"Then prepare me my dinner. And serve it outside, under the grapevine,
where I can see the view."
The woman started to obey. The man came nearer.
"Shall I carry your bags to the bedroom?"
"Yes. And I will go with you and unpack."
He took me to a room on the second floor. There was a bed there and a
very old chest of drawers. The floor, everything about the room was
spotlessly clean. The walls had been freshly whitewashed. Their smooth
whiteness suggested wonderful possibilities for despoliation, the
drawing of a picture, the writing of a poem, the careless writhing
autograph that caused my relatives so much despair.
"Have all the masters slept here?" I asked carelessly.
"All."
"Was there one by the name of George Seabrook?"
"I think so. But they come and go. I am old and forget."
"And all these masters, none of them ever wrote on the walls?"
"Of a certainty. All wrote with pencil what they desired to write. Who
should say they should not? For did not the villa belong to them while
they were here? But always we prepared for the new master, and made the
walls clean and beautiful again."
"You were always sure that there would be a new master?"
"Certainly. Someone must pay us our wages."
I gravely placed a gold piece in his itching palm, asking, "What did
they write on the walls?"
He looked at me with old, unblinking eyes. Owl eyes! That is what they
were, and he slowly said,
"Each wrote or drew as his fancy led him, for they were the masters and
could do as they wished."
"But what were the words?"
"I cannot speak English, or read it."
Evidently, the man was not going to talk. To me the entire situation was
most interesting. Same servants, same villa, many masters. They came and
bought and wrote on the wall and left, and then my real-estate friend
sold the house again. A fine racket!
Downstairs, outdoors, under the grapevine, eating a good Italian meal,
looking at the wonderful view, I came to laugh at my suspicions. I ate
spaghetti, olives, dark bread and wine. Silence hung heavily over the
sullen sleepy afternoon. The sky became copper-colored. It was about to
rain. The old man came and showed me a place to put my car, a recess in
the wall of the house, open at one end, but sheltered from the weather.
The stone floor was black with grease; more than one automobile had been
kept there.
"Other cars have been here," I ventured.
"All the masters had cars," the old man replied.
* * * * *
Back on the stone gallery I waited for the storm to break. At last it
came in a solid wall of gray wetness across the valley. Nearer and
nearer it came till it deluged my villa and drove me inside.
The woman was lighting candles. I took one from her hand.
"I want to look through the house," I explained.
She made no protest; so I started exploring the first floor. One room
was evidently the sleeping-quarters for the servants; another was the
kitchen, and the remaining two might have served in the old days for
dining-room and drawing-room. There was little furniture, and the walls
were gray with time and mold. One flight of stone stairs led upward to
the bedroom, another to the cellar. I decided to go downstairs.
They were steps, not made of masonry, but apparently carved out of the
living rock. The cellar was simply a cubical hole in the mountain. It
all looked very old. I had the uneasy feeling that originally that
cellar had been a tomb and that later the house had been built over it.
But, once at the bottom, there was nothing to indicate a sepulcher. A
few small casks of wine, some junk, odds of rope and rusty iron, those
were in the corners; otherwise, the room was empty, and dusty.
"It is an odd room," I commented to myself. It seemed in some way out of
place and out of shape and size for the villa above it. I had expected
something more, something larger, gloomier. Walking around, I examined
the walls, and then something came to my alert senses.
Three sides of the room were carved out of rock, but the remaining side
was of masonry, and in that side there was a door. A door! And why
should a door be there except to lead to another room? There was a door,
and that presupposed something on the other side. And what a door it
was! More of a barricade than a partition. The iron hinges were built to
support weight and give complete defense and support. There was a
keyhole, and if the key corresponded with the size of the hole, it was
the largest that I had ever heard of.
Naturally, I wanted to open the door. As master of the villa, I had a
right to. Upstairs the old woman seemed unable to understand me and
ended by telling me to see her husband. He, in turn, seemed incapable of
following my stream of talk. At last, I took him to the door and pointed
to the keyhole. In English, Italian and sign language I told him rather
emphatically that I wanted the key to that door. At last he was willing
to admit that he understood my questions. He shook his head. He had
never had the key to that door. Yes, he knew that there was such a door,
but he had never been on the other side. It was very old. Perhaps his
ancestors understood about it, but they were all dead. He made me tired,
so much so that I rested by placing a hand on the butt of the upper
hinge. I knew that he was deceiving me. Lived there all his life and
never saw the door open!
"And you have no key to that door?" I repeated.
"No. I have no key."
"Who has the key?"
"The owner of the house."
"But I own it."
"Yes, you are the master; but I mean the one who owns it all the time."
"So, the various masters do not really buy the place?"
"They buy it, but they come and go."
"But the owner keeps on selling it and owning it?"
"Yes."
"Must be a profitable business. And who owns it?"
"Donna Marchesi."
"I think I met her yesterday in Sorona."
"Yes, that is where she lives."
The storm had passed. Sorona was only two miles away, on the other side
of the mountain. The cellar, the door, the mysterious uncertainty on the
other side intrigued me. I told the man that I would be back by supper,
and I went to my bedroom to change, preparatory to making an afternoon
call.
