ing-gown, I slowly descended the stairs. Loud snores from the
servants' room told, or seemed to tell, of their deep slumbers. Down
into the cellar I went and put the key into the hole of the lock. The
key turned easily--no rust there--the springs and the tumblers had been
well oiled, like the hinges. It was evident that the door had been used
often. Turning the light on the hinges, I saw what had made my hand
black with oil. Earnestly I damned the servants. They knew about the
door. They knew what was on the other side!

Just as I was about to open the door I heard a woman's voice singing in
Italian; it sounded like a selection from an opera. It was followed by
applause, and then a moaning, and one shrill cry, as though someone had
been hurt. There was no doubt now as to where the sounds that I heard in
my room had come from; they had come from the other side of the door.
There was a mystery there for me to solve. But I was not ready to solve
it; so I turned the key noiselessly, and with the door locked, tiptoed
back to my bed.

There I tried to put two and two together. They made five, seven, a
million vague admixtures of impossible results, all filled with weird
forebodings. But never did they make four, and till they did, I knew the
answers to be wrong, for two and two had to make four.

Many changes of masters! One after another they came and bought and
disappeared. A whitewashed wall. What secrets were covered with that
whitewash? A door in a cellar. And what deviltry went on behind it? A
key and a well-oiled lock, and servants that knew everything. In vain
the question came to me. _What is back of the door?_ There was no ready
answer. But, Donna Marchesi knew! Was it her voice that I had heard? She
knew almost everything about it, but there was one thing that I knew and
she did not. She did not know that I could pass through the door and
find out what was on the other side. She did not know that I had a key.

The next day I pleaded indisposition and spent most of the hours idling
and drowsing in my chamber. Not till nearly midnight did I venture down.
The servants were certainly asleep that time. A dose of chloral in their
wine had attended to the certainty of their slumbers. Fully dressed,
with an automatic in my pocket, I reached the cellar and opened the
door. It swung noiselessly on its well-greased hinges. The darkness on
the other side was the blackness of hell. An indescribable odor came to
me, a prison