CHAPTER IV.\
THE DEVIL’S ELBOW
1
Taking all things into consideration, I doubted if it were possible for me to cover my tracks. A conviction was growing that I had to do with enemies whose methods of observation left me no means of countering.
The facts underlying all this mystery I had yet to learn. Upon what astounding intrigue had I innocently blundered? But I was now certain that these facts were of a character which would not bear light of day. The winged horror of the cemetery definitely defied conjecture. It was supernormal. The Voice formed a complement to it. But my midnight visitor, who imitated night watchmen, was a tangible opponent with whom one might hope to come to grips. Mme. Yburg.… ?
If there were vampires in the Black Forest, then certainly they had human accomplices—and clever ones. But with these, at least, I could deal.
I made several calls in the town, some of them necessary and others mere red herrings. On coming out from each of the offices and shops, I assured myself that none of the suspects, A, B, or C, was in sight. Presently, leaving the Bank, I turned sharply right and set out upon the real business of the day.
My plans from this moment onward included avoidance of spots in which I was likely to meet acquaintances. A study of the map had enabled me to lay a safe course. Once clear of the outskirts of the town, I counted myself moderately safe from ordinary espionage.
This route lay up climbing streets, in which the houses stood upon most various elevations. Whereas one would be based upon the level, the next might equally well be upraised upon so high a rocky foundation that its porch overlooked the roof of a neighbour.
Flowers there were everywhere: set in window boxes, lining porches, bordering long flights of steps leading up to the more elevated sites, crowding the forecourts of those houses which opened directly on to the pavement.
The byways of the town are very quiet. And as I mounted ever nearer to the forest, it became less and less possible that I should be tracked without my knowledge. I took frequent occasion to pause and glance around me, also back and downward upon the route below.
Not once did I detect a follower—a fact which, in view of what happened later, is noteworthy, being a sidelight upon the methods of a very extraordinary man.
Once really clear of the town, I took fewer precautions. For a mile and a half my way was along woodland roads where travellers were rare.
At a point selected earlier that morning, a car awaited me. I had chosen the man with care. As a result of conversation with the Dutch bookseller and a close study of my map, I had come to the conclusion that there was only one coign of vantage from which I might hope to command a view of Felsenweir. (In this, by the way, I was wrong.) Part of the route was possible by car; the last half mile merely a forest path.
My purpose was secretly to study the ruins, closely and for a considerable time, with a view to learning if they were inhabited. And, at the moment of joining the car at the place appointed, a conviction seized me that my well-laid schemes had gone “a-gley.”
Something in the chauffeur’s behaviour seemed odd. He sprang down with alacrity and opened the door; but his glance was furtive—unfriendly.
Around me was the beautiful silence of woodlands. I might look through straight upstanding pines, and as far as sight could reach nothing stirred. Left of the climbing road a rock wall rose sheer for twenty feet or more. Above it, and beyond, on a slight gradient, the forest mounted to a distant peak.
And now, in this solitude where almost anything could happen and never be heard of in the world of men, I realized that I was dealing with criminals of a unique kind; such as perhaps only mediæval laws could reach—with human outcasts, pariahs so far beyond our modern pale that the life of an intruder would mean less to them than the flame of a candle.
By means which I utterly failed to understand, the Voice had learned the object of my visit to the Black Forest. To his—or to its—human accomplices had been assigned the task of learning how much I knew.
Now, noting an unmistakable change of demeanour in the man whom I had engaged early that morning outside the Kurhaus, the possibility crashed in on my mind that he might be one of them!
At which moment I observed something that seemed to confirm my unpleasant theories. On the point of entering, I turned and looked at the driver. But he evaded my glance.
“You told me, I think, that you had never been this way before?”
“Never, sir. No one ever comes.”
I had given him to understand that I was a geologist; but now:
“It must lead somewhere,” I said, “beyond the point to which we are going?”
“It leads to an old ruined monastery,” he replied—“but not interesting, and then a mile further on it joins the Alt-Eberstein road.”
He persistently avoided meeting my glance, but, nevertheless, I resigned myself to the next stage of the journey. As I dropped back on the cushions and the man returned to the wheel, I wondered why he was lying.
Because, on the finely powdered pine cone which coated the surface, clearly defined tire-tracks showed as far ahead as I could see.
And they had been made by the same brand of tire as that which shod the car I sat in!
2
Pursuing a typical Black Forest road, we mounted higher and higher. Sharp bends there were and dangerous corners overhanging tree-clad declivities. I had the map open on my knees; but every once in a while, where the surface was favourable, I peered ahead… and always those car tracks showed, speaking of a former but a recent journey!
I studied the chauffeur’s back. He was not tall, but he had a formidable shoulder span and the thick, fleshless neck of a fighter.
Had I walked into a trap?
The man’s behaviour when we arrived at the selected point—a mound marking the site of a Roman watch tower—must determine the problem, I argued.
A theory that he would pass the tower and endeavour to carry me on to some unknown destination was shortly disproved. Having passed not one pedestrian on the route, we presently negotiated a hairpin bend overhanging dizzy pine tops, and a sort of clearing in the woodland came into view not more than twenty yards ahead. There was a bay on the left of the road, occupied by a flat mound. Out of this mound, three tall, very slender trees started, their distant crests overtopping the forest below.
Here the Roman tower had stood.
We stopped.
I was out before the man had time to get to the door.