In the room I found my hand black with oil.
And that told me a good many things, as it was the hand that had rested
against the upper hinge of the door. I washed the hand, changed my
clothes and drove my car to Sorona.
* * * * *
Fortunately, the Donna Marchesi was at home. I might have met her
before, but I now saw her ethereal beauty for the first time. At least,
it seemed ethereal at the first moment. In some ways she was the most
beautiful woman that I had ever seen: skin white as milk, hair a tawny
red, piled in great masses on her head, and eyes of a peculiar green,
with pupils that were slots instead of circles. She wore her nails long,
and they were tinted red to match the Titian of her hair. She seemed
surprized to have me call on her, and more surprized to hear of my
errand.
"You bought the villa?" she asked.
"Yes. Though, when I bought it, I did not know that you were the owner.
The agent never stated whom he was acting for."
"I know," she said with a smile. "Franco is peculiar that way. He always
pretends that he owns the place."
"No doubt he has used it more than once."
"I fear so. The place seems to be unfortunate. I sell it with a reserve
clause. The owner must live there. And no one seems to want to stay; so
the place reverts back to me."
"It seems to be an old place."
"Very old. It has been in my family for generations. I have tried to get
rid of it, but what can I do when the young men will not stay?"
She shrugged her shoulders expressively. I countered with,
"Perhaps if they knew, as I do, that you owned the property, they would
be content to stay, for ever, in Sorona."
"Prettily said," she answered. Then the room became silent, and I heard
her heavy breathing, like the deep purr of a cat.
"They come and go," she said at last.
"And, when they go, you sell to another?" I asked.
"Naturally, and with the hope that one will stay."
"I have come for the key," I said bluntly, "the key to the cellar door."
"Are you sure you want it?"
"Absolutely! It is my villa and my cellar and my door. I want the key. I
want to see what is on the other side of the door."
And then it was that I saw the pupils of her eyes narrow to livid slits.
She looked at me for a second, for five, and then opening a drawer in a
cabinet near her chair, she took out the key and handed it to me. It was
a tool worthy of the door that it was supposed to open, being fully
eight inches long and a pound in weight.
Taking it, I thanked her and said good-bye. Fifteen minutes later I was
back, profuse in my apologies: I was temperamental, I explained, and I
frequently changed my mind. Whatever was on the other side of the door
could stay there, as far as I was concerned. Then again I kissed her
hand farewell.
On the side street I passed through the door of a locksmith and waited
while he completed a key. He was following a wax impression of the
original key. An hour later I was on the way back to the villa, with the
key in my pocket, a key that I was sure would unlock the door, and I was
confident that the lady with the cat eyes felt sure that I had lost all
interest in that door and what was beyond it.
The full moon was just appearing over the mountains when I drove my car
up to the villa. I was tired, but happy. Taking the candlestick in my
hand, which candlestick was handed to me with a deep bow by the old
woman, I ascended the stairs to my bedroom. And soon I was fast asleep.
* * * * *
I awoke with a start. The moon was still shining. It was midnight. I
heard, or thought I heard, a deep moaning. It sounded a little like
waves beating on a rockbound coast. Then it ceased and was replaced by a
musical element that came in certain stately measures. Those sounds were
in the room, but they came from far away; only by straining my sense of
sound to the utmost could I hear anything.
Slippers on my feet, flashlight in my hand and the key in the pocket of
my dressing-gown, I slowly descended the stairs. Loud snores from the
servants' room told, or seemed to tell, of their deep slumbers. Down
into the cellar I went and put the key into the hole of the lock. The
key turned easily--no rust there--the springs and the tumblers had been
well oiled, like the hinges. It was evident that the door had been used
often. Turning the light on the hinges, I saw what had made my hand
black with oil. Earnestly I damned the servants. They knew about the
door. They knew what was on the other side!
Just as I was about to open the door I heard a woman's voice singing in
Italian; it sounded like a selection from an opera. It was followed by
applause, and then a moaning, and one shrill cry, as though someone had
been hurt. There was no doubt now as to where the sounds that I heard in
my room had come from; they had come from the other side of the door.
There was a mystery there for me to solve. But I was not ready to solve
it; so I turned the key noiselessly, and with the door locked, tiptoed
back to my bed.
There I tried to put two and two together. They made five, seven, a
million vague admixtures of impossible results, all filled with weird
forebodings. But never did they make four, and till they did, I knew the
answers to be wrong, for two and two had to make four.
Many changes of masters! One after another they came and bought and
disappeared. A whitewashed wall. What secrets were covered with that
whitewash? A door in a cellar. And what deviltry went on behind it? A
key and a well-oiled lock, and servants that knew everything. In vain
the question came to me. _What is back of the door?_ There was no ready
answer. But, Donna Marchesi knew! Was it her voice that I had heard? She
knew almost everything about it, but there was one thing that I knew and
she did not. She did not know that I could pass through the door and
find out what was on the other side. She did not know that I had a key.
The next day I pleaded indisposition and spent most of the hours idling
and drowsing in my chamber. Not till nearly midnight did I venture down.
