The Silent House | Page 4

he. "Good-night."
"Good-night," replied Berwin shortly, and added to his discourtesy by
letting Lucian find his way out alone.
And so ended the barrister's first meeting with the strange tenant of the
Silent House.

CHAPTER II
SHADOWS ON THE BLIND
The landlady of Denzil was a rather uncommon specimen of the class.
She inclined to plumpness, was lively in the extreme, wore very
fashionable garments of the brightest colours, and--although somewhat
elderly--still cherished a hope that some young man would elevate her
to the rank of a matron.
At present, Miss Julia Greeb was an unwedded damsel of forty
summers, who, with the aid of art, was making desperate but
ineffectual efforts to detain the youth which was slipping from her. She
pinched her waist, dyed her hair, powdered her face, and affected

juvenile dress of the white frock and blue sash kind. In the distance she
looked a girlish twenty; close at hand various artifices aided her to pass
for thirty; and it was only in the solitude of her own room that her real
age was apparent. Never did woman wage a more resolute fight with
Time than did Miss Greeb.
But this was the worst and most frivolous side of her character, for she
was really a good-hearted, cheery little woman, with a brisk manner,
and a flow of talk unequalled in Geneva Square. She had been born in
the house she occupied, after the death of her father, and had grown up
to assist her mother in ministering to the exactions of a continuous
procession of lodgers. These came and went, married and died; but not
one of the desirable young men had borne Miss Greeb to the altar, so
that when her mother died the fair Julia almost despaired of attaining to
the dignity of wifehood. Nevertheless, she continued to keep boarders,
and to make attempts to captivate the hearts of such bachelors as she
judged weak in character.
Hitherto all her efforts had been more or less of a mercantile character,
with an eye to money; but when Lucian Denzil appeared on the scene,
the poor little woman really fell in love with his handsome face. But, in
strange contrast to her other efforts, Miss Greeb never for a moment
deemed that Lucian would marry her. He was her god, her ideal of
manhood, and to him she offered worship, and burnt incense after the
manner of her kind.
Denzil occupied a bedroom and sitting-room, both pleasant, airy
apartments, looking out on to the square. Miss Greeb attended to his
needs herself, and brought up his breakfast with her own fair hands,
happy for the day if her admired lodger conversed with her for a few
moments before reading the morning paper. Then Miss Greeb would
retire to her own sitting-room and indulge in day dreams which she
well knew would never be realised. The romances she wove herself
were even more marvellous than those she read in her favourite penny
novelettes; but, unlike the printed tales, her romance never culminated
in marriage. Poor brainless, silly, pitiful Miss Greeb; she would have
made a good wife and a fond mother, but by some irony of fate she was

destined to be neither; and the comedy of her husband-hunting youth
was now changing into the lonely tragedy of disappointed spinsterhood.
She was one of the world's unknown martyrs, and her fate merits tears
rather than laughter.
On the morning after his meeting with Berwin, the young barrister sat
at breakfast, with Miss Greeb in anxious attendance. Having poured out
his tea, and handed him his paper, and ascertained that his breakfast
was to his liking, Miss Greeb lingered about the room, putting this
straight and that crooked, in the hope that Lucian would converse with
her. In this she was gratified, as Denzil wished to learn details about the
strange man he had assisted on the previous night, and he knew that no
one could afford him more precise information than his brisk landlady,
to whom was known all the gossip of the neighbourhood. His first word
made Miss Greeb flutter back to the table like a dove to its nest.
"Do you know anything about No. 13?" asked Lucian, stirring his tea.
"Do I know anything about No. 13?" repeated Miss Greeb in shrill
amazement. "Of course I do, Mr. Denzil. There ain't a thing I don't
know about that house. Ghosts and vampires and crawling spectres live
in it--that they do."
"Do you call Mr. Berwin a ghost?"
"No; nor nothing half so respectable. He is a mystery, sir, that's what
Mr. Berwin is, and I don't care if he hears me commit myself so far."
"In what way is he a mystery?" demanded Denzil, approaching the
matter with more particularity.
"Why," said Miss