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When the first Baron Igescu, the present owner's uncle, had addedthe wings, he had also built secret passageways which co
The panel had been opened long enough for him to know that it wasan entrance. Perhaps the baron wanted him to know it; perhaps Dolores, the ghost. In any event, he meant to go through it.
Finding the actuator of the entrance was another matter. He pressed the woodaround the panel, tried to move strips around it, knocked at variousplaces onthe panel (it sounded hollow), and examined the wood closely forholes. He found nothing out-of-the-way.
Straightening up, he half-turned in an angry movement and thenturned back again, as if he would catch something--or somebody--doing somethingbehind his back. There was nothing behind him that had not been there before. But he did glimpse himself in the huge floor-to-ceiling mirror that constitutedhalf of the wall across the room.
CHAPTER 13
The mirror certainly was not reflecting as a mirror should. Norwas it reflecting grossly or exaggeratedly, like a fu
There were slight shiftings of everything reflected, of the wallbehind him, the painting on the wall to one side of him, the canopied bed, andhimself. It was as if he were looking at an underwater room through a window, with himself deep in the water and the mirror a window, or porthole, to a room ina subaquatic palace. The objects in the room, and he seemed to be asmuch an object as the bed or a chair, swayed a little. As if currents of coldwater succeeded by warmer water compressed or expanded the water and sochanged theintensity and the refraction of lighting.
There was more to the shifting than that, however. At one place, the room and everything in it, including himself, seemed almost--not quite- normal. As they should be or as it seemed that they should be. Seemed, hethought, becauseit struck him that things as they are were not necessarily things asthey shouldbe, that custom had made strangeness, or outrageousness (a peculiarword, whatmade him think of that?), comfortable.
Then the "normality" disappeared as the objects twisted orswayed, he wasnot sure which they did, and the room, and he, became "evil."
He did not look "weak" nor "petty" nor "sneaky" nor "selfish" nor"indifferent," all of which he felt himself to be at various times. He looked "evil." Malignant, destroying, utterly loveless.
He walked slowly toward the mirror. His image, wavering, advanced. It smiled, and he suddenly realized that he was smiling. That smile wasnot utterly loveless; it was a smile of pure love. Love of hatred and ofcorruption and ofall living things.
He could almost smell the stink of hate and of death.
Then he thought that the smile was not of love but of greed, unless greedwas a form of love. It could be. The meanings of words were asshifting andelusive as the images in the mirror.
He became sick; something was gnawing at his nerves in the pit ofhis stomach.
It was a form of sea-sickness, he thought. See-sickness, rather.
He turned away from the mirror, feeling as he did so a chill passover his scalp and a vulnerability--a hollowness--between his shoulders, as ifthe man in the mirror would stick him in the back with a knife if he exposed hisback to him.
He hated the mirror and the room it mirrored. He had to get outof it. If he could not get the panel open in a few seconds, he would have to leaveby thedoor.
There was no use in repeating his first efforts. The key to thepanel wasnot in its immediate neighborhood, so he would have to lookelsewhere. Perhapsits actuator, a button, a stud, something, could be behind the largeoil painting. This was of a man who looked much like the baron and wasprobably hisuncle. Childe lifted it up and off its hooks and placed it upright onthe floor, leaning against the wall. The space behind where it had been wassmooth. No actuator mechanism here.
He replaced the painting. It seemed twice as heavy, when helifted it up asit had when he had taken it down. This room was draining him of hisstrength.
He turned away from the painting and stopped. The panel had swunginward into the darkness behind the wall.
Childe, keeping an eye on the panel, placed a hand on the lowercorner of the portrait-frame and moved it slightly. The panel, however, hadalreadystarted to close. Evidently the actuating mechanism opened it brieflyand then closed it automatically.
He waited until the panel shut and again moved the framesideways. Nothinghappened. But when he lifted the painting slightly, the panel againswung open.
Childe did not hesitate. He ran to the panel, stepped throughcautiously, making sure that there was firm footing in the darkness, and then gotto one side to permit the panel to swing shut. He was in unrelieved black; the air was dead and odorous of decaying wood, plaster falling apart, and a traceof long-dead mice. There was also a teaser (was it there or not?) ofperfume.
The flashlight showed a dusty corridor about four feet wide andseven high. It did not end against the wall of the hallway, as he had expected. Awell of blackness turned out to be a stairway under the hall. At its bottomwas a small platform and another stairway leading up, he presumed, to anotherpassageway onthe other side of the hall.
In the opposite direction, the passageway ran straight for aboutfifty feetand then disappeared around a corner. He walked slowly in thatdirection and examined the walls, ceiling, and floor carefully. When he had gonefar enough tobe past the baron's bedroom, he found a panel on hinges. It was toosmall and too far up the wall for passage. He unlocked its latch, turned hisflashlightoff, and swung it slowly out to avoid squeaking of hinges. They gaveno sound. The panel had hidden a one-way mirror. He was looking into a bedroom. A titian-haired woman came through the door from the hall about sevenseconds later. She walked past him, only five feet away, and disappeared intoanother doorway. She was wearing a print dress with large red flowers; herlegs werebare and her feet were sandaled.
The woman was so beautiful that he had felt sick in his solar plexus for amoment, a feeling he had experienced three times, when seeing for thefirst time women so beautiful that he was agonized because he would never havethem.
Childe thought that it would be better to continue his exploring, but he could not resist the feeling that he might see something significantif he stayed here. The woman had looked so determined, as if she hadsomethingimportant to do. He placed his ear against the glass and could hear, faintly, Richard Strauss' Thus Spake Zarathustra. It must be coming from theroom into which she had gone.
The bedroom was in rather somber taste for a beautiful youngwoman; thebaron's room, if it had been the baron's room, would have been moreappropriatefor her. It was far cheerier, if you excepted the wall-mirror. Thewalls were of dark dull wooden paneling about six feet up from the floor; abovethem was a dull dark wallpaper with faint images: queer birds, twisted dragons, and the, recurring figures of what could be a nude Adam and Eve and an appletree. There were no snakes.
The carpet was thick and also dull and dark with images too fadedto be identified. The bed was, like the baron's, canopied, but it was of aperiod hedid not recognize, although this did not mean much, because he knewvery littleabout furniture or furnishings. Its legs were wrought-iron in theform of dragon's claws. The bedspread and the canopy were a dark red. Therewas a mirror on the wall opposite. It was three-sided, like the mirrors used inthe clothingdepartments of stores. It seemed to be nothing extraordinary; itreflected the window through which Childe was looking as another mirror above alarge dullred-brown dresser.