The servants were certainly asleep that time. A dose of chloral in their
wine had attended to the certainty of their slumbers. Fully dressed,
with an automatic in my pocket, I reached the cellar and opened the
door. It swung noiselessly on its well-greased hinges. The darkness on
the other side was the blackness of hell. An indescribable odor came to
me, a prison smell and with it the soft half sob, half laugh of sleeping
children, dreaming in their sleep, and not happy.
I flashed the light around the room. It was not a room but a cavern, a
cave that extended far into the distance, the roof supported by stone
pillars, set at regular intervals. As far as my light would carry I saw
the long rows of white columns.
And to each pillar was bound a man, by chains. They were resting on the
stone floor, twenty or more of them, and all asleep. Snores, grunts and
weary sighs came from them, but not a single eyelid opened. Even when I
flashed the light in their faces their eyes were shut.
And those faces sickened me; white and drawn and filled with the lines
of deep suffering. All were covered with scars; long, narrow, deep
scars, some fresh and red, others old and dead-white. At last, the
sunken eyelids and the inability to see my flashlight and respond told
me the nauseating truth. Those men were all blind.
[Illustration: "Looking eternally into the blackness of his life and
chained to a pillar of stone."]
A pleasant sight! One blind man, looking eternally into the blackness of
his life, and chained to a pillar of stone--that was bad enough; but
multiply that by twenty! Was it worse? Could it be worse? Could twenty
men suffer more than one man? And then a thought came to me, a terrible,
impossible thought, so horrible that I doubted my logic. But now two and
two were beginning to make four. Could those men be the _masters_? They
came and bought and left--to go to the cellar and stay there!
"Oh! Donna Marchesi!" I whispered. "How about those cat-eyes? If you had
a hand in this, you are not a woman. You are a tiger."
* * * * *
I thought that I understood part of it. The latest master came to her
for the key to the cellar, and then, when he once passed through the
door he never left. She and her servants were not there to welcome me
that night, because she did not know that I had a key.
The thought came to me that perhaps one of those sleeping men was George
Seabrook. He and I used to play tennis together and we knew each other
like brothers. He had a large scar on the back of his right hand; a
livid star-shaped scar. With that in mind, I walked carefully from
sleeping man to sleeping man, looking at their right hands. And I found
a right hand with a scar that was shaped like the one I knew so well.
But that blind man, only a skin-covered skeleton, chained to a bed of
stone! That could not be my gay young tennis player, George!
The discovery nauseated me. What did it mean? What _could_ it mean? If
the Donna Marchesi was back of all that misery, what was her motive?
Down the long cave-like room I went. There seemed to be no end to it,
though many of the columns were surrounded with empty chains. Only those
near the door had their human flies in the trap. In the opposite
direction the rows of pillars stretched into a far oblivion. I thought
that at the end there was the black mouth of a tunnel, but I could not
be sure and dared not go that far to explore the truth. Then, out of
that tunnel, I heard a voice come, a singing voice. Slipping my shoes
off, I ran back near the door and hid as best I could in a dark recess,
back of a far piece of stone. I stood there in the darkness, my torch
out, the handle of the revolver in my hand.
The singing grew louder and louder, and then the singer came into view.
It was none other than Donna Marchesi! She carried a lantern in one hand
and a basket in the other. Hanging the lantern on a nail, she took the
basket and went from one sleeping man to another. With each her
performance was the same; she awakened them with a kick in the face, and
then, when they sat up crying with pain, she placed a hard roll of bread
in their blind, trembling, outstretched hand. With all fed, there was
silence save for gnawing teeth breaking through the hard crusts. The
poor devils were hungry, starving slowly to death, and how they wolfed
the bread! She laughed with animal delight as they cried for more.
Standing under the lamp, a lovely devil in her decollete dress, she
laughed at them. I swear I saw her yellow eyes, dilated in the
semi-darkness!
Suddenly she gave the command,
"Up! you dogs, _up_!"
* * * * *
Like well-trained animals they rose to their feet, clumsily, but as fast
as they could under the handicap of trembling limbs and heavy chains.
Two were slow in obeying, and those she struck across the face with a
small whip, till they whined with pain.
They stood there in silence, twenty odd blind men, chained against as
many pillars of stone; and then the woman, standing in the middle of
them, started to sing. It was a well-trained voice, but metallic, and
her high notes had in them the cry of a wild animal. No feminine
softness there. She sang from an Italian opera, and I knew that I had
heard that song before. While she sang, her audience waited silently. At
last she finished, and they started to applaud. Shrunken hands beat
noisily against shrunken hands.
She seemed to watch them carefully, as though she were measuring the
degree of their appreciation. One man did not satisfy her. She went over
and dug into his face with long strokes of those long red nails until
his face was red and her fingers bloody. And when she finished her
second song that man clapped louder than any of them. He had learned his
lesson.
She ended by giving them each another roll and a dipper of water. Then,
lantern and basket in her hands, she walked away and disappeared down
the tunnel. The blind men, crying and cursing in their impotent rage,
sank down on their stone beds.