“Yes.” Herr R——threw himself into his chair again, mopping his face. “You have this experience each night?”
“It differs,” he said slowly, “in some details.”
“You have told me that the orders you give the underservants vary.”
“There is another difference. When the dreams began, I woke when the hinges of the door at the passage end creaked. Each night now the dream endures a moment longer. Perhaps a tenth of a second. Now I see the arm of the creature who opens that door, nearly to the elbow.”
I took the address of his home, which he was glad enough to give me, and leaving the bank made my way to my hotel.
When I had eaten my roll and drunk my coffee the next morning, I went to the place indicated by the card given me by Baron H——, and in a few minutes was sitting with him in a room as bare as those tents from which armies in the field are cast into battle. “You are ready to begin the case this morning?” he asked.
“On the contrary. I have already begun; indeed, I am about to enter a new phase of my investigation. You would not have come to me if your Dream-Master were not torturing someone other than the people whose names you gave me. I wish to know the identity of that person, and to interrogate him.”
“I told you that there were many other reports. I—”
“Provided me with a list. They are all of the petite bourgeoisie, when they are not persons still less important. I believed at first that it might be because of the urgings of Herr R——that you engaged me, but when I had time to reflect on what I know of your methods, I realized that you would have demanded that he provide my fee had that been the case. So you are sheltering someone of greater importance, and I wish to speak to him.”
“The countess—,” Baron H——began.
“Ah!”
“The countess herself has expressed some desire that you should be presented to her. The count opposes it.”
“We are speaking, I take it, of the governor of this province?”
The baron nodded. “Of Count von V——. He is responsible, you understand, only to the queen regent herself.”
“Very well. I wish to hear the countess, and she wishes to talk with me. I assure you, Baron, that we will meet; the only question is whether it will be under your auspices.”
The countess, to whom I was introduced that afternoon, was a woman in her early twenties, deep breasted and somber haired, with skin like milk, and great dark eyes welling with fear and (I thought) pity, set in a perfect oval face.
“I am glad you have come, monsieur. For seven weeks now our good Baron H——has sought this man for me, but he has not found him.”
“If I had known my presence here would please you, Countess, I would have come long ago, whatever the obstacles. You then, like the others, are certain it is a real man we seek?”
“I seldom go out, monsieur. My husband feels we are in constant danger of assassination.”
“I believe he is correct.”
“But on state occasions we sometimes ride in a glass coach to the
“Very well. Now tell me your dream.”
“I am here, at home—”
“In this palace, where we sit now?”
She nodded.
“That is a new feature, then. Continue, please.”
“There is to be an execution. In the garden.” A fleeting smile crossed the countess’s lovely face. “I need not tell you that that is not where the executions are held; but it does not seem strange to me when I dream.
“I have been away, I think, and have only just heard of what is to take place. I rush into the garden. The man Baron H——calls the Dream-Master is there, tied to the trunk of the big cherry tree; a squad of soldiers faces him, holding their rifles; their officer stands beside them with his saber drawn, and my husband is watching from a pace or two away. I call out for them to stop, and my husband turns to look at me. I say, ‘You must not do it, Karl. You must not kill this man.’ But I see by his expression that he believes that I am only a foolish, tenderhearted child. Karl is . . . several years older than I.”
“I am aware of it.”
“The Dream-Master turns his head to look at me. People tell me that my eyes are large—do you think them large, monsieur?”
“Very large, and very beautiful.”
“In my dream, quite suddenly, his eyes seem far, far larger than mine, and far more beautiful, and in them I see reflected the figure of my husband. Please listen carefully now, because what I am going to say is very important, though it makes very little sense, I am afraid.”
“Anything may happen in a dream, Countess.”
“When I see my husband reflected in this man’s eyes, I know—I cannot say how—that it is this reflection, and
