ging a bell, sent in the
card by a servant who appeared some three or four minutes later.

An interval of some ten minutes now elapsed, during which the professor
warmed himself at the gate-keeper's fire, contriving meanwhile, by a few
skilfully put questions, to extract the information that, the count's
horse having fallen lame that day in the streets of Saint Petersburg,
Vasilovich had returned home by rail, and had reached the castle by way
of the other gate, which sufficiently accounted for the watchers having
missed him.

At length the servant who had taken in von Schalckenberg's card returned
with the information that the count would see the professor; and
forthwith the pair set out across the courtyard, entering the building
by way of a heavily studded oaken door, which the servant carefully
locked and barred behind him, to the momentary dismay of the visitor,
who was scarcely prepared to find the observance of so much precaution
on the part of the man whom he had come to take prisoner. However, he
slipped his hands into the side pockets of his heavily furred overcoat,
and then withdrew them again with a quiet smile of renewed confidence;
he was essentially a man of resource, and his faith in himself quickly
reasserted itself.

The professor's conductor led him through a long, stone-vaulted passage,
dimly lighted at intervals by oil lamps, that flared and smoked in the
draughts that chased each other to and fro, until at the very end he
paused before a door, at which he knocked deferentially. An
inarticulate growl answered from the other side, whereupon the servant
flung open the door, motioned von Schalckenberg to enter, and promptly
closed the portal behind him.

Pushing aside a heavy curtain, or _portiere_, that stretched across the
doorway, the professor found himself in a large and lofty room, ceiled
and wainscoted in oak, the walls hung with oil pictures so completely
darkened and obscured with smoke and grime that it was impossible to
distinguish what they were meant to depict. The stone floor was
carpeted with skins, and a long, massive oak dining-table ran the length
of the room, which was lighted during the day by three heavily curtained
windows, and now by a solitary lamp. At the far end of the room stood
one of the enormous porcelain stoves, which are such a feature of
Russian interiors, balanced at the other end by an immense sideboard.
The table was undraped, save at the far end, where sat,