Henry and Agnes were left alone in the Room of the Caryatides.
The person who had written the description of the palace—probably a
poor author or artist—had correctly pointed out the defects of the
mantel-piece. Bad taste, exhibiting itself on the most costly and
splendid scale, was visible in every part of the work. It was
nevertheless greatly admired by ignorant travellers of all classes;
partly on account of its imposing size, and partly on account of the
number of variously-coloured marbles which the sculptor had contrived
to introduce into his design. Photographs of the mantel-piece were
exhibited in the public rooms, and found a ready sale among English and
American visitors to the hotel.
Henry led Agnes to the figure on the left, as they stood facing the
empty fire-place. “Shall I try the experiment,” he asked, “or will
you?” She abruptly drew her arm away from him, and turned back to the
door. “I can’t even look at it,” she said. “That merciless marble face
frightens me!”
Henry put his hand on the forehead of the figure. “What is there to
alarm you, my dear, in this conventionally classical face?” he asked
jestingly. Before he could press the head inwards, Agnes hurriedly
opened the door. “Wait till I am out of the room!” she cried. “The bare
idea of what you may find there horrifies me!” She looked back into the
room as she crossed the threshold. “I won’t leave you altogether,” she
said, “I will wait outside.”
She closed the door. Left by himself, Henry lifted his hand once more
to the marble forehead of the figure.
For the second time, he was checked on the point of setting the
machinery of the hiding-place in motion. On this occasion, the
interruption came from an outbreak of friendly voices in the corridor.
A woman’s voice exclaimed, “Dearest Agnes, how glad I am to see you
again!” A man’s voice followed, offering to introduce some friend to
“Miss Lockwood.” A third voice (which Henry recognised as the voice of
the manager of the hotel) became audible next, directing the
housekeeper to show the ladies and gentlemen the vacant apartments at
the other end of the corridor. “If more accommodation is wanted,” the
manager went on, “I have a charming room to let here.” He opened the
door as he spoke, and found himself face to face with Henry Westwick.
“This is indeed an agreeable surprise, sir!” said the manager
cheerfully. “You are admiring our famous chimney-piece, I see. May I
ask, Mr. Westwick, how you find yourself in the hotel, this time? Have
the supernatural influences affected your appetite again?”
“The supernatural influences have spared me, this time,” Henry
answered. “Perhaps you may yet find that they have affected some other
member of the family.” He spoke gravely, resenting the familiar tone in
which the manager had referred to his previous visit to the hotel.
“Have you just returned?” he asked, by way of changing the topic.
“Just this minute, sir. I had the honour of travelling in the same
train with friends of yours who have arrived at the hotel—Mr. and Mrs.
Arthur Barville, and their travelling companions. Miss Lockwood is with
them, looking at the rooms. They will be here before long, if they find
it convenient to have an extra room at their disposal.”
This announcement decided Henry on exploring the hiding-place, before
the interruption occurred. It had crossed his mind, when Agnes left
him, that he ought perhaps to have a witness, in the not very probable
event of some alarming discovery taking place. The too-familiar
manager, suspecting nothing, was there at his disposal. He turned again
to the Caryan figure, maliciously resolving to make the manager his
witness.
“I am delighted to hear that our friends have arrived at last,” he
said. “Before I shake hands with them, let me ask you a question about
this queer work of art here. I see photographs of it downstairs. Are
they for sale?”
“Certainly, Mr. Westwick!”
“Do you think the chimney-piece is as solid as it looks?” Henry
proceeded. “When you came in, I was just wondering whether this figure
here had not accidentally got loosened from the wall behind it.” He
laid his hand on the marble forehead, for the third time. “To my eye,
it looks a little out of the perpendicular. I almost fancied I could
jog the head just now, when I touched it.” He pressed the head inwards
as he said those words.
A sound of jarring iron was instantly audible behind the wall. The
solid hearthstone in front of the fire-place turned slowly at the feet
of the two men, and disclosed a dark cavity below. At the same moment,
the strange and sickening combination of odours, hitherto associated
with the vaults of the old palace and with the bed-chamber beneath, now
floated up from the open recess, and filled the room.
The manager started back. “Good God, Mr. Westwick!” he exclaimed, “what
does this mean?”
Remembering, not only what his brother Francis had felt in the room
beneath, but what the experience of Agnes had been on the previous
night, Henry was determined to be on his guard. “I am as much surprised
as you are,” was his only reply.
“Wait for me one moment, sir,” said the manager. “I must stop the
ladies and gentlemen outside from coming in.”
He hurried away—not forgetting to close the door after him. Henry
opened the window, and waited there breathing the purer air. Vague
apprehensions of the next discovery to come, filled his mind for the
first time. He was doubly resolved, now, not to stir a step in the
investigation without a witness.
The manager returned with a wax taper in his hand, which he lighted as
soon as he entered the room.
“We need fear no interruption now,” he said. “Be so kind, Mr. Westwick,
as to hold the light. It is _my_ business to find out what this
extraordinary discovery means.”
Henry held the taper. Looking into the cavity, by the dim and
flickering light, they both detected a dark object at the bottom of it.
“I think I can reach the thing,” the manager remarked, “if I lie down,
and put my hand into the hole.”
He knelt on the floor—and hesitated. “Might I ask you, sir, to give me
my gloves?” he said. “They are in my hat, on the chair behind you.”
Henry gave him the gloves. “I don’t know what I may be going to take
hold of,” the manager explained, smiling rather uneasily as he put on
his right glove.
He stretched himself at full length on the floor, and passed his right
arm into the cavity. “I can’t say exactly what I have got hold of,” he
said. “But I have got it.”
