Читать книгу The Day the World Ended - Arthur Henry Ward - Страница 14

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I breakfasted on the balcony, as was my custom, watching early promenaders in wooded paths beside the tiny river and trying to reconcile the morning beauty of this sheltered valley with that nightly terror of the Voice.

“You have two days ...”

Already, I regretted having confided so much of the facts respecting my nocturnal visitor to the watchman. I had on my breakfast table a note from the management respectfully requesting an interview.

As I poured out a second cup of coffee and stared in the direction of Lichtenthaler Allee, I saw a slim figure moving through the trees with peculiar grace. That proud, slender body could belong to no one but Mme. Yburg. I was not mistaken. And she was coming toward the hotel.

Ideas—fantastic, horrible—entered my mind. I flogged my memory for details of the shape I had seen, or thought I had seen, on this very balcony in the night. The man, the man who had spoken to me out of the shadows, might have been no more than an accomplice—his task to cover the retreat of ... the other!

She saw me presently, waved her hand, and went on to where a bridge spanned the stream. I was lighting a cigarette when she came round an angle of the hotel and walked along a gravel path to the balcony.

“Good-morning,” I said. “You don’t look as though you had had a late night.”

“I didn’t,” she replied, and tapped at the gravel with a light stick which she carried. “I was so terribly bored! I escaped. It was mean of you to desert me.”

I met the glance of her unfathomable eyes. They were slightly oblique, which always defeats me.

“What could I do? Mr. Kluster is a most alarming dragon.”

“No.” She was watching me all the time and her gaze was disconcerting. “I had to be victimized, I suppose. What are you doing with yourself to-day?”

Now, this seemingly normal inquiry held for me a sinister meaning. I had been afoot early, and I had obtained in the town a handbook which dealt with local history. It lay before me now. Particularly, I had sought for information respecting the older tombs in the cemetery. The shopman had been able to help me and to augment the facts.

I had learned from this valuable handbook that the last of the once powerful Felsenweir family was buried approximately at the spot where that winged horror had alighted. The cypress-shadowed mausoleum which I had approached was in fact the family vault of the Felsenweirs. Their great hold in the hills was to-day a ruin and all but inaccessible.

“There are strange stories about Felsenweir Castle,” the salesman had told me.

He was a Dutchman and did not display the extraordinary reticence upon the subject of the Black Forest “vampires” which hitherto I had met with.

“Anything to do with recent rumours?”

The man’s light blue eyes had lighted up.

“Absolutely. The poor fellow who was found dead in the forest lay on the borders of the Felsenweir woods. The giant bat you may have heard about was seen in the same neighbourhood.”

Putting two and two together, and studying an excellent map which I had obtained from my informant, I had arrived at the conclusion that a nearer view of Felsenweir was indicated. Approach to the castle ruins was next to impossible, I was told. The property was held by a trust and the surrounding woods were strictly private.

But I had made a plan, and now:

“What are you doing with yourself to-day?” Mme. Yburg asked.

“I shall be busy all the morning,” I replied. “But you would make me very happy if you would join me for tea at the Casino.”

She lowered her eyes and bit her lip meditatively. Her pale, clearly chiselled features were Greek in purity; but I thought that the little teeth were terribly white.

“I should love to,” she replied. “But if I’m late—after five, I mean—you won’t give me up?”

“Certainly not. I may be late myself.”