He approached the blank wall of the castle. Its great stone bulk loomed above, sinister in the dim starlight, and then, without a sound, the man disappeared.
Now, I am prejudiced against prowling figures that disappear suddenly while I am watching them. It was a new experience to me, and I felt that the world was not living up to its proper matter-of-fact character. I went to the spot where he had last been visible. A tall bush grew there, beside a vine that clung to the old wall of the castle. Under the bush—I felt carefully—was only stone wall. The vine was very thick, and cast a deeper blackness in the dark, but so far as I could feel there was no door there. Yet a man had been in that spot, and was gone, and somewhere in that great mass of stonework Helena was quite probably out of earshot of any of her servants.
I went quickly back to our rooms, and awoke John to tell him what I had seen. He put on shoes and trousers and a dressing gown and went down into the garden to watch, while I went inside to find and warn Helena.
I found the great hall, and then knew in a general way where her rooms were, because she had waved vaguely toward them as she talked during the evening. However, the old castle was such a rambling, crooked pile, that I should probably never have found my way if I had not roused a maid who came rushing at me with a tall candle lighting a thick white cotton nightgown.
“Madame will not be disturbed,” she proclaimed, gloomily, Cassandra-like, “every night she locks her door, and no one dares go near her. Not for my life, gnädiger Herr, would I knock at her door.”
“Show me the door, then,” I said, “and I will knock.”
“No, the Herrschaften must understand, if I disobey her, my lady will send me away forever, and then how will my old mother and father live?”
I fished an American dollar from my pocket. It is an all-potent open sesame in Europe. The girl’s eyes opened wide, her hand stretched out, then she drew it back, and shook her head, longingly, “I dare not, wohlgeborner Herr,” she said, politely.
“Show me her door, merely, and I will knock, and never tell her how I found it,” I offered, and put the dollar in her fingers. She looked at me, then at the dollar. Then, as nonchalantly as though she were putting it in a gold-mesh purse, she lifted her nightgown, and placed the dollar safely inside a long thick woollen stocking. She seemed to be quite dressed under the nightgown.
“That door,” she said, and pointed down the hall, and then she ran away, shamelessly. Her candle flickered down the corridor, and was gone.