by Andre Norton
Feeling well fed, drowsy, and very much at peace with the world Michael Karl limped back to the library. He was safe from all but unexpected interruptions until four when Jan would bustle in with the afternoon tea, and Ericson would lounge in to pour himself the cup he never drank and sit telling Michael Karl interesting things about his day's work until his tea cooled and he ordered it taken away in disgust. In all the time Michael Karl had been there he had never seen the American drink his tea.
The list of the week's letters had been made, neatly copied and laid on Ericson's desk for his attention, and Michael Karl felt free to return to his language studies. He had a method all his own for the learning of irregular verbs which he was using this afternoon. One said the verb over three or four times looking at the book and then the book was put aside. Fixing his eyes firmly on the opposite wall, Michael Karl would try to picture the word spelled out letter by letter on its polished surface.
“I-a-g—g—What does come next?” Michael Karl sternly repressed the desire to look in the book and began again. “I-A-G—” But again it refused to form under his eyes. Perhaps that corner in the panel made too much of a shadow and so distracted his attention. Why that was queer, none of the other panels had that odd shadowed corner in them.
He laid down his book and crossed the room. The shadow in the panel provoked his curiosity. Why, part of the wall was sticking out! With his finger nails he caught and tugged at the edge. Something gave way and the whole panel swung out noiselessly like a door.
It must be the secret passage of which Ericson had told him. Without thinking he boldly clambered through. On a shell beside the door lay a flashlight. Then Ericson or some one in the house used the passage and used it often enough to leave the light there.
Michael Karl remembered things which had puzzled him, Ericson's intimate knowledge of the palace and its inhabitants for instance. He hesitated—would it be exactly playing the game to follow the passage and learn its secret? If Ericson had wanted him to know about it wouldn't he have told him?
And then he thought of the Cross. What better way of returning it unseen than to use the secret passage? He examined the inner fastening of the panel so that he would be sure to get it open again and picked up the torch. As the panel clicked shut behind him he felt a little tingle of excitement run up his back. He was off adventuring again.
The passage ran straight for a couple of yards and then ended in a flight of narrow stone steps. Michael Karl eyed them doubtfully, his feet were apt even now to protest when tried too much. But the excitement of adventure made him try it.
The air in the passage was chill but fresh and there was none of the dank sliminess which Michael Karl had always associated with underground passages. He must be inside the mountain itself, climbing the distance between the Pala Horn and the Palace Fortress.
The stairs were bisected suddenly by a deep landing. There was the outline of a door on the right wall and in it an inch above the level of Michael Karl's eyes the narrow slit of a peephole. He stretched on tiptoe to use it. But all he could see was dense darkness, and the distant sound of water made him think that this door led into the ancient dungeons.
There were more stairs after he left the dungeon door, but no more landings and at last he found himself at the top of the stairs in a long narrow hall. A crack of light, again to his right, showed him a second door and peephole. This time he looked into a wide hall with a marble stairway and crimson carpet, which took his breath away with their splendor. From the American's stories he identified it with the stairway leading to the throne room.
Beside a farther door there was a pair of powdered footmen who far surpassed Breck and Kanda in gorgeousness, and a wooden sentry pacing back and forth. He waited a while to see if anything would happen but the sentry was as stiff as ever and the footmen just stood, so Michael Karl went on.
The scene from the next peephole showed him what seemed to be a gun room. He was greatly tempted to try this door and step out a second or two to examine the ancient swords and guns in the wall racks but his prudence won. From the gun room steps led up again. Michael Karl began to think that this secret passage was overprovided with stairs.
When the next beam of light betrayed a peephole to him, he had no idea where he was. The secret door seemed to be some distance from the floor and his view was somewhat curtailed by the back of a tall chair. Then he understood he was in the throne room behind the throne itself!
The room was deserted and this time Michael Karl's curiosity won. He pushed down on the lever at the side and the door slipped back. Michael Karl wondered at its noiselessness until his hand came away greasy from the lever. The door had been recenty oiled. But, of course, the American must come and go through all the doors at his will. Michael Karl stepped out, leaving the door ajar behind him; he pulled a thick fold of the crimson velvet hangings into the crack as a further safeguard against its closing.
The vacant throne was the most impressive thing he had ever seen. It stood on a four-step dais under a crimson canopy with a silver standard draped over its back. He knew that to be the Royal Standard which followed the king into battle.
For a moment he was tempted to seat himself as was his right, and then he shook his head. It wasn't his right any more, he had given that up as the price of his freedom. With a little sigh, perhaps half of regret, he looked down the long room with its chandeliers of crystal and gold.
The walls were painted with scenes from Morvanian history. Michael Karl had never seen the Hall of Mirrors, but at that moment he was sure, with a fierce pride, that nothing at Versailles could surpass the Throne Room of Rein Castle. He stood for a moment before the throne. Just so he might have stood in the glory of a white and gold hussar's uniform on the day of his coronation had he chosen to. But that, decided Michael Karl sternly, was past. Turning back to the passage he clicked the door shut behind him.
