handle and it yielded to my grasp.

I whispered to Francis:

"Stay where you are! And if you hear me shout, fly for your life!"

For, I reflected, the place might be full of troops. If there were any
risk it would be better for me to take it since Francis, with his
identity papers, had a better chance than I of bringing the document
into safety.

I opened the glass door and found myself in a lobby with a door on the
right.

I listened again. All was still. I cautiously opened the door and
looked in. As I did so the place was suddenly flooded with light and a
voice--a voice I had often heard in my dreams--called out imperiously:

"Stay where you are and put your hands above your head!"

Clubfoot stood there, a pistol in his great hand pointed at me.

"Grundt!" I shouted but I did not move.

And Clubfoot laughed.

CHAPTER XVII

FRANCIS TAKES UP THE NARRATIVE

I saw the lights flash up in the room. I heard Desmond cry out:
"Grundt;" Instantly I flung myself flat on my face in the flower bed,
lest Desmond's shout might have alarmed the soldiers about the fire. But
no one came; the gardens remained dark and damp and silent, and I heard
no sound from the room in which I knew my brother to be in the clutches
of that man.

Desmond's cry pulled me together. It seemed to arouse me from the
lethargy into which I had sunk during all those months of danger and
disappointment. It shook me into life. If I was to save him, not a
moment was to be lost. Clubfoot would act swiftly, I knew. So must I.
But first I must find out what the situation was, the meaning of
Clubfoot's presence in Monica's house, of those soldiers in the park.
And, above all, was Monica herself at the Castle?

I had noticed a little estaminet place on the road, about a hundred
yards before we reached the Schloss. I might, at least, be able to pick
up something there. Accordingly, I stole across the garden, scaled the
wall again and reached the road in safety.

The estaminet was full of people, brutish-looking peasants swilling neat
spirits, cattle drovers and the like. I stood up at the bar and ordered
a double noggin of _Korn_--a raw spirit made in these parts from
potatoes, very potent but at least pure. A man in corduroys and leggings
was drinking at the bar, a bluff sort of chap, who readily entered into
conversation. A casual question of mine about the game conditions
elicited from him the information that he was an under-keeper at th