Page:Richard Marsh--The joss, a reversion.djvu/87

Rh there at half-past eight I’ll just speak to him, then start off back at once. He’ll come with us, we shall be back here before nine, and then he’ll leave us at the door.”

That was how it was to turn out, according to her. I had my doubts. When you are with the man to whom you are engaged to be married half an hour is nothing. It’s gone before you know it’s begun.

It was eight o’clock when we left the house. I thought we should never have left it at all. We could not open the door. It had no regular handle; no regular anything. While we were trying to get it open the house was filled with the most extraordinary noises. If it was all rats, as Pollie declared, then rats have got more ways of expressing their feelings than I had imagined. It seemed to me as if the place was haunted by mysterious voices which were warning us to be careful of what we did.

“Of course if we’re prisoners it’s just as well that we should know it now as later on. How do you open this door?”

Just as she spoke the door opened.

“How did you do that?” I asked.

“I don’t know.” She seemed surprised. “I was just pushing at the thing when—it came open. There’s a trick about it I expect; we’ll find out what it is to-morrow, there’s no time now. At present it’s enough that it’s open; out you go!”

When we were out in the street, and she pulled it to, it shut behind us with an ominous clang, like the iron gates used to do in the barons’ castle which we read about in the days of old. We took the tram in the Westminster Bridge Road, then walked the rest of the way. It was half-past eight when we arrived. As I expected, of course Mr. Cooper wasn’t there.

“Pollie, we ought not to stop. We ought to be in before nine this first night, at any rate. We don’t know what will happen if we’re not.”