He resigned himself in the end to a sleepless night, and lying in his
bed drew some comfort from the sound of voices and the tread of feet in
the passages and the rooms about him. These, at all events, were
companionable, and they assured him of safety. But in a while they
ceased, and he was left in a silence as absolute as the darkness. He
endured this silence for perhaps half an hour, and then all manner of
infinitesimal sounds began to stir about him. The lightest of footsteps
moved about his bed, faint sighs breathed from very close at hand, even
his name was softly whispered. He sat suddenly up in his bed, and at
once all these sounds became explained to him. They came from the street
and the square outside the window. So long as he sat up they were
remote, but the moment he lay down again they peopled the room.
"Sure," said Wogan, "here is a lesson for architects. Build no shutters
to a house when the man that has to live in it has a spark of
imagination, else will he go stark raving mad before the mortar's dry.
Window shutters are window shutters, but they are the doors of Bedlam as
well. Now Gaydon should have slept in this room. Gaydon's a great man.
Gaydon has a great deal of observation and common sense, and was never
plagued with a flim-flam of fancies. To be sure, I need Gaydon, but
since I have not Gaydon, I'll light a candle."
With that Wogan got out of bed. He had made himself so secure with his
key and his tilted chair and his shutters that he had not thought of
placing his candle by his bedside. It stood by his looking-glass on the
table. Now the room was so pitch dark that Wogan could do no more than
guess at the position even of the window. The table, he remembered, was
not far from the door, and the door was at some distance from his bed,
and in the wall on his right. He moved forward in the darkness with his
hands in front of him, groping for the table. The room was large; in a
little his hands touched something, and that something was a pillar of
the bed. He had missed his way in his bedroom. Wogan laughed to himself
and started off again; and the next thing which his outstretched hands
touched was a doorknob. The table should now be a little way to his
left. He was just turning away in that direction, when it occurred to
him that he ought to have felt the rim of the top bar of his tilted
chair underneath the door-handle. He stooped down and felt for the
chair; there was no chair, and he stood very still.