“This is the place,” said he, coming round and facing me on the roadside.
Here the surface was hard. I had lost sight of the car tracks below the hairpin bend; but:
“Quite right,” I replied. “Turn the car and wait for me.”
“Very good, sir.”
“I may be gone an hour or more.”
“Very good, sir.”
His behaviour was unexceptionable, if his glance remained evasive. I began to wonder. Perhaps the poor fellow, considering his odd commission at leisure, had come to the conclusion that I was mad!
I set out along the road. My map I had returned to my pocket, but certain essential notes relating to my route from this point to that which I had in mind were pencilled on a slip of paper which I carried in my cigarette case. And just before I reached the spot where my notes told me that there was a footpath, forest swept down and overhung the road; the surface was dusted with pine débris.
A bend concealed my movements from the chauffeur. Where a mountain path—indicated in the map—turned due west, there was a recess.
Sharply marked in this recess were impressions showing that a car had been turned here not very long before.
I pressed on and upward. Presently, where a fallen tree offered a seat, I paused for a rest. Glancing at my notes, I filled and lighted a pipe.
Thus far no sound had reached me from the road below. No sound reached me now. Was the chauffeur stealthily following me? Above and below were the curious blue shadows of the forest. But nothing stirred—bird, beast, or man. When presently I started to climb again, my scrambling footsteps broke a perfect silence.
Now the route followed a tiny stream, or rather, miniature cataract. It became a natural staircase. I could not be certain if the rocky footholds had been improved by man’s handiwork in primitive times, but the ascent was very easy although the gradient was steep.
A grotto which might have sheltered gnomes gave birth to this mountain torrent. My path lay across its brow. Here, going was not so good, for the ground was cumbered with undergrowth.
But I was near to my goal.
Thirty yards saw me on the brink of a sheer precipice—a gaunt crag jutting up out of the forest like a mummy’s bone from torn wrappings.
3
This was the Devil’s Elbow—so called in my map; and the only point, I believed, from which one might overlook the heights of Felsenweir. I halted, a little breathless. My pipe had gone out, and I relighted it before consulting a pocket compass which I had brought with me.
“A quarter north of northeast by east,” was my note.
The naked rock offered no facilities for comfortable observation. But since my purpose was to study the distant ruins at some length, I could not possibly stand upright.
Being now unpleasantly warm, I removed my coat, folded it to form a cushion, and, having the compass before me, lay prone, my elbows resting on the folded coat. I focussed the Zeiss glasses on a hazy blue crest lying northeast by east and a quarter north of the Devil’s Elbow.
Forest climbed its slopes densely ranked. Gaps there were, here and there, and naked rock jutting out. But the height was warmly clothed almost to its summit.
At one point—as I had calculated—no verdure protected the ruins from observation. I could see the upper walls, and they appeared to be in a fair state of preservation; I could see parts of the main building; and I could see very clearly the high keep, and a tower, like a minaret, which rose above it.
Felsenweir had been a mighty hold in days when marauding barons had ruled the Rhineland.
Carefully, I adjusted focusses. That curious blue haze which overhangs the Black Forest dispersed magically through ever lighter shades as I turned the threads. At last, I secured a sharp, clear view. Intervening miles were spanned by the lenses. I could count the embrasures on the upper battlements and pick out iron bars of a window high in the frowning keep.
Except that the place seemed to be in wonderfully good preservation, I was unable at first to detect anything confirming my theory—viz.: that Felsenweir was inhabited.
But, with intervals of rest, since the eye strain of close watching was considerable, I continued to study the distant ruin.
I had hoped for no more than a glimpse of a moving figure. And this was what I presently saw—a moving figure. But never can I forget the figure which came into view.…
The winged horror of the graveyard had turned me cold: I had had a desperate fight with myself to conquer panic on that occasion. The Voice in the night would disturb my dreams while memory remained. But the thing I saw now on the battlements of Felsenweir produced an almost sharper dread.
I saw it passing the embrasures of the upper battlements, and I counted, mentally, “One—Two—Three,” and so on. It reached and passed the last one visible to me, and I lowered the glasses.
So clear are recollections of this extraordinary spectacle I can even remember that I closed my eyes for a moment, in an endeavour to concentrate on facts—to arrange my ideas in some sort of harmony with what I had seen. I told myself that I lived in the Twentieth Century, not in the Tenth.
A tall man, encased from head to foot in black armour, and carrying a heavy mace, had slowly patrolled the walls of Felsenweir!…
My pipe lay near my hand. I stared down at it dazedly. It seemed to have lost significance—to belong to another age. I raised the glasses again. I became an impersonal intelligence, belonging to no generation, but merely a time-detached spectator, watching—watching.…
Heedless, now, of eye strain, I waited, for five, seven, ten minutes; and then:
A second man at arms crossed the battlements!
I think, as I watched him disappear, I was nearer to doubting my own sanity than I had ever been in my life. The giant bat. Had I really seen it? The Voice in the night. Had I really heard it? … “You have two days…”
Again I dropped the glasses, and:
“Am I mad?” I said aloud.
“Not a bit of it!” a strident voice replied.
Stiff as I was from crouching so long upon the rock, that voice had me on my feet in three seconds. I twisted around.
Not six feet away, an unlighted cigar hanging from his mouth, Aldous P. Kluster stood regarding me!
“Don’t get fussed,” he went on quietly. “I’ve got you placed at last. We’re together on this.”