After the Throne Room, the black paneled room shown through the next peephole seemed small and mean for all its long table and seven high-backed chairs. Michael Karl thought, rightly, that it was some sort of a council chamber. There was no one there now and it didn't interest him. He went on, trying to remember where he had seen something which had given him the same queer feeling of power that the throne had impressed upon him. At last he remembered—the Werewolf's cloak-draped chair in the ruined castle. There was the same air of royal splendor and might about it as about the crimson canopied gold throne. Why?
He puzzled over that “why” until the passage came to an abrupt end before him. This time the peephole and the door were in the end instead of at the side.
Michael Karl saw a deep bed hung in crimson and embroidered in gold thread with the royal arms many times repeated. So this was the end of the old duke's bolthole, his bedroom. But, of course, at any sudden night alarm he might save his skin without trouble, and with what he had read and heard about his ancestors almost every one of them might have been driven to saving their skins at any moment. They had been a precious lot, the old Karloffs.
Like the Throne Room the bedroom aroused his curiosity to the point where he could no longer resist it. He stepped out and brought the door almost closed behind him, but wedged his handkerchief in to keep it open. For as yet he didn't know how to open the doors from the outside.
The rug under foot was thick and gray with the royal crest in red at its four corners. There were a couple of chests, museum pieces, and the massive bed where the crimson velvet upper cover had been turned back, as if waiting for the royal occupant, to show the sheerest of satin sheets and pillows trimmed in priceless lace. Michael Karl shuddered. What he had escaped! The somber magnificence of the room was suffocating.
Greatly daring he tiptoed across and pulled open one or the doors an inch or two. It led into a dressing room which was empty. Michael Karl crossed it softly to open the farther door. It was a wardrobe room, holding, to his dazed eyes, what seemed like hundreds and hundreds of all colors and kinds of uniforms. He clos
ed it quickly. So that was more of what he had escaped.
Michael Karl hurried back to the bedroom. The other door he found upon investigation led into a reception room. Without the tall window the afternoon light was fading, and he was dreadfully afraid that it was past four o'clock. He stepped back to the secret door. To his relief it was still open, he had been haunted by the fear that it might have slammed shut in spite of his handkerchief.
Did he or did he not hear some sort of a rustling noise as he stepped into the passage? His nerves were probably on edge from excitement he decided as he hurried down the hall. If it were anything it would only be a rat.
The stairs tired him more than he thought. He would be glad to sit quietly the rest of the evening. Back again outside the panel in Ericson's house he listened until he thought the pounding blood in his head would break his ear drums. Michael Karl had no desire to show Ericson that he had discovered his secret by stepping through the secret door before the American's very eyes. And here, unfortunately, was no peephole.
At last when he could stand it no longer he took a chance and bore down upon the lever. The door swung open. Michael Karl caught a confused glimpse of Jan's coat tails disappearing through the door. The tea tray was on the desk, and the room was empty.
Jan would think he had been out for a moment. With a sigh of relief Michael Karl brushed a cobweb from his shoulder and allowed the panel to click shut behind him. He crossed to the desk and put his afternoon's work carefully away before he sat down with a well-sweetened cup of tea in one hand and his grammar in the other to learn his irregular verb.
“Hello, youngster. Still busy?”
Michael Karl regarded the American with a somewhat glassy eye. “Iagio, iagiar, iagiari,” he repeated.
Ericson reached over and took the book out of Michael Karl's hand.
“See here,” he said, “I don't propose to have my afternoon tea spoiled by you repeating that stuff. Chuck it awhile. Busy all afternoon?”
Was it Michael Karl's imagination or was the American watching him closely? He thought swiftly. “Of course.” After all he had been busy but in a different way.
“Hard work?”
“Not very. Oh, I say,” Michael Karl remembered the green envelope. He reached down at his boot top. Funny, it had been right at the top, maybe it had slipped down though. He thrust his fingers farther down in and felt for the stiff paper. The green envelope was gone! It lay somewhere along his afternoon journeyings. He flushed.
“Yes?” prompted Ericson.
Michael Karl simply couldn't tell him. You couldn't say to a man who had practically saved your life, “See here, that letter you wanted came this morning but I lost it exploring your secret passage.” Michael Karl felt a dull lump of sickness go sliding down in his breast. He had muffed things for fair; his one chance would be to go through the passage again to-night and try to recover the thing. Meanwhile he wanted to get away from the American and his questions.
“What did you want?” asked the American. “Boy, are you ill?”
Michael Karl's face was very white.
“I have a headache. I guess I'll go to bed,” he said miserably. He wanted to get away and think this thing out. Hobbling across the room which seemed miles long he went out, knowing that the American was staring after him.
The stairs went up and up endlessly he thought. And after he reached his room he had the desire to sit down and howl. He felt as he hadn't since the night nine years before when the Colonel had taken a stray dog he had adopted from him.
Chapter VII
The Council At Work
Michael Karl lay in a tangle of sheets wondering how long it would be before he could attempt the passage again. As he had just crawled into bed and the clock below had just boomed five, it was apt to be several hours.
