II
As I begin my narrative, my mind travels back for a moment to the days of my youth, and I am made more vividly aware of the changes that have taken place in the world. We are living in a new era now—a period marked by a series of strange occurrences, manifestations of the weird powers that lurk in outer space. The New Deal has passed into history. A strangely remote time ago, that was....
The laboratory has supplied us with the basic means of lifting the curtain of space from scenes and activities at a distance. A system of sight transmission and reception, comparable in coverage and service to the world-wide hook-up of sound broadcasting, has brought all nations closer together. In the friendly exchange of ideas and feelings through the medium of television and the radio, the whole civilized world enjoys common participation.
Nationalism no longer endangers the peace of the world. All war debts between nations have been settled, and tariff barriers laid low. Internationalism reigns supreme, to the spirit and benefits of which Henry contributed his share by engaging servants representing seven nationalities. Thus we harbored at the castle of Sands Cliff about every conceivable question of society, politics and religion.
Our summer castle is such a place as you read of, in romances of the Middle Ages. It was built more than half a century ago by a wealthy New York society woman who must have had a strain of poetic romanticism in her veins. When Henry purchased the place, it was almost in ruins.
It is perched on the summit of a precipitous sand cliff, commanding an excellent view of Long Island Sound. From its windows, on a bright day, the majestic towers of New York appear dimly etched against a mauve horizon like the spires of a magical city. There it stands, dark and foreboding, and ivy-clad, in its own grounds, surrounded by a high brick wall. The main entrance gate is approached by a dark avenue which winds through a heavily wooded park. There is no other dwelling within a mile.
There are many mullioned windows in its slim, peaked towers. Inside, a clutter of rooms—endless rooms—some of them in the upper floors unused and smelling dusty and dank. The front door opens on a brick terrace, which has a stone balustrade as a protective measure against a sheer drop of two hundred feet to the rocky base of the cliff. From the east end of the terrace, stone steps wind down to a private yacht landing and a long stretch of beach, fenced in with barbed wire.
An outstanding feature of the castle is its galleried entrance hall, with its darkly gleaming oak panelling and great, stone staircase; a hall so large that when one speaks, the sound is echoed like the whispering of ghosts from the high, oak-timbered ceiling.
There is a queer element of solitude and uncanniness that always cloaks the castle at the twilight hour, before Orkins, in his routine of duty, switches on the lights. I noticed it particularly, one summer evening, about the middle of August, as I walked up and down the terrace, dinner-jacketed and smoking, awaiting the arrival of our two dinner guests, Serge Olinski and His Highness Prince Dmitri Matani.
The sun had gone down in a cloudless, violet sky, and purplish twilight had settled on the Sound and the marshland, stretching westward to a cove, where the lights of the village of Sands Cliff were beginning to twinkle. The silence was more oppressive than the heat. Now and then it was broken by a distant tugboat whistle, like the hoarse croak of a frog, and the faint calling of a thrush for its mate in the thick shrubberies that fringed Jane's flower garden, on the north side of the castle.