Page:Weird Tales Volume 7 Number 3 (1926-03).djvu/10

296 visiting a haunted castle, don't you think?"

"Oh, well," I yielded reluctantly. "We may as well be doing it as standing here talking about it."

I took the electric torch from the tool-box, and we started toward the castle.

stands on the opposite side of Bear Creek. There is a little rustic bridge, however, over which one can cross. It is quite a climb to the old stone wall which encircles the place, I should say about one or two hundred yards to the top of the hill; on which Lochinvar Lodge is precariously perched. As we scrambled up the rocky side, Doris suddenly caught my arm.

"Oooh!" She gasped in a transport of delight. "Isn't it beautiful!"

It was indeed a wonderful sight, the moonlight gleaming over the four towers of that huge old gray structure, with the ragged edge of the bordered roof forming a silhouette in strong contrast to the white light bathing the whole. But beautiful as it was, it seemed to me an infernal, malignant beauty, a sinister suggestion of Plato's castle in the Elysian Fields. A stone dislodged under my feet went tinkling down into the river as if glad of an excuse to remove itself from the castle's proximity. I laughed, but somehow there was not much mirth in my laugh tonight.

"Why, we are at the wall already!" It was Doris speaking. "Do you suppose we can go inside?"

"I am sure of it," I answered reassuringly, "almost too sure."

If she heard the last words she paid no attention to them.

"The gate is locked, all right," proclaimed Nielson, who was a little ahead of us, "and shaking won't budge it. Looks as if we'd have to climb over the fence."

Fortunately, or unfortunately, the wall was only about five feet high. By dint of much boosting and giggling we managed to get Doris over. It was about a hundred feet to the front door of the castle.

There must have been a well-kept and beautiful garden here once, but now the more hardy mountain shrubs have completely overrun the place, and form such an inextricably tangled mass that all evidences of cultivation are lost. The grass is long and rank, and shows an alarming propensity to trip a person walking over it. In fact, Doris did stumble once, and would have fallen had not Nielson caught her in time. Such a tenderly grateful look as she gave him! Without the slightest warning, a fierce unreasoning jealousy seized me. That he loved her I had only to look into his face to see. And what would be my chances compared to his? I did my best not to think of it. A man of thirty-five with a taste for literature, and a taste for science, and no money to support either taste, and what is worse, no means of making it.

We were now so close to the castle that we could see it only as a huge shapeless bulk looming in front of us. I turned on the flashlight as we made our way toward the glass-enclosed porch which took the place of a drawbridge at the front entrance. The door was effectually barred.

At the rear of the castle was what might be termed a porte-cochère, through which vehicles could drive into the inner court of the castle. I shuddered at the idea of any car coming the way we had climbed until I remembered there was a road winding around the other side of the hill.

It was a broad, deep, moldy tunnel through which we passed. And it was extremely black, black as if it were totally devoid of light. I amused myself by turning the flashlight over the surroundings.

"Hello!" Nielson suddenly ejaculated; "what's that?"