Of the events intervening between this moment and that when death called to us out of
the night, I have the haziest recollections. An excelent dinner was served in the bleak and
gloomy dining-room by the mulatto, and the crippled author was carried to the head of
the table by this same Herculean attendant, as lightly as though he had but the weight of a
child.
Van Roon talked continuously, revealing a deep knowledge of all sorts of obscure
matters; and in the brief intervals, Nayland Smith talked also, with almost feverish
rapidity. Plans for the future were discussed. I can recall no one of them.
I could not stifle my queer sentiments in regard to the mulatto, and every time I found
him behind my chair I was hard put to repress an shudder. In this fashion the strange
evening passed; and to the accompaniment of distant, muttering thunder, we two guests
retired to our chambers in Cragmire Tower. Smith had contrived to give me my
instructions in a whisper, and five minutes after entering my own room, I had snuffed the
candles, slipped a wedge, which he had given me, under the door, crept out through the
window onto the guttered ledge, and joined Smith in his room. He, too, had extinguished
his candles, and the place was in darkness. As I climbed in, he grasped my wrist to
silence me, and turned me forcibly toward the window.
I turned and looked out upon a prospect which had been a fit setting for the witch scene
in Macbeth. Thunder clouds hung low over the moor, but through them ran a sort of
chasm, or rift, allowing a bar of lurid light to stretch across the drear, from east to west--a
sort of lane walled by darkness. There came a remote murmuring, as of a troubled sea--a
hushed and distant chorus; and sometimes in upon it broke the drums of heaven. In the
west lightning flickered, though but faintly, intermittently.
Out of the blackness of the moor it came, wild and distant--"Help! help!"
"Smith!" I whispered--"what is it? What. . ."
"Mr. Smith!" came the agonized cry . . . "Nayland Smith, help! for God's sake. . . ."
"Quick, Smith!" I cried, "quick, man! It's Van Roon--he's been dragged out . . . they are
murdering him . . ."
Nayland Smith held me in a vise-like grip, silent, unmoved!
