It was some time before that summons was answered, but no one of the waiting group seemed to have anything to say to the others during the interval. The mystery of time itself was in the atmosphere. Some brooding spirit of the past might have been peering out at them from the watchman's wicket in the bartizan above. They stood still and silent until, at last, the postern in the big double-doorway was unlatched from within and a grey-haired, elderly woman with a hard-featured face, much lined and seamed, in the stiffly rustling garb of a superior servant, appeared in the narrow opening and dropped them an old-fashioned curtsy after a quick, shrewd glance at them.
"If it isn't too late, we'd like to be allowed to look over the castle," Slyne said politely raising his cap.
The woman was gazing intently at Sallie. She started as Mr. Jobling coughed, with intention, after they had waited a second or two for an answer.
"You will be very welcome, sirs," she said hastily. "I have authority to admit visitors. Will you be pleased to step in."
She looked long and very closely at Sallie again as the girl crossed the threshold; and then at the others in turn as they entered, one at a time, by the narrow postern. She closed it behind them, and led the way through a low, arched passage into a dimly lighted but spacious hall.
"We've just passed through the walls," Mr. Jobling informed them patronisingly, of his superior knowledge. "They're twelve feet thick on this front. Loquhariot would still be a hard nut to crack, eh?"
"I'd sooner crack a bottle than a nut," commented Captain Dove aside to Slyne, who frowned reprovingly at him.
The great hall they entered next could almost have housed a regiment. But it, like the guard-room through which they had come, was peopled only in dusky corners by fearsomely lifelike suits of armour. Its empty fireplaces made it seem still more desolate and deserted. War-worn flags hung from the gallery overhead, to which a wide stairway with many shallow steps gave access. Dead and gone Justices and St. Justs and Juras looked coldly down, from out of dark, tarnished frames, at the whispering intruders.
"You're Mrs. M'Kissock, aren't you?" Mr. Jobling remarked with affable condescension as they followed that hard-featured personage into a seemingly endless passage lined and hung with heads and horns and other trophies of the chase from all parts of the world.
She glanced sharply round at him again and bowed in silent assent.