at my elbow. A light station
wagon was waiting just outside. How the deuce did Hobson know my name?
What did he want of me at Gauntmoor this time of night? Yet prospects of
bed and breakfast away from the Commercial lured me strangely.

"Sure, Mr. Pierrepont will be delighted," I announced, leaping into the
vehicle, and soon we were mounting upward, battling with the winds
around the time-scarred walls. The wagon stopped at the great gate. A
horn sounded from within, the gate swung open, a drawbridge fell with a
hideous creaking of machinery, and we passed in, twenty or thirty feet
above the snow-drifted moat. Beyond the portcullis a dim door swung
open. Some sort of seneschal met us with a light and led us below the
twilight arches, where beyond, I could catch glimpses of the baileys and
courts and the donjon tower against the heavy ramparts.

The wind hooted through the high galleries as we passed; but the west
wing, from its many windows and loopholes, blazed with cheerful yellow
light. It looked nearly cozy. Into a tall, gaunt tower we plunged, down
a winding staircase, and suddenly we came into a vast hall, stately with
tapestries and innumerable monkish carvings--and all brightly lighted
with electricity!

A little fat man sat smoking in a chair near the fire. When I entered he
was in his shirt sleeves, reading a newspaper, but when a footman
announced my name the little man, in a state of great nervousness,
jumped to his feet and threw on a coat, fidgeting painfully with the
armholes. As he came toward me, I noticed that he was perfectly bald. He
looked dyspeptic and discontented, like a practical man trying vainly to
adjust his busy habits to a lazy life. Obviously he didn't go with the
rest of the furniture.

"Pleased to see you, Mr. Pierrepont," he said, looking me over carefully
as if he thought of buying me. "Geoffray Pierrepont--tut, tut!--ain't it
queer!"

"Queer!" I said rather peevishly. "What's queer about it?"

"Excuse me, did I say queer? I didn't mean to be impolite, sir--I was
just thinking, that's all."

You could hear the demon Army of the Winds scaling the walls outside.

"Maybe you thought it kind of abrupt, Mr. Pierrepont, me asking you up
here so unceremonious," he said. "My daughter Annie, she tells me I
ought to live up to the looks of the place; but I've got my notions. To
tell you the truth, I'm in an awful quandary about this Antique Castle
business and when I heard you was at th