Fritz’s death remained a mystery, at the solution of which we could only hazard various conjectures. But that it was a man’s work I had little doubt. The death-wound in the throat was the clean stab of a knife or dagger. My idea was that the man, a spy, had been hiding in order to watch us, and being attacked by the dog had silenced him in the most effectual manner; then before I could follow, making his escape under cover of the nearest hedge, which would hide his retreat right down to the road, whence, if he thought it necessary, he could cross the river, and get off into the woods, when pursuit would be hopeless.
But, whatever the explanation of the affair might be, it had happened so swiftly and so mysteriously as to cause a very uneasy feeling, a serious apprehension for my friends’ lives, which I could not disguise from myself. Now I was indeed beginning to realize the malignant tenacity of Chancellor Rallenstein. All the same, this fresh evidence rather braced my determination to outwit him. I gave up my long rides in the country round, and confined myself to walking about the grounds and the village, keeping a sharper look-out than ever.
A very uncomfortable feeling is that of being secretly watched. And that we were under a stealthy observation we all instinctively felt.
It is annoying, putting aside the danger, and it plays the devil by the nerves. To wake up in the morning with the feeling that your actions that day will have mysterious eyes upon them, governed and directed with an inscrutable and determined will, ah! it makes one pray for an open enemy. The tension was telling upon us; on me probably least of all, since I had the nerves of a steeplechase rider, and fresh air and exercise kept me fit. But I felt things could not go on indefinitely as they were. As the days and weeks wore on, Rallenstein would scarcely be likely to rest content with merely keeping his marked-down quarry under observation. Our staying on at Schönval was simply waiting for the assassin’s stroke that was being prepared. One side or other must force the situation. I therefore determined that we should risk it; but, as it turned out, the forcing came from the other side.
I was walking near the village one afternoon, turning over certain plans in my mind, when I made a singular discovery. I ought to mention that the neighbourhood was rich in geological treasures. There had been, years before, a landslip, by which many hidden things of past ages had been brought to light. I had several times climbed about this region, more to explore its picturesque ruggedness than for any geological curiosity I possessed. On this day something prompted me to go through the landslip again. So I turned up the path behind the inn, which led along a wooded ascent to where the fissured rocks and tree-grown boulders lay in romantic confusion. At one point in the irregular acclivity there was placed at some twenty yards from the path an ancient stone sarcophagus, which had been unearthed at some time, and, its value being probably deemed less than the cost of removal, had been left there to form one of the attractions of the place, and, indirectly, of the inn below. I had passed this before, but had never taken the trouble to turn off the path in order to examine it more closely. The present and future had been too absorbing to let one care about the past. But now I did so. I stepped aside and strolled slowly towards the object of my curiosity. As I approached, to my astonishment a head appeared above the edge of the stone coffer, and a girl’s laughing face turned a sort of petulant inquiry towards me. Saturated as I was with mistrust, I hardly knew whether to be suspicious of this apparition or not. A village girl, perhaps, I thought, although she certainly did not look it. I resolved to find out.
“I beg your pardon,” I said in German. “I am sorry to have disturbed you, but I was about to examine this old object, not thinking any one was inside it.”
Her smile deepened into a laugh. “How should you?” she replied. “It is the last place you would expect to find at least a living person in.”
I was German scholar enough to know that it was not her native tongue. She spoke it prettily, indeed, but ungrammatically, and with a foreign accent.
“I won’t disturb you,” I said. “Another day——”
She had risen, stepped on to the ledge of the great coffin, and now jumped down on the ground beside me.