Explore "The Mill of Silence" by Bernard Capes on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
In the cool of the evening I knocked at Dr. Crackenthorpe's front door. No one answering -- his one servant was gadding, probably -- I tried the handle, found it to be on the latch only, and walked in. The house was quiet as a desert, save that from the doctor's private consulting-room, as he called it, issued a little, weak, snoring sound.
I paused in the dusky passage before tapping at the closed door of this room. The whole place was faintly stringent with the atmosphere that comes from a poor habit of ventilation -- an atmosphere like that emitted from crumbling old leather-bound folios. A ragged strip of carpet, so trodden up its middle to the very string as to give the impression of a cinder-path running between dully flowering borders, climbed the flight of stairs before me, and stretched itself upon the landing above in an exhausted condition.