“Is there one?”
“Did you not know it?”
“No, I did not, really.”
“Well, then, come and see it.”
Christian took the candle and lighted M. Goefle to the spot; but the secret door was shut from the outside. It was so accurately fitted into the wood-work that it was impossible to distinguish it from the other panels, which were all ornamented with a similar raised moulding, and so thick that it gave back the same dull sound as the rest of the oak wainscot. Besides, it was strongly fastened behind by the large bolts that Christian had noticed the evening before. He had left them unfastened, but they had now been bolted, probably by the same hand that had padlocked the outer door at the foot of the secret staircase. Christian mentioned all this to M. Goefle, who was obliged to take his word for it, as he had no means of going to certify the facts.
“Believe me, M. Goefle,” said Christian, “either some old servant of M. Stenson’s came in here yesterday to put the room in order, without knowing that it had been invaded, or the Baroness Hilda is kept a prisoner somewhere in the building, either under our feet or over our heads; in the walled-up rooms above, for aught that I know. And by the way, how about that built-up door—you did not tell me where it led to, nor why it was closed. And yet that seems to me a rather interesting circumstance.”
“A very ordinary one. Stenson told me all about it. The room over this was for a long time completely out of repair. When the Baroness Hilda took refuge at Stollborg, she had the door closed up because it let in the wind and the cold. After her death, Stenson had it opened, to make repairs in the masonry of the upper part of the building. But as it would have cost more than it was worth to make the place habitable, and as nobody would have ventured to occupy rooms that were regarded as the devil’s very head-quarters, on account of the Catholic chapel that was supposed to have been erected there, Stenson, with the baron’s permission—as he himself told me—built it up solid again with his own hands. He did this both out of economy—there being no further use for the door—and to put a stop to the superstitious stories in circulation about the old building.”
“Still, M. Goefle, you saw the supposed phantom come out from behind the map of Sweden that covers that masonry?”
“Oh, that was only a dream! Go and look, Christian. You will be more successful than I was, if you can find a practicable door there. Do you think I did not go and examine the place as soon as the vision disappeared?”
“Of course,” said Christian, who had already ascended the stairs, raised the map of Sweden, and was rapping at different parts of the wall beneath it. “There’s nothing here but a wall as thick as the rest, if I can judge by the dulness of the sound. The red paint also is accurately matched, and well laid on across the joinings; but did you notice, M. Goefle, how this plaster is scratched in the middle here?”