Half raising himself, he drew his hand out.
The next instant, he started to his feet with a shriek of terror. A
human head dropped from his nerveless grasp on the floor, and rolled to
Henry’s feet. It was the hideous head that Agnes had seen hovering
above her, in the vision of the night!
The two men looked at each other, both struck speechless by the same
emotion of horror. The manager was the first to control himself. “See
to the door, for God’s sake!” he said. “Some of the people outside may
have heard me.”
Henry moved mechanically to the door.
Even when he had his hand on the key, ready to turn it in the lock in
case of necessity, he still looked back at the appalling object on the
floor. There was no possibility of identifying those decayed and
distorted features with any living creature whom he had seen—and, yet,
he was conscious of feeling a vague and awful doubt which shook him to
the soul. The questions which had tortured the mind of Agnes, were now
_his_ questions too. _He_ asked himself, “In whose likeness might I
have recognised it before the decay set in? The likeness of Ferrari? or
the likeness of—?” He paused trembling, as Agnes had paused trembling
before him. Agnes! The name, of all women’s names the dearest to him,
was a terror to him now! What was he to say to her? What might be the
consequence if he trusted her with the terrible truth?
No footsteps approached the door; no voices were audible outside. The
travellers were still occupied in the rooms at the eastern end of the
corridor.
In the brief interval that had passed, the manager had sufficiently
recovered himself to be able to think once more of the first and
foremost interests of his life—the interests of the hotel. He
approached Henry anxiously.
“If this frightful discovery becomes known,” he said, “the closing of
the hotel and the ruin of the Company will be the inevitable results. I
feel sure that I can trust your discretion, sir, so far?”
“You can certainly trust me,” Henry answered. “But surely discretion
has its limits,” he added, “after such a discovery as we have made?”
The manager understood that the duty which they owed to the community,
as honest and law-abiding men, was the duty to which Henry now
referred. “I will at once find the means,” he said, “of conveying the
remains privately out of the house, and I will myself place them in the
care of the police authorities. Will you leave the room with me? or do
you not object to keep watch here, and help me when I return?”
While he was speaking, the voices of the travellers made themselves
heard again at the end of the corridor. Henry instantly consented to
wait in the room. He shrank from facing the inevitable meeting with
Agnes if he showed himself in the corridor at that moment.
The manager hastened his departure, in the hope of escaping notice. He
was discovered by his guests before he could reach the head of the
stairs. Henry heard the voices plainly as he turned the key. While the
terrible drama of discovery was in progress on one side of the door,
trivial questions about the amusements of Venice, and facetious
discussions on the relative merits of French and Italian cookery, were
proceeding on the other. Little by little, the sound of the talking
grew fainter. The visitors, having arranged their plans of amusement
for the day, were on their way out of the hotel. In a minute or two,
there was silence once more.
Henry turned to the window, thinking to relieve his mind by looking at
the bright view over the canal. He soon grew wearied of the familiar
scene. The morbid fascination which seems to be exercised by all
horrible sights, drew him back again to the ghastly object on the
floor.
Dream or reality, how had Agnes survived the sight of it? As the
question passed through his mind, he noticed for the first time
something lying on the floor near the head. Looking closer, he
perceived a thin little plate of gold, with three false teeth attached
to it, which had apparently dropped out (loosened by the shock) when
the manager let the head fall on the floor.
The importance of this discovery, and the necessity of not too readily
communicating it to others, instantly struck Henry. Here surely was a
chance—if any chance remained—of identifying the shocking relic of
humanity which lay before him, the dumb witness of a crime! Acting on
this idea, he took possession of the teeth, purposing to use them as a
last means of inquiry when other attempts at investigation had been
tried and had failed.
He went back again to the window: the solitude of the room began to
weigh on his spirits. As he looked out again at the view, there was a
soft knock at the door. He hastened to open it—and checked himself in
the act. A doubt occurred to him. Was it the manager who had knocked?
He called out, “Who is there?”
The voice of Agnes answered him. “Have you anything to tell me, Henry?”
He was hardly able to reply. “Not just now,” he said, confusedly.
“Forgive me if I don’t open the door. I will speak to you a little
later.”
The sweet voice made itself heard again, pleading with him piteously.
“Don’t leave me alone, Henry! I can’t go back to the happy people
downstairs.”
How could he resist that appeal? He heard her sigh—he heard the
rustling of her dress as she moved away in despair. The very thing that
he had shrunk from doing but a few minutes since was the thing that he
did now! He joined Agnes in the corridor. She turned as she heard him,
and pointed, trembling, in the direction of the closed room. “Is it so
terrible as that?” she asked faintly.
He put his arm round her to support her. A thought came to him as he
looked at her, waiting in doubt and fear for his reply. “You shall know
what I have discovered,” he said, “if you will first put on your hat
and cloak, and come out with me.”
She was naturally surprised. “Can you tell me your object in going
out?” she asked.
He owned what his object was unreservedly. “I want, before all things,”
he said, “to satisfy your mind and mine, on the subject of Montbarry’s
death. I am going to take you to the doctor who attended him in his
illness, and to the consul who followed him to the grave.”
Her eyes rested on Henry gratefully. “Oh, how well you understand me!”
she said. The manager joined them at the same moment, on his way up the
stairs. Henry gave him the key of the room, and then called to the
servants in the hall to have a gondola ready at the steps. “Are you
leaving the hotel?” the manager asked. “In search of evidence,” Henry
whispered, pointing to the key. “If the authorities want me, I shall be
back in an hour.”