It is curious that in the overwhelming anguish that had now seized upon me, an insignificant thought came to the surface of my seething consciousness and restored all the coolness and self-control that I had lost: “What an unconscionable ass I have been! Fool! Fool! Fool! Of course! Of course! Why did I not get the point at the very first? Long ago, long ago? After the very first suspicious words I heard from the mouths of those two weird hosts of mine?... Fool of fools! Why did I not recognize her perfume out there in the hall where I first perceived it—before those three bolts were drawn upon me, leaving me a helpless prisoner in this hole where I am caught like a rat in a trap?
“Helpless, eh? Like a rat in a trap, eh? Not quite.”
I was almost normally calm as I put a hand to my belt and drew my revolver. Helpless, eh? There were eight cartridges in my automatic, and I had used only one—the one that put poor Siegfried out of his misery! “Seven left! Helpless? Not so helpless as all that? There must be seven of them!”
I snapped the lock on the hammer and opened the magazine. The seven bullets were in place. I threw the barrel back into position and released the lock again, testing the trigger lightly with my finger to be sure the requisite free play was there. I put the pistol into my coat pocket, with my right hand upon it.
“At sunrise, eh? You were coming back at sunrise, old Methuselah? Do! I shall be glad to see you!”
I looked at my watch. Two o’clock! It was mid-winter time. The dawn would be long in coming.
I rose from the chair and stepped over to the bed. The sheets were singularly delicate, the coverlets thick and downy. Another breath of perfume floated past my nostrils.—I buried a fist in my hot, feverish cheek.... That bed, so daintily prepared! It had been offered to me! But for whom had it been made so cosy? Who slept there ordinarily? And my thoughts flashed out through the walls and partitions of that accursed mansion to another room, where there would be another bed and in it a woman, sleeping! Madeleine, my Madeleine!
The dart of horrified jealousy that ran through my heart was like the thrust of a sharp, white-hot sword. Madeleine! There, in that other chamber, at night! The victim of what unconscionable sorcery! The plaything of what loathsome and unmentionable desires!
But no—my calmer judgment soon concluded. Those men—demons, perhaps—could not have been dastards in the thrall of lust! That secret house could not be a House of Love! What was the mystery, then? What? Oh, what?
The three candles were flickering at the three points of their tripod of lances. The door! I looked at it. Here also the joinings yawned from age. And that would doubtless be the case with the window.