loring the first floor. One room
was evidently the sleeping-quarters for the servants; another was the
kitchen, and the remaining two might have served in the old days for
dining-room and drawing-room. There was little furniture, and the walls
were gray with time and mold. One flight of stone stairs led upward to
the bedroom, another to the cellar. I decided to go downstairs.

They were steps, not made of masonry, but apparently carved out of the
living rock. The cellar was simply a cubical hole in the mountain. It
all looked very old. I had the uneasy feeling that originally that
cellar had been a tomb and that later the house had been built over it.
But, once at the bottom, there was nothing to indicate a sepulcher. A
few small casks of wine, some junk, odds of rope and rusty iron, those
were in the corners; otherwise, the room was empty, and dusty.

"It is an odd room," I commented to myself. It seemed in some way out of
place and out of shape and size for the villa above it. I had expected
something more, something larger, gloomier. Walking around, I examined
the walls, and then something came to my alert senses.

Three sides of the room were carved out of rock, but the remaining side
was of masonry, and in that side there was a door. A door! And why
should a door be there except to lead to another room? There was a door,
and that presupposed something on the other side. And what a door it
was! More of a barricade than a partition. The iron hinges were built to
support weight and give complete defense and support. There was a
keyhole, and if the key corresponded with the size of the hole, it was
the largest that I had ever heard of.

Naturally, I wanted to open the door. As master of the villa, I had a
right to. Upstairs the old woman seemed unable to understand me and
ended by telling me to see her husband. He, in turn, seemed incapable of
following my stream of talk. At last, I took him to the door and pointed
to the keyhole. In English, Italian and sign language I told him rather
emphatically that I wanted the key to that door. At last he was willing
to admit that he understood my questions. He shook his head. He had
never had the key to that door. Yes, he knew that there was such a door,
but he had never been on the other side. It was very old. Perhaps his
ancestors understood about it, but they were all dead. He made me tired,
so much so that I rested by placing a hand on the butt of the upper
hinge. I knew