Page:The Whisper on the Stair by Lyon Mearson (1924).djvu/224

 his feet. What paper there was on the walls hung down to the floor in long panels, and in many places the plaster had come off, exposing the laths and logs beneath.

Outside the rain beat down heavily, soggily, having settled into a steady, monotonous downpour. The empty chambers and halls echoed and re-echoed to the dull beat of the storm, and the sense of oppression that Val had been experiencing all evening was heightened by the gloomy rooms and leaping shadows caused by his lantern. In the corners his light reached not at all, unless he stepped right up to them.

Once or twice he thought he heard a step downstairs, but he put it down to his imagination and to his overwrought nerves.

“Steady, Val!” he spoke aloud to himself, to calm his nerves. Don’t be a baby, you big mutt. His voice rumbled peculiarly in the empty rooms, where a voice had not been raised for perhaps a generation.

He examined each room carefully, and decided there was little hope of finding anything upstairs. The walls were almost bare; there were no panels, the floors and ceiling were thin, so that nothing could be hidden in them; so thin was the floor that if it had been light, in one of the rooms he examined that he thought must have been over the living room, he would have been able to see into the room below.

In the attic he found nothing of any value whatever, though he examined it carefully and meticulously.

“Well, Peter Pomeroy, old chap, if you’ve hidden anything in this house, which I doubt, I think it must be downstairs—in the living room, maybe, or the kitchen.” He remembered that he had yet to examine the dining room, kitchen, butler’s pantry, and any