“You shall see your love again, Carl Eingen.”
“And otherwise?”
“The sweet face of Gretchen Müller shall smile upon you only from the shadows of the night, when memory haunts your pillow and drives sleep routed from your couch.”
Carl Eingen looked about him restlessly. The dark mysteries of this weird cellar appeared to cast upon him an uncanny spell. He seemed to be plunged into a shadow-haunted realm in which laws that were new to him prevailed. The dwarf, smiling with conscious power, seemed to exert a hypnotic influence over the impressionable youth, whose artistic sensibilities rendered him extremely sensitive to the influences of a romantic environment.
Furthermore, the threat uttered by the dwarf had had its effect. Carl Eingen longed passionately to gaze once more upon a face that had been for years the fairest sight earth held for him. The possibility—remote and unreasonable as it seemed—that this little mischief-maker could remove Gretchen Müller forever from his ken thrilled him with unspeakable dread. Instinctively he seemed to realize that Cousin Fritz was not wholly a vain boaster, that he was not without some portion of the boundless power he claimed.
“Well, Cousin Fritz,” said Carl at length, his voice hoarse and unsteady, “I will go to this point, and no further. If you will lead me at once to Fraulein Müller, I give you my word that I will take no advantage of what I have learned, that neither Wilhelm nor any of his people shall know that I have met you down here.”
The dwarf laughed mockingly and sprang to the floor. “It’s unconditional surrender, even on those terms,” he cried. “What I have left undone, Fraulein Müller will accomplish. Look here, Carl Eingen! See how powerless you were.”
Cousin Fritz skipped merrily toward the proclamation that offered a reward for his capture. Removing it from the wall he playfully tore it into small pieces. Suddenly, to Carl’s amazement, a black hole gaped at them where the paper had rested but a moment before.
“In here, Carl,” cried the dwarf, scrambling through the aperture. “You thought you had reached the end of the cellar. This is merely the entrance, my friend.”
For a moment the youth hesitated. When, after much squeezing and a good deal of discomfort, he stood beside Cousin Fritz, his guide’s figure was almost lost in the deep gloom.