No
apparition with the smallest amount of self-respect could risk coming
in contact with such inane creatures, so she sent them all out for a
motor drive, and, for once, rejoiced in the house to herself. A
curious proceeding for a lady! True! but then, Lady Adela was a lady,
and, being a lady, was not afraid of being thought anything else; and
so acted just as unconventionally as she chose. But stay a moment; she
was not alone in the house, for she had three of her dogs with
her--three beautiful boarhounds, trophies of her last trip to the
Baltic. With such colossal and perfectly trained companions Lady Adela
felt absolutely safe, and ready--as she acknowledged afterwards--to
face a whole army of spooks. She did not even shiver when the front
door of the basement closed, and she heard the sonorous birring of the
motor, drowning the giddy voices of the servants, grow fainter and
fainter until it finally ceased altogether. When the last echoes of the vehicle had died away in the distance,
Lady Adela made a tour of the premises. The housekeeper's room pleased
her immensely--at least she persuaded herself it did. "Why, it is
quite as nice as any of the rooms upstairs," she said aloud, as she
stood with her face to the failing sunbeams and rested her strong
white hand on the edge of the table. "Quite as nice. Karl and Max,
come here!" But the boarhounds for once in their lives did not obey her with a
good grace. There was something in the room they did not like, and
they showed how strong was their resentment by slinking unwillingly
through the doorway. "I wonder why that is?" Lady Adela mused; "I have never known them do
it before." Then her eyes wandered round the walls, and struggled in
vain to reach the remoter angles of the room, which had suddenly grown
dark. She tried to assure herself that this was but the natural effect
of the departing daylight, and that, had she watched in other houses
at this particular time, she would have noticed the same thing. To
show how little she minded the gloom, she went up to the darkest
corner and prodded the walls with her riding-whip. She laughed--there
was nothing there, nothing whatsoever to be afraid of, only shadows. With a careless shrug of her shoulders, she strutted into the
passage, and, whistling to Karl and Max who, contrary to their custom,
would not keep to heel, made another inspection of the kitchens. At
the top of the cellar steps she halted. The darkness had now set in
everywhere, and she argued that it would be foolish to venture into
such dungeon-like places without a light. She soon found one, and,
armed with candle and matches, began her descent. There were several
cellars, and they presented such a dismal, dark appearance, that she
instinctively drew her skirts tightly round her, and exchanged the
slender riding-whip for a poker. She whistled again to her dogs. They
did not answer, so she called them both by name angrily. But for some
reason (some quite unaccountable reason, she told herself) they would
not come. She ransacked her mind to recall some popular operatic air, and
although she knew scores she could not remember one. Indeed, the only
air that filtered back to her was one she detested--a Vaudeville tune
she had heard three nights in succession, when she was staying with a
student friend in the Latin Quarter in Paris. She hummed it loudly,
however, and, holding the lighted candle high above her head, walked
down the steps. At the bottom she stood still and listened. From high
above her came noises which sounded like the rumbling of distant
thunder, but which, on analysis, proved to be the rattling of
window-frames. Reassured that she had no cause for alarm, Lady Adela
advanced. Something black scudded across the red-tiled floor, and she
made a dash at it with her poker. The concussion awoke countless
echoes in the cellars, and called into existence legions of other
black things that darted hither and thither in all directions. She
burst out laughing--they were only beetles! Facing her she now
perceived an inner cellar, which was far gloomier than the one in
which she stood. The ceiling was very low, and appeared to be crushed
down beneath the burden of a stupendous weight; and as she advanced
beneath it she half expected that it would "cave in" and bury her. A few feet from the centre of this cellar she stopped; and, bending
down, examined the floor carefully. The tiles were unmistakably newer
here than elsewhere, and presented the appearance of having been put
in at no very distant date. The dampness of the atmosphere was
intense; a fact which struck Lady Adela as somewhat odd, since the
floor and walls looked singularly dry. To find out if this were the
case, she ran her fingers over the walls, and, on removing them, found
they showed no signs of moisture. Then she rapped the floor and walls,
and could discover no indications of hollowness. She sniffed the air,
and a great wave of something sweet and sickly half choked her. She
drew out her handkerchief and beat the air vigorously with it; but the
smell remained, and she could not in any way account for it. She
turned to leave the cellar, and the flame of her candle burned blue. Then for the first time that evening--almost, indeed, for the first
time in her life--she felt afraid, so afraid that she made no attempt
to diagnose her fear; she understood the dogs' feelings now, and
caught herself wondering how much they knew. She whistled to them again, not because she thought they would
respond,--she knew only too well they would not,--but because she
wanted company, even the company of her own voice; and she had some
faint hope, too, that whatever might be with her in the cellar, would
not so readily disclose itself if she made a noise. The one cellar was
passed, and she was nearly across the floor of the other when she
heard a crash. The candle dropped from her hand, and all the blood in
her body rushed to her heart. She could never have imagined it was so
terrible to be frightened. She tried to pull herself together and be
calm, but she was no longer mistress of her limbs. Her knees knocked
together and her hands shook. "It was only the dogs," she feebly told
herself, "I will call them"; but when she opened her mouth, she found
her throat was paralysed--not a syllable would come. She knew, too,
that she had lied, and that the hounds could not have been responsible
for the noise. It was like nothing she had ever heard, nothing she
could imagine; and although she struggled hard against the idea, she
could not help associating the sound with the cause of the candle
burning blue, and the sweet, sickly smell. Incapable of moving a
step, she was forced to listen in breathless expectancy for a
recurrence of the crash. Her thoughts become ghastly. The inky sea of
darkness that hemmed her in on every side suggested every sort of
ghoulish possibility, and with each pulsation of her overstrained
heart her flesh crawled.