hind the blinds of Francis Tudor's drawing-room. Yes, he
could hear a sound. It was the distant sound of a man talking--loudly,
slowly, and distinctly--but too far off for him to catch even one word.
He guessed, as he pushed the window a little wider open, and bent his
ear to the aperture, that the voice must be in a room beyond the
drawing-room. It continued monotonously for a long time, with little
breaks at rare intervals; it was rather like a parson reading a sermon
in an empty church. Then it ceased. And there were footsteps, which
approached the window, and retired. He noticed that the light within the
room was being moved, but it cast no human shadow on the blind. The
light came finally to a standstill, and then there followed sounds which
Hugo could not diagnose--short, regular sounds, broken occasionally by a
sharp clash, as of an instrument falling. And when these had come to an
end, there were more footsteps--a precise, quick walking to and fro,
which continued for ages of time. Lastly, the footsteps receded;
something dropped, not heavily, but rather in a manner gently subsiding,
and a groan (or was it a moan, a tired suspiration?) wakened in Hugo's
spinal column a curious, strange thrill. Then silence, complete,
definitive, terrifying.

By merely pushing the window against the blind, he could enter and know
the secret of the universe.

'Why am I doing this?' he asked himself, while he pushed the window.
'Why have I done this?' he asked himself, as he stood within the immense
and luxurious room.

He gazed round with a swift and timid glance, as a man would who expects
to see that which ought not to be seen. To his left was the fireplace,
with a magnificent mirror over it. On the mantelpiece burned a movable
electric table--lamp, with twin branched lights. He observed the
silk-covered cord lying across the mantelpiece and disappearing over the
further edge; by the side of the lamp was a screwdriver. Exactly in
front of the lamp, on a couple of trestles such as undertakers use, lay
an elm coffin, its head towards the mantelpiece. At the opposite end of
the room was another fireplace and another mirror, with the result that
Hugo saw an endless succession of coffins and corpse-lights, repeated
and repeated, till they were lost in a vague crystal blur, and by every
pair of corpse-lights was a screwdriver.

He stood moveless, and listened, and could detect no faintest sound.
Across the room from the principal