But now, with the waters of the lake lapping about the foundations of the verandah, with the garden and the roadway approach a partly submerged wilderness, in the chill windlessness of the last of the night, the place only added to the general impression of distance and darkness and utter desolation.
The moon had lost its cold brilliance. It lay fallen from its high estate in the dome of the heavens, lolling wearily, a dull yellow disc just above the horizon. The stars, too, had yielded their twinkling brightness, while the cold fires of the Aurora were burning low, and their ceaseless movement suggested a hasty, disorderly retreat to the mysterious fastnesses of the northern world which had given them birth.
Yet life was stirring, and it centred about this derelict habitation.
Two men had passed the rotting fencing and made their way through the tangle of growth to the back entrance, which clearly opened into the kitchen premises. They paused before the closed door and remained talking in low tones for some moments, then one of them, a man of big physique, raised a clenched hand and his knuckles rapped sharply and peculiarly on the resounding woodwork. There was a further moment of delay, then the door swung open inwards, and the darkness beyond swallowed up the newly arrived visitors.
After awhile there came a further arrival. He was a stoutish creature who gazed searchingly about him in the darkness before passing on beyond the line of the containing fence. But finally he, too, passed from view as had the earlier comers, and the engulfing solitude in which the derelict habitation was wrapped returned to its unbroken sway.
After that, in quick succession, there were two further arrivals. They came, both of them, from the direction of the sleeping city. They came singly, and in each case their approach was in similar method to those who came before. It was as if rule governed them, they approached cautiously, peering and listening in the dim twilight of the night. Then came the signal knock upon the door, and after that the gaping darkness of the interior swallowed them up in the voiceless mechanical fashion which suggested a contrivance controlled from somewhere in the far interior of the deserted habitation.