Reaching the door, he opened it and went out into the hall. All
was dark and silent. He permitted himself here to flash on his
electric torch for a moment, and he saw that the hall was spacious
and used as a lounge, for there were several chairs clustered in
its centre, opposite the fireplace. There were two or three doors
opening from it, and almost opposite where he stood were the stairs,
a broad flight leading to a wide landing above.

Still with the same extreme silence and care, he began to ascend
these stairs and when he was about half-way up he became aware of
a faint and strange sound that came trembling through the silence
and stillness of the night.

What it was he could not imagine. He listened for a time and then
resumed his silent progress with even more care than previously,
and only when he reached the landing did he understand that this
faint and low sound he heard was caused by a woman weeping very
softly in one of the rooms near by.

Silently he crossed the landing in the direction whence the sound
seemed to come. Now, too, he saw a thread of light showing beneath
a door at a little distance, and when he crept up to it and listened
he could hear for certain that it was from within this room that
there came the sound of muffled, passionate weeping.

The door was closed, but he turned the handle so carefully that he
made not the least sound and very cautiously he began to push the
door back, the tiniest fraction of an inch at a time, so that even
one watching closely could never have said that it moved.