In sitting down I had intended to collect my thoughts if possible,
bring a little order into the chaos of impressions, suspicions and
fears that were whirling in my bewildered brain. But I had hardly
touched the seat, when an unexpected sensation put an end to my
reflections.
I had cast my eyes about the four walls of the room where I now
was--four walls cheaply papered in a stock design of loud colors.
Again the miserable poverty of the furnishings had impressed me, with
the exception of the antique candlestick. The place, indeed, in its
present condition, had all the appearances of a spare room, roughly
fitted up with these few odd and ill-matched articles. I should not
have thought it strange had I detected there the close musty odor that
one always meets in apartments long unoccupied and rarely aired.
But that was not the smell that came to my nostrils. Quite the contrary
in fact! The room was suddenly fragrant with a warm living perfume, a
perfume that now reminded me of the one I had vaguely perceived in the
draught from under the closed door of the anteroom. It was not the same
perfume, by any means, though it was of the same general kind, one of
those essences which float about every house where women are, combining
the most diverse aromas into a single fragrance that is the alluring
fragrance of feminine beauty.
I brought all my senses to bear upon it. “Heliotrope,” I analyzed, ...
“and rose”! The isolation of these two essences seemed all at once to
sharpen my memory of the earlier perfume; the latter, unmistakably, had
been a lily of the valley.
“_Muguet_,” I said aloud, “lily of the valley!”
All a-quiver I leapt to my feet, terrified, stunned, but ferociously
determined. Of course! Of course! The two syllables of that French
word, _muguet_, had brought a flood of light into my clouded mind. Of
course! _Muguet!_ Her perfume! Madeleine! Madeleine!
It is curious that in the overwhelming anguish that had now seized
upon me, an insignificant thought came to the surface of my seething
consciousness and restored all the coolness and self-control that I had
lost: “What an unconscionable ass I have been! Fool! Fool! Fool! Of
course! Of course! Why did I not get the point at the very first? Long
ago, long ago? After the very first suspicious words I heard from the
mouths of those two weird hosts of mine?... Fool of fools! Why did I
not recognize her perfume out there in the hall where I first perceived
it--before those three bolts were drawn upon me, leaving me a helpless
prisoner in this hole where I am caught like a rat in a trap?
“Helpless, eh? Like a rat in a trap, eh? Not quite.”
I was almost normally calm as I put a hand to my belt and drew my
revolver. Helpless, eh? There were eight cartridges in my automatic,
and I had used only one--the one that put poor Siegfried out of his
misery! “Seven left! Helpless? Not so helpless as all that? There must
be seven of them!”
I snapped the lock on the hammer and opened the magazine. The seven
bullets were in place. I threw the barrel back into position and
released the lock again, testing the trigger lightly with my finger to
be sure the requisite free play was there. I put the pistol into my
coat pocket, with my right hand upon it.
“At sunrise, eh? You were coming back at sunrise, old Methuselah? Do! I
shall be glad to see you!”
I looked at my watch. Two o’clock! It was mid-winter time. The dawn
would be long in coming.
I rose from the chair and stepped over to the bed. The sheets were
singularly delicate, the coverlets thick and downy. Another breath of
perfume floated past my nostrils.--I buried a fist in my hot, feverish
cheek.... That bed, so daintily prepared! It had been offered to me!
But for whom had it been made so cosy? Who slept there ordinarily?
And my thoughts flashed out through the walls and partitions of that
accursed mansion to another room, where there would be another bed and
in it a woman, sleeping! Madeleine, my Madeleine!
The dart of horrified jealousy that ran through my heart was like the
thrust of a sharp, white-hot sword. Madeleine! There, in that other
chamber, at night! The victim of what unconscionable sorcery! The
plaything of what loathsome and unmentionable desires!
But no--my calmer judgment soon concluded. Those men--demons,
perhaps--could not have been dastards in the thrall of lust! That
secret house could not be a House of Love! What was the mystery, then?
What? Oh, what?
The three candles were flickering at the three points of their tripod
of lances. The door! I looked at it. Here also the joinings yawned from
age. And that would doubtless be the case with the window.
For there was a window in the room, the room that was really my prison.
I stepped over to examine it, pressing my forehead to the panes and
plunging my gaze into the outer blanket of darkness.
Nothing! Nothing at all. An impenetrable pall of inky blackness came
right up against my eyes. A thick growth of ivy formed an outer curtain
over the window, weaving a fabric through and around the heavy iron
bars which guarded it.
A prison! That was the very name for it!
I heard footsteps moving softly along one of the partitions behind me.
I held my breath. Soon silence returned, complete death-like silence.
I went back to the bed and lay down upon it, waiting, ready for
anything. I had my clothes and my boots on. My hand clutched the butt
of the automatic in my pocket.
I waited, my eyes glued upon the door, my ears straining to catch the
slightest sound.