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Page 9
What did it all mean? Had Francis fallen out with some confederate who,
having had his revenge by denouncing my brother, now took this
extraordinary step to announce his victim's fate to the latter's
friends? "Like Achilles in the tent!" Why not "in _his_ tent"?
Surely ...
A curious choking noise, the sound of a strangled cough, suddenly broke
the profound silence of the house. My heart seemed to stop for a moment.
I hardly dared raise my eyes from the paper which I was conning, leaning
over the table in my shirt and trousers.
The noise continued, a hideous, deep-throated gurgling. Then I heard a
faint foot-fall in the corridor without.
I raised my eyes to the door.
Someone or something was scratching the panels, furiously, frantically.
The door-knob was rattled loudly. The noise broke in raucously upon that
horrid gurgling sound without. It snapped the spell that bound me.
I moved resolutely towards the door. Even as I stepped forward the
gurgling resolved itself into a strangled cry.
"Ach! ich sterbe" were the words I heard.
Then the door burst open with a crash, there was a swooping rush of wind
and rain through the room, the curtains flapped madly from the windows.
The candle flared up wildly.
Then it went out.
Something fell heavily into the room.
CHAPTER IV
DESTINY KNOCKS AT THE DOOR
There are two things at least that modern warfare teaches you, one is to
keep cool in an emergency, the other is not to be afraid of a corpse.
Therefore I was scarcely surprised to find myself standing there in the
dark calmly reviewing the extraordinary situation in which I now found
myself. That's the curious thing about shell-shock: after it a motor
back-firing or a tyre bursting will reduce a man to tears, but in face
of danger he will probably find himself in full possession of his wits
as long as there is no sudden and violent noise connected with it.
Brief as the sounds without had been, I was able on reflection to
identify that gasping gurgle, that rapid patter of the hands. Anyone who
has seen a man die quickly knows them. Accordingly I surmised that
somebody had come to my door at the point of death, probably to seek
assistance.
Then I thought of the man next door, his painful breathlessness, his
blueish lips, when I found him wrestling with his key, and I guessed
who was my nocturnal visitor lying prone in the dark at my feet.
Shielding the candle with my hand I rekindled it. Then I grappled with
the flapping curtains and got the windows shut. Then only did I raise my
candle until its beams shone down upon the silent figure lying across
the threshold of the room.
It was the man from No. 33. He was quite dead. His face was livid and
distorted, his eyes glassy between the half-closed lids, while his
fingers, still stiffly clutching, showed paint and varnish and dust
beneath the nails where he had pawed door and carpet in his death agony.
One did not need to be a doctor to see that a heart attack had swiftly
and suddenly struck him down.
Now that I knew the worst I acted with decision. I dragged the body by
the shoulders into the room until it lay in the centre of the carpet.
Then I locked the door.
The foreboding of evil that had cast its black shadow over my thoughts
from the moment I crossed the threshold of this sinister hotel came over
me strongly again. Indeed, my position was, to say the least, scarcely
enviable. Here was I, a British officer with British papers of identity,
about to be discovered in a German hotel, into which I had introduced
myself under false pretences, at dead of night alone with the corpse of
a German or Austrian (for such the dead man apparently was)!
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