The old man shook his head.
“No. And I don’t know how he got here or went away, unless he drove or come in a motor. He didn’t use the trains.”
The road down toward the river was steep, and lined with trees upon each side; their interwoven branches overhead, as Scanlon had explained, were dense enough to keep out most of the light. “It’s pretty much the same kind of a night as the one I used when I first came here,” said Bat. “Stars, but no moon.”
The wooden bridge, with a peaked roof over it, crossed the river at the foot of the road; the square openings upon either side showed the dark water flowing sullenly along.
“Look,” and Bat Scanlon pointed out at one of the windows of the bridge. “There are the lights of Schwartzberg.”
Some distance away—perhaps a mile—and high above the west bank of the river, hung a cluster of lights. So lonely were these, and so pale and cold that they might well have marked the retreat of some necromancer, in which he pored over his dark books of magic.
“It’s a peculiar thing,” said Ashton-Kirk, his eyes upon the far-off lights, “what various forms fear takes. Here is a man who, apparently, is in constant terror of some one, or something, and yet we find him lodged stubbornly in a place where a secret blow might be levelled at him with the greatest ease.”
“That struck me more than once,” spoke Mr. Scanlon. “And I felt like putting it to him as a question shaped something like: ‘Why stay here when there’s places where there’s more folks? Why stick around a spot where there’s always some one cutting in with an unwelcome surprise, when you can get good house-room in places where there’s plenty of burglar alarms?’”
Their feet sounded drearily upon the loose planks of the bridge; and when they emerged at the far end they found themselves upon a narrow road which ran off into the darkness.
“On, over the hills, in and out, and up and down, until it lands you at Schwartzberg gate,” said Scanlon.