Page:Walpole--portrait of man with red hair.djvu/158

 his knee upwards. The hand vanished, and at the same moment Crispin's voice said: "We are almost there. We are going through the gates now."

Lamps flashed upon their faces and Crispin's eyes seemed to have vanished into his fat white face. He had, in that sudden illumination, the most curious effect of blindness. His lids were closed over his eyes, lying like little pieces of pale yellow parchment under the faint red eyelashes.

"Here we are!" he cried. "Out you get, Herrick." And as Harkness stepped out of the car something deep within him whispered: "I am going to be hurt. Pain is coming"

Before him swung a cavern of light. It swung because on his stepping from the car he was dizzy, dizzy with a kind of poignant thick scent in the soul's nostrils, deep deep down as though he were at the edge of being spiritually anæsthetised. He paused for a moment looking back into the night piled up behind him.

Then he walked in.

It was an old house. The long hall was panelled and hung with the heads of animals. A torn banner of faded red and yellow with long tassels of gold hung above the stone fireplace. The floor was of stone, and some dim rugs of uncertain colour lay