The curtains fell together again.
There was something so startling in this action of the wind that Barrant stood motionless, looking round him.

The cold current of air he had admitted died away in the draughty passages with queer gasping noises, like a wind strangled.

Then there was the most absolute silence.

The curtains hung perpendicular, as thickly motionless as blankets.

Barrant noticed that the hallstand and a chair beside it were thick with dust.
Evidently the house was empty.
Turning first to make quite sure that the front door was securely shut, he took his way upstairs to Robert Turold's study.
A point of light, falling through the shattered panel of the closed door, pierced the vague gloom of the passage and hovered on the door of the bedroom opposite--the room into which the dead man had been carried.
Barrant entered the study and looked around him.