The old lady excused herself with a dignity out of all proportion to the matter, and they went off on a tour of inspection, the host leading the way, and keeping up a running description of the place as they proceeded, explaining how he had, so to speak, grafted a new house on the remains of the mediæval castle. All the rooms through which they passed were decorated and furnished in a manner suggestive of considerable wealth.
Presently they crossed a small inner courtyard, and Zarka paused before a door of ecclesiastical design.
“This,” he said, “is a necessary adjunct to a house so isolated as mine.” He threw open the door, and they found themselves to their surprise in an elaborately fitted private chapel. It was perhaps as well that their voluble host did not catch the glances exchanged between his two visitors; he might not have felt flattered by the implied sarcasm on his religious arrangements. Perhaps their silence was significant; anyhow the Count did not detain them in the chapel longer than was needed to glance round it.
“Now,” he said, as they turned from the door, “one more room, and I will not bore you by playing the showman any longer, at least indoors. I must take you down into the rock and show you my armoury. I think you will admit it is worth seeing.”
Indeed it was. The Count led the way down a broad winding staircase cut between walls of solid rock. Deep loopholes, lined with reflectors, gave light at intervals, and the roughness of the steps, evidently hewn in the rock-bed, was covered with thick carpets of Oriental design. Arrived at the bottom the Count pressed a knob, and the great barred doors in front of them opened, disclosing an unexpected sight.
It was a great room, constructed deep in the rock; its stone walls, hewn smooth and polished, were hung with arms and trophies of the chase. Suits of armour of various descriptions and ages were arranged on stands round the room, from regal suits of mail to the habergeons of humble pikemen and arquebusiers. Above were suspended helmets, the crested, gold-inlaid casques of warrior kings and knights, as well as the sallet of the free-lance and the plain skull pieces and morions of foot-soldiers. Shields of various shapes and emblazonry formed a frieze round the upper part of the walls; below were swords, rapiers and daggers, lances gay with pennons, murderous pikes, daggers, gauntlets, all in artistic array. The great room, hewn out almost to the face of the rock, sloping almost sheer down from beneath the castle, was lighted by deep windows opening on to the side of the precipice, and commanding the sunlit valley which stretched away below.
Zarka watched his visitors’ surprise with his habitual smile, a smile which seemed to serve as a mask for possibly darker thoughts behind.
“This room,” he observed, “is my favourite toy, and it has afforded me more amusement than most toys.”
“An innocent amusement,” Galabin thought; “yet, truly with a grim significance behind it.”
“The room was made before my time,” Zarka continued, in answer to a question of Von Tressen’s. “It was excavated by my great-grandfather and used as a sort of strong room; perhaps”—he gave a shrug—“who knows? a hiding place in those troublous times. All I have done is to have it enlarged and fitted up as you see. Yes; it is my hobby. I have fallen a prey to the collector’s mania, and I fear have wasted much time and good money over it.”