The House of Lost Souls - F. G. Cottam [12]
He looked around, half-waiting for the sound to stir again. The rain strengthened. He heard drops begin to drip from stiffening leaves and dribble down runnels of bark. It occurred to him that he was soaked, again, for the third time in less than twenty-four hours. And it occurred to him that the wood on the hill was a great deal older than the university buildings so sympathetically designed to blend in with their austere and gloomy surroundings. He waited in the rain to hear again the predatory prowl of whatever was concealed in the trees to his left. He waited for five minutes, glancing a couple of times at his wristwatch. It was growing darker. But no sound came. After five minutes, he moved on up the hill to his meeting with Andrew Clarke, the ethics professor. He did not want to be late. Though he was confident Professor Clarke would have no further, pressing engagements after this. It was a Saturday, after all. And Saturday was a quiet day in academia.
There was moss spreading on the wood of the building. It furred the sills of the windows and encroached across the stone surround of the main entrance, soft and deeply green. And there was mildew inside. Seaton smelled its scent of subtle decay as soon as the glass door closed behind him and he paused in the blink and stutter of failing fluorescents overhead, wondering which way he ought to go to find the ethics man. There was no one in the long corridor in front of him. There were doors to right and left, numbered he saw, as he progressed along the passage. But none of them bore a name. The mildew smell grew stronger. He saw two doors marked WC with male and female symbols under the initials and went into the Gents because he needed to pee.
Mildew blotched and spotted the porcelain of the urinals. In the sinks, the mouths of the dripping copper taps were stained and swollen with mould. The mirrors above the sinks reflected black. Seaton saw all of this in the feeble glow of an emergency light screwed into the plaster above the door. The fluorescents were out in here. He peed calmly and then deliberately washed his hands. The paper from the dispenser, when he dried them, felt dusty between his fingers. He liked the mirrors above the row of sinks least. There was a temptation, very compelling, to look into them. He’d glanced at one of them on walking in and thought he’d glimpsed in its dark reflection a grinning flapper under a glitter-ball. It would be a terrible mistake to look into the mirrors in here. He compressed his paper towel in his palm and aimed it at a bin screwed to the wall. It missed. He was reaching for the door handle when he heard a snicker of laughter from one of the stalls, which he now saw was locked. He was suddenly aware of the smell of strong tobacco smoke. It was very rich, Turkish, perhaps Egyptian. He crouched and looked under the stall. A pair of feet faced him. They were shod in shiny leather shoes. Above the shoes, skirting each, rose the grey anachronism of canvas spats. In the dim light, Seaton could just make out the ridges of buttons rising taut at their ankles. He saw the sole of one shoe lift and slap the floor and heard more laughter from the stall’s occupant.
‘I say,’ said an empty voice.
He straightened and walked out of the lavatory as calmly as he could.
The ethics professor was in a room at the very end of the corridor. It was his office, and he sat behind his desk flanked by shelves of books with his name on their spines and photographs of occasions he’d dignified with his attendance in an academic gown. There was a lit Coleman lantern on his desk and it deepened the shadows in the room with its steady flare of flat brightness. Light gleamed off the glasses the professor wore, making it impossible to see his eyes or read his mood. He was probably in his mid-fifties, with grey hair and grey cheeks.