The guide led us down the narrow staircase to the outer door of Philip's suite, then slipped away, shutting the door behind him. Lady Vale-Avon and Monica (the mother still clasping her daughter's arm), Pilar, Dick, Carmona, and I were now alone between the gloomy walls behind which the bigot and despot had lived his miserable life and died his miserable death.
There was a chill in the sombre place which froze the spirit; yet I, for one, did not feel sad. I was conscious only of an excited expectancy, as if I were waiting for something to happen.
We let our imagination set the meagre form of Philip in his chair, or by the desk at which he used to write; examined the grim relics of his monk-like existence; and finally moved to the death-chamber, set like a stage-box at the theatre, beside the high altar of the chapel.
So small was the room that it was filled by our little party of six; [pg 115]yet I felt there another presence which none of us could see—a grey ghost agonising for his sins, through a bleak eternity.
Monica felt it too, for she shivered, and exclaimed, “Let us go. This room seems haunted with evil. I can't breathe in it.”
“But now for the secret,” said Carmona. “Would you guess at any hidden opening in these walls?”
We stared critically about, and I began to test the wainscot, but the Duke stopped me. “You'd never find the place,” he said; “and I promised the person who told me not to give away the secret; but that doesn't prevent me from showing you what's behind the door.”
He moved close to the wall, stood for an instant, then stepped back, as we heard a slight clicking sound, like the snap of a spring on an old box-lid. At the same time a part of the wainscoting rolled away, leaving a narrow aperture.
It was dark on the other side, but Carmona took a gold match-box from his pocket and struck a bunch of little wax fosforos.
“Philip had this cell made for a place of penance and self-torture,” he said, “and it's just as it used to be during his lifetime, before he was too ill to go in any more. His twisted wire scourge is there, with his blood on it, his horsehair shirt, and a girdle bristling with small, sharp spikes. Will you have a look, Lady Vale-Avon? I can't go with you, for the cell isn't big enough for two, but I'll hold the matches at the door.”