"Not a sign of it. I will go down and ask the landlord in strict confidence how they dampen their stoves in Ansbach."
"Well, if you must. It's getting hotter every moment." She followed him timorously into the corridor, lit by a hanging lamp, turned low for the night.
He looked at his watch; it was eleven o'clock. "I'm afraid they're all in bed."
"Yes; you mustn't go! We must try to find out for ourselves. What can that door be for?"
It was a low iron door, half the height of a man, in the wall near their room, and it yielded to his pull. "Get a candle," he whispered, and when she brought it, he stooped to enter the doorway.
"Oh, do you think you'd better?" she hesitated.
"You can come, too, if you're afraid. You've always said you wanted to die with me."
"Well. But you go first."
He disappeared within, and then came back to the doorway. "Just come in here, a moment." She found herself in a sort of antechamber, half the height of her own room, and following his gesture she looked down where in one corner some crouching monster seemed showing its fiery teeth in a grin of derision. This grin was the damper of their stove, and this was where the maid had kindled the fire which had been roasting them alive, and was still joyously chuckling to itself. "I think that Munich man was wrong. I don't believe we beat the Germans in anything. There isn't a hotel in the United States where the stoves have no front doors, and every one of them has the space of a good-sized flat given up to the convenience of kindling a fire in it."