There was a knock at the door. Michael Karl didn't answer. He must keep up his fiction of being ill and if he kept still perhaps the knocker would think he had fallen asleep and go away.
But that was just what the knocker didn't do. “What's the matter, boy?” Michael Karl, hearing the American's voice, felt more of a beast than ever. Ericson was really concerned, he only called Michael Karl “boy” when he wanted to praise or was worried about him.
“Nothing,” the answer was very much muffled in the bedclothes. The American, standing beside him, caught another scrap of sentence about “headache” and “sleep it off.”
He took Michael Karl firmly by the shoulder and turned him around so he could see the boy's flushed face.
“Don't be foolish. There is something the matter. You were all right up until a few minutes ago. Then after you started to tell me something you developed this sudden headache. What happened this afternoon?”
Michael Karl began to see that he had overplayed his role. It was going to be very hard to lie to the American. And, something inside of him said, he didn't want to anyway.
“Nothing,” he answered again in a small voice which sounded bitterly ashamed in his own ears.
The American shrugged. “Well, if you won't tell me, you won't I suppose. But I did think—”
The way he allowed his sentence to trail off unfinished hurt more than any words could have. Ericson was disappointed in him, and all at once Michael Karl knew that he cared more for the American's friendship than anything else in the world.
“There was something,” he said without meaning to. “I can't tell you now—”
But the American had gone. Michael Karl rolled over. If anything could have made him more miserable, it was that silent going. Ericson hadn't heard what he was going to say. He wished he had never seen that letter or been reckless enough to enter the secret door.
He was not going to think of Ericson he told himself sternly. But why had the American asked about how he had spent his afternoon? He had never done that before.
Suppose, Michael Karl caught his breath, suppose Ericson had known that he had used the passage and was waiting to see if he would “ ‘fess up.” Why didn't he? It couldn't be any worse than it was now and the American would have his letter. It might be frightfully important.
Michael Karl reached for the bell cord and then he shook his head. He would go down and face Ericson in that fatal library. With clumsy lingers he pulled on shirt, breeches and boots and hurried out into the hall.
He sped down the stairs, but the library was empty. Feeling queerly sick as if he had missed a step in the dark he summoned Jan with a pull of the bell cord. He was a coward and he knew it.
“The Dominde Ericson,” he demanded, “where is he?”
The little man seemed troubled. “The Dominde went out,” he answered slowly, but there seemed to be something on his mind. Michael Karl thought he was nerving himself to ask a question, but he couldn't quite make it and he bowed himself out his question unasked.
So Ericson had gone out. Then there was a chance that he might enter the passage, find the letter, and return before Ericson. He almost ran to the wall but this time there was no jutting corner to guide him and he didn't know how to work the releasing spring. Well, he'd have to learn and do it quick.
Michael Karl closed the library door and locked it. Jan and the rest would think that their master had returned and was busy.
He went back to study the wall. The door panel was fifth from the fireplace and sixth from the corner of the room. Five and six made eleven, but that didn't mean anything, or did it? Each panel was carved with a bunch of grapes.
Everything that he had ever read about secret doors suggested that the grapes had something to do with the spring. Michael Karl counted the separate grapes carefully, if there were eleven on the bunch of the secret panel—There were but the same was true of the neighboring panels on either side.
It was like one of those bewildering field fortification problems which the Colonel used to torture him with. Given: one panel, eleven grapes, two leaves and a crooked stem. To find: the spring of a secret door. He pushed and pulled at each one of the g
rapes and then tried all combinations of grapes and leaves he could think of, but the door remained as fast set as ever.
Then he turned his attention to those panels on either side. It was when he looked at them closely that he discovered his first clue. On the one sixth from the fireplace five of the grapes were carved almost in a straight line, while on the one seventh from the corner of the room the grapes in a line numbered six. Taking a chance he pushed down on the fifth and the sixth grapes. There was a familiar click, and the secret door swung open.
The flashlight was on the shelf where he had left it and he stopped only to snatch it up before he started slowly along the passage and up the stairs allowing his light to penetrate into every corner of the stone steps. He passed the dungeon door and the door of the hall but nowhere did he see the slip of green.
At the throne room he halted and snapped open the door. He must search around the throne itself. The room was dark and he had to shelter the torch with his hand for fear of discovery as he crept about on his knees. Beyond discovering several rolls of gray dust which testified to the palace's poor housekeeping there was nothing for him to see.
Rather frightened—somehow he had been sure that he had dropped the letter by the throne—he crawled back into the passage. There was the rest of the hall and the king's bedroom to go over, he must find that letter.
He came to the end of the passage without seeing so much as a hint of green and hesitated before the door to the bedroom. If he didn't find it here what was he going to do?
The door opened to his touch and he was on the gray carpet again. Over and under the great bed and the chests his torch poked and pried with no result.
“Well, there's the dressing room and the wardrobe yet,” he tried to hearten himself aloud.
The dressing room was empty and he caught his breath as he stood before the wardrobe door. If he didn't find it inside, he was through. He opened the door an inch at a time afraid to look.