I remember peering round the
opening. The others had their backs towards me, and I slipped
through and closed the door behind me. I seemed instinctively to
know my way. I ran down a flight of steps and along dark corridors
through which I had to feel my way with my hands, till I came to a
small door in an angle of the wall. I knew the room that lay the
other side. A photograph was taken of it and published years
afterwards, when the place was discovered, and it was exactly as I
knew it with its way out underneath the city wall through one of the
small houses in the Aussermarkt.
"I could not open the door. Some stones had fallen against it, and
fearing to get punished, I made my way back into the council room.
It was empty when I reached it. They were searching for me in the
other rooms, and I never told them of my adventure."
At any other time I might have laughed. Later, recalling his talk
that evening, I dismissed the whole story as mere suggestion, based
upon the imagination of a child; but at the time those strangely
brilliant eyes had taken possession of me. They remained still
fixed upon me as I sat on the low rail of the veranda watching his
white face, into which the hues of death seemed already to be
creeping.
I had a feeling that, through them, he was trying to force
remembrance of himself upon me.
Pages:
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184