"Oh no. Not yet; it's miles and miles."
Their footfalls made sounds like the squish of oozing water. Rampole's light darted. Small eyes regarded them, scuttling away as the beam pried open dark corners. There were gnats flicking round their faces, and somewhere close there must have been water, for the croaking of frogs beat harshly in guttural chorus. Again that interminable journey wound Rampole through corridors, past rusty gates, down stone stairs and twisting up again. As the flashlight's beam found the face of the Iron Maiden, something whirred in the darkness.
Bats. The girl ducked, and Rampole struck viciously with his stick. He had miscalculated, and the cane clanged against iron, sending a din of echoes along the roof. From a flapping cloud, the squeaks of the bats shrilled in reply. Rampole felt her hand shaking on his arm.
"We've warned him," she whispered. "I'm afraid. We've warned him… No, no, don't leave me here! I've got to stay with you. If that light goes out… Those ghastly things; I can almost feel them in my hair…."
Though he reassured her, he felt the thick knocking of his own heart. If there were dead men walking in the stone house where they had died, he thought, they must have faces just like that big, empty, spider-hung countenance of the Iron Maiden. The sweat of the old torture room seemed to linger. He tightened his jaws as though he were biting on a bullet, as soldiers did to stifle the pain of an amputation in Anthony's day.
Anthony…
There was a light ahead. They could see it dimly, just at the top of a flight of stairs leading to the passage which ran outside the Governor's Room. Somebody was carrying a candle.
Rampole snapped off his light. He could feel Dorothy shaking in the dark as he put her behind him and began to edge up the stairs along the left-hand wall, the stick free in his right hand. He knew with cold clarity that he was not afraid of a murderer. He would even have liked to swing the heavy cane against a murderer's skull. But what made the small wires jerk and jump in his legs, what made his stomach feel cold as a squeezed rag, was the fear that this might be somebody else.
For a moment he was afraid the girl behind him was going to cry out. And he knew that he, too, would have cried out if there had been a shadow across that candlelight, and the shadow had worn a three-cornered hat…. Up there he heard footsteps. Evidently the other person had heard them coming, and then believed he must have been mistaken, for the sounds were going back in, the direction of the Governor's Room.
Somewhere there was the tapping of a cane…