasped.
His gaze was set upon something in the shadow of a small table in a corner of the room--something on the floor. In silence, now, we both stood staring at it, for Osborne had risen suddenly. Slowly it moved. It was gradually gliding along the floor, with a sound like paper being pushed along a carpet. Whence it came, where it began and where it ended, we could not see, for the shadow it was in was very deep. Nor was its colour in the least discernible.
All we could make out was that some long, sinuous, apparently endless Thing was pa.s.sing along the room, close to the wall farthest from us, coming from under the sofa and disappearing beneath the table.
All at once Osborne sprang towards me with an exclamation of alarm, and I felt his grip tighten upon my arm.
”Good G.o.d!” he cried.
An instant later a broad, flat head slowly reared itself from beneath the red table-cover which hung down almost to the floor, rose higher and higher until the black, beady, merciless eyes were set upon mine, and in that brief instant of supreme suspense my attention became riveted on the strange, slate-grey mark between and just behind the reptile's cruel eyes. Then, as its head suddenly shot back, Osborne dashed towards the door.
Once, twice, three times he pulled frantically at the handle with all his force.
”Good G.o.d! Berrington,” he cried, his face blanched to the lips, ”we're locked in!”
Almost as he spoke, the serpent with head extended swept forward towards us, along the floor.
I held my breath. Escape from its venomous fangs was impossible.
We had been trapped!
CHAPTER III
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