The Hound of Florence Read Free

pointed discreetly to the portfolio he was carrying.
    â€œIs that all?”
    Lucas did not answer. He had put a few of his father’s best drawings in the portfolio, together with one or two of his own attempts. That was really all he possessed in the world.
    The woman looked kindly at him, as though she did not expect any answer and regarded his poverty as of no moment. It was a gentle, understanding and reassuring look.
    â€œGo right in,” she said, jerking her head over her shoulder toward the house. “You know where it is.”
    Lucas stepped past her and vanished up the passage. The woman stood looking after him as though he were caught in a trap.
    Slowly he climbed the steep, winding stairs. They were so dark that at first, until his eyes grew accustomed to the dim light and he could discern the shadowy forms of the stone steps, he groped his way inch by inch. He had not seen the glance the woman sent after him as he entered the house, nor had he any idea why they had been so ready to rent him the top attic without making any stipulation about payment. True, it was squalid enough, but it had a bed, a table and a chair, so that at any rate he would have a roof over his head and a place of refuge at a moment when he had been afraid he would have to sleep in the street. The woman’s friendly smile had made him feel, as on the first occasion, that these people had seen how poor he was and wanted to do him a kindness.
    He had taken this almost as a matter of course and thought no more about it. He had not the faintest idea that he was being used merely to dispel, by means of his harmless presence, the attic’s evil reputation. He did not know that a week previously, in this same bare room which he had just entered, a mysterious old man had died a mysterious death. For many years this old man had lived there alone, feared by his neighbours, regarded by everybody with silent dread, understood by none. He was very tall and pale, and so thin that in his long, loose robes, he looked more like a spirit than a creature of flesh and blood. So colorless was his face that it might have belonged to a corpse, and his every movement and step were so feeble that it seemed as though a breath would blow him away. But through the snow-white hair of his mustache and beard there gleamed the fine cupid’s bow of his red lips, eternally closed, like a symbol of imperishable youth; and the clear, commanding expression of his gray eyes was that of a man of great power and vitality.
    The porter’s wife could remember him from the time when she was a child and used to play with other children on the bastion. Everybody, young and old alike, shrank from him. No one had ever been known to hear him speak. Silent and solitary, he walked amid his fellows, inaccessible and heedless of all about him. Often for weeks at a time he would disappear, and then as suddenly return. Everyone thought him a magician. One or two brave spirits, imagining he was versed in the occult sciences, and perhaps possessed the power of healing or exorcising serious afflictions, had, from time to time, sought his help; but to all their questions he had answered never a word, until at last, cowed by the power of his eyes, they had fled in terror from his presence. It was a long time ago that all this had happened and no one had been able to pluck up courage to address him since. Then suddenly, about a week previously, he had been found up in the attic a disfigured corpse. Thus the room came to be regarded as a place of horror, where in all probability it was neither safe nor wise to live. It was hoped that the young lodger would be a means of testing whether the old man’s spirit still haunted the place.
    But of all this Lucas, as he entered the tiny room, knew nothing. Laying his portfolio on the table, he cast a rapid glance round without seeing anything and then gave himself up to his thoughts. They were the thoughts of a man for whom all the