The Dark House: A Knot Unravelled

For the faint light that came through the thick ground-glass fanlight over the great double doors was diffused among black bronze statues and white marble figures of Greek and Roman knights. In one place, seated meditatively, with hands resting upon the knees, there was an Indian god, seeming to watch the floor. In another, a great Japanese warrior, while towards the bottom of the great winding staircase, whose stone steps were covered with heavy dark carpet, was a marble, that imagination might easily have taken for a queen. Here and there the panelled walls were ornamented with stands of Indian arms and armour, conical helmets, once worn by Eastern chiefs, with pendent curtains, and suits of chain mail. Bloodthirsty daggers, curved scimitars, spears, clumsy matchlocks, and long straight swords, whose hilt was an iron gauntlet, in which the warrior's fingers were laced as they grasped a handle placed at right angles to the blade, after the fashion of a spade. There were shields, too, and bows and arrows, and tulwars and kukris, any number of warlike implements from the East, while beside the statues, the West had to show some curious chairs, and a full-length portrait of an Englishman in the prime of lifea handsome, bold-faced man, in the uniform of one of John Company's regiments, his helmet in his hand, and his breast adorned with orders and jewels of foreign make. The old Indian servant stood there like one of the statues, as the dining-room door opened and three dark, closely-shaven and moustached men, in black, came out softly, and went silently up the stairs. There was something singularly furtive and strange about them as they followed one another in silence, all three alike in their dress coats and turned-down white collars, beneath which was a narrow strip of ribbon, knotted in front. They passed on and on up the great winding stairs, past the drawing-room, from whence came the low buzz of voices, to a door at the back of the house, beside a great stained-glass window, whose weird lights shone down upon a lion-skin rug. Here the first man stopped for his companions, to reach his side. Then, whispering a few words to them, he took a key from his pocket, opened the door, withdrew the key, and entered the darkened room, closing and locking the door, as the old Indian crept softly up, sank upon his knees upon the skin rug, his hands clasped, his head bent down, and resting against the panels of the door.

Dettagli