“‘Sometimes there are vagrants who get impudent,’ said Campe. ‘I’ve known them to attempt robbery; so we may as well be prepared.’
“Next day we took the dogs and guns and tried for some birds; at night we locked the place up like a prison. The days that followed were about the same; I never felt so thick a depression anywhere as there was in Schwartzberg. For hours no one would speak; our meals would go through like a funeral rite; sometimes I’d catch myself chewing my food to the tune of a dead march. After dinner we’d have a gloomy game of cards; at about ten we’d all go off to bed, one by one, and seem glad to do it.”
“Your first visit wasn’t pleasant,” said Ashton-Kirk.
“I got no fun out of it except the tramping around, and then only when I’d go off by myself. I’d have cleared out as soon as I’d sized matters up, but there were two things kept me back. First, I like young Campe, and I wanted to help him out; second, something was doing of a piquant nature, and I had a curiosity to know what it was.
“Several times, from my bedroom windows, I saw Kretz prowling about the courtyard or upon the wall. Once I fancied I caught the creeping of a couple of figures beyond the wall. I went out to look up the nature of the stunt, and almost got myself shot by what Campe afterward called prowling tramps. On the following night as I sat reading in my room, I heard a woman’s scream—sudden and high with fear. There was a rush of feet along empty corridors, sharp voices and the slamming of doors. I grabbed up my automatic and, all in disarray, I broke for the scene of excitement. But half-way down a flight of stairs I came upon Sergeant-Major Kretz, quite calm, but looking a little grimmer, if anything, than I’d ever seen him before.
“‘It’s nothing,’ he tells me. ‘The Fräulein was frightened. All is right. You need not bother.’”
“There’s a woman, then, at Schwartzberg?” said Ashton-Kirk.
“Two of them, to be exact,” returned Scanlon. “One’s an aunt of Campe’s; the other is a companion, or something of the kind. The girl I see often, but the aunt very rarely. But I never did more than nod to either of them until the night Campe was cut.”
“Cut!”
“In the body,” said Scanlon. “That was two nights ago. I had gone to bed rather later than usual and had, I think, been asleep only a few minutes when I was awakened by a sound. I sat up and listened. Then it came again. Far off, as though among the hills, came a roaring; it started like a murmur at first, and grew in volume until it rumbled like nothing I’d ever heard before. Then it died away, and only its echo remained, drifting above the hillsides.