The Argosy — page 117: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

a 7 P a fi e i ay 102 In the Dead of Night . door of the nailed-up room. Finch deposited his candles on the nearest window-sill, and by their dim, uncertain light, the company ~ grouped themselves round the door, the servants a little way behind their superiors, and waited. No one spoke: no one wanted to speak. © They were thinking of the dark tragedy that, but a few short months before, and in the dead of night, had been enacted behind that shut- up door. Presently the turret-clock began to strike. Slowly and lingeringly it tolled, as if unwilling to let the dying day drop into its grave. Over all there, a deeper hush fell. Twelve solemn strokes, and then silence and another day. Silence for, perhaps, the space of half a minute; when, with an indescribable awe, they heard, one and all, a slight noise, as of a chair being pushed back; and the next moment came the sound, clear, distinct, and unmistakable, of footsteps slowly pacing the bare, polished floor of the nailed-up room. The servants all shrank back a little, and turned their white and frightened faces on one another. Kester St. George, too, staggered back a step or two and leaned for support against an angle of the wall. Even at that supreme moment he could feel that the cold, stern eyes of Richard Dering were fixed on his face, and he hated him with a hatred like death. Hardly breathing, they all listened, while the footsteps slowly, un- hesitatingly, paced the room. Suddenly they heard another sound which several there present at once recognised. What they heard was the noise of a man coughing; and the cough they heard was the short, dry, grating cough that had been peculiar to Mr. Percy Osmond, and | to him alone. Finch recognised it in amoment. So did Kester St. George: who, with a quick cry of pain, pressed his hand to his heart, and staggering back a pace or two, fell to the ground in a dead faint. ( To be continued.) Gomicbooks.com