Wheeling Sunday register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1882-1934, 1899-03-12

sion, the hand which held the door
open for me to enter. 1t vas of an
immense size, and SO %hideously resem-
bled that of a baboon that my eyes
darted involuntarily back to the face,
to make sure that my conductor was
human.
AS l stared in silence a noise behind
my back caused me to turn my head,
only just in time to see the hanson
which had brought me wheel and go
off in the direction from which we had
come.
For an instant I watched it, saw it
turn the corner, and was more than
! something so incredibly repulsive
about that brown, ape-like hand on the
door that my appetite for the adven-
ture was turned into a loathing which
l could hardly have explained.
l went SO far as to take a step, but
an inarticulate gurgle, like that made
by a person naturally dumb, or whose
tongue has been cut, attracted my at
tention once more to the nOndescript
being at the gate. With the grunt,
which was as yet not as cultural as a
grunt, but peculiarly shrill and grating,
he had drawn my eyes again to him.
self. He then proceeded to beckon to-
wards the house. which was SO far set
back as to be scarcely visible in the
~blackness, retreating inch by inch as
he did so, evidently signifying that it
! was important l should follow.
Cant you speak?" l ! questioned,
! rather irritably.
He shook his head, parting his thick
lips the while, and pointing inward
with one long index finger.
BY this time l had overcome the
desire to leave the green door in the
wall without learning its secret-if,
indeed, it had one. and this were not,
after all, some gigantic hoax. | still
~instinctively disliked the creature, but
L was lCddy again " g I'LL bC my
guide, no matter what the end to which
he might lead me. Is
l stepped inside, my feet grating on
a gravel path, and the gate was closed
after me. Inside the trees hung thick
and dark as bed curtains over the walk,
and l thought l could smell the sweet
pungent scent of the pine tree. The
faint illumination from the street lamp
at the corner round which the cab had
disappeared Il wondered if it had gone
to stable) was lost here, and as the
square unlighted front OF the house vas
black against such sky spaces as could
be discerned among the trees, we were
obliged to grope our way towards it.
The month was early February, and
some lonely bird, flown north before it's
time, uttered a sudden cry in the dark
ness, which pierced my heard with a
strange ~poignancy. 1t was like a tragic
voice crying to me for help in peril
help that l knew not how to give.
In old days I had not been SO i'm
questionable, but Of late, though my
years were only twenty-nine. l seemed
to have lived through many lives 10
! extreme old age, to know the sorrows
! of all grcaning creation, and to have
an almost painful sympathy for every
one.
| could not have told why, but after
that liquid note from the unseen |
would not have sacrificed the expert
ence which was yet to come to me for
all the gold / was ever likely to win
in the quest l hoped to begin on the
morrow.
AS my eyes accustomed themselves
to the dusk I progressed more boldly,
followed the squat figure which pat
tered in heeless shoes close before me,
l judged that the house stood no farth-
er than fifty yards from the street, for
in a movement o two had reached it.
The front door must have been left
Unmatched, for it was pushed noise
lecsiy back, 70 shew a dim vestibule,
whence light entered from a hall be.
yond. And after l was well inside it
was brought into its place with a tell
tale click. which revealed the existence
Of a night latch.
The midnight stiffness was so in
/ tense in the house that the ticking of
a clock, somewhere out Of sight, was
like a ghostly voice of the silence.
My guide took me through the vesti-
bule into a wide, square hall. fur
nished with a few carved chairs Of
foreign make. its floor spread with a
huge Turkish rug in which the feet
sank stealthily. making 40 sound.