Hortense had not spoken a word. She watched not without surprise this series of forcible entries, which were accomplished with a really masterly skill. He guessed her thoughts and, turning round, said in a serious voice:
“It’s child’s-play to me. I was a locksmith once.”
She seized his arm and whispered:
“Listen!”
“To what?” he asked.
She increased the pressure of her hand, to demand silence. The next moment, he murmured:
“It’s really very strange.”
“Listen, listen!” Hortense repeated, in bewilderment. “Can it be possible?”
They heard, not far from where they were standing, a sharp sound, the sound of a light tap recurring at regular intervals; and they had only to listen attentively to recognise the ticking of a clock. Yes, it was this and nothing else that broke the profound silence of the dark room; it was indeed the deliberate ticking, rhythmical as the beat of a metronome, produced by a heavy brass pendulum. That was it! And nothing could be more impressive than the measured pulsation of this trivial mechanism, which by some miracle, some inexplicable phenomenon, had continued to live in the heart of the dead château.
“And yet,” stammered Hortense, without daring to raise her voice, “no one has entered the house?”
“No one.”
“And it is quite impossible for that clock to have kept going for twenty years without being wound up?”
“Quite impossible.”
“Then … ?”
Serge Rénine opened the three windows and threw back the shutters.
He and Hortense were in a drawing-room, as he had thought; and the room showed not the least sign of disorder. The chairs were in their places. Not a piece of furniture was missing. The people who had lived there and who had made it the most individual room in their house had gone away leaving everything just as it was, the books which they used to read, the knickknacks on the tables and consoles.
Rénine examined the old grandfather’s clock, contained in its tall carved case which showed the disk of the pendulum through an oval pane of glass. He opened the door of the clock. The weights hanging from the cords were at their lowest point.
At that moment there was a click. The clock struck eight with a serious note which Hortense was never to forget.
“How extraordinary!” she said.
“Extraordinary indeed,” said he, “for the works are exceedingly simple and would hardly keep going for a week.”
“And do you see nothing out of the common?”
“No, nothing … or, at least. …”
He stooped and, from the back of the case, drew a metal tube which was concealed by the weights. Holding it up to the light:
“A telescope,” he said, thoughtfully. “Why did they hide it? … And they left it drawn out to its full length. … That’s odd. … What does it mean?”
The clock, as is sometimes usual, began to strike a second time, sounding eight strokes. Rénine closed the case and continued his inspection without putting his telescope down. A wide arch led from the drawing-room to a smaller apartment, a sort of smoking-room. This also was furnished, but contained a glass case for guns of which the rack was empty. Hanging on a panel near by was a calendar with the date of the 5th of September.
“Oh,” cried Hortense, in astonishment, “the same date as today! … They tore off the leaves until the 5th of September. … And this is the anniversary! What an astonishing coincidence!”
“Astonishing,” he echoed. “It’s the anniversary of their departure … twenty years ago today.”
“You must admit,” she said, “that all this is incomprehensible.”
“Yes, of course … but, all the same … perhaps not.”
“Have you any idea?”
He waited a few seconds before replying:
“What puzzles me is this telescope hidden, dropped in that corner, at the last moment. I wonder what it was used for. … From the ground-floor windows you see nothing but the trees in the garden … and the same, I expect, from all the windows. … We are in a valley, without the least open horizon. … To use the telescope, one would have to go up to the top of the house. … Shall we go up?”
She did not hesitate. The mystery surrounding the whole adventure excited her curiosity so keenly that she could think of nothing but accompanying Rénine and assisting him in his investigations.
They went upstairs accordingly, and, on the second floor, came to a landing where they found the spiral staircase leading to the belvedere.
At the top of this was a platform in the open air, but surrounded by a parapet over six feet high.
“There must have been battlements which have been filled in since,” observed Prince Rénine. “Look here, there were loopholes at one time. They may have been blocked.”
“In any case,” she said, “the telescope was of no use up here either and we may as well go down again.”
“I don’t agree,” he said. “Logic tells us that there must have been some gap through which the country could be seen and this was the spot where the telescope was used.”
He hoisted himself by his wrists to the top of the parapet and then saw that this point of vantage commanded the whole of the valley, including the park, with its tall trees marking the horizon; and, beyond, a depression in a wood surmounting a hill, at a distance of some seven or eight hundred yards, stood another tower, squat and in ruins, covered with ivy from top to bottom.
Rénine resumed his inspection. He seemed to consider that the key to the problem lay in the use to which the telescope was put and that the problem would be solved if only they could discover this use.
He studied the loopholes one after the other. One of them, or rather the place which it had occupied, attracted his attention above the rest. In the middle of the layer of plaster, which had served to block it, there was a hollow filled with earth in which plants had grown. He pulled out the plants and removed the earth, thus clearing the mouth of a hole some five inches
