How about a Black Man crawling up the wall like a bat?

I threw my pencil on the table so hard the point broke, and stood up. Just for that, I told my undisciplined imagination, you and I are going exploring.

The heavy cupboard that served as my closet was pushed into the corner I wanted to examine. It was ten feet high and four feet wide and seemed to be built of concrete. My first shove didn’t even rock it. After I had greased a track under the feet with a candle, and strained every muscle in my back, it began to yield. There are some advantages to being big, I guess.

Finally I had the cupboard moved out at an angle. I squeezed in behind.

The whole room had once been wood-paneled, but now only a few rotting fragments remained, in areas like this, which were normally concealed by furniture. I lifted my lamp in one hand and ran my fingers over the stones. They felt like stones. I rapped tentatively on one of them, and scraped my knuckles. I put the lamp on the floor, sat down beside it, and made a profane remark.

And there it was. As simple as that. I had been looking at the stones which were on my eye level, and that would have been over the head of a stocky medieval male. The doorway was so low that even Burckhardt would have had to bend over in order to pass through. I could see the outlines clearly, where the mortar was missing. In earlier times, of course, tapestries and/or paneling had covered the door.

It yielded a trifle when I pushed against it, but it refused to open. I looked in vain for a bar or catch. Then the answer came to me. I was in the countess’s room. The active party in the nocturnal get-togethers would be coming into the room, not leaving it. In those days a lady was supposed to act like a lady.

A wooden coat hanger proved strong enough to act as a lever. The door opened with a protesting squeal of rusted hinges. I told myself that next day I would squander a few marks on a can of oil. The creaking doors of Schloss Drachenstein were beginning to get on my nerves.

I lifted up the lamp and held it through the opening. I couldn’t see much—only the top of a flight of stairs going down.

There were only four stairs. Then the passage leveled out. I had wondered how a passage could run between the rooms of the count and countess without blocking the windows of Tony’s room. Now I understood. It was below the window level.

When I reached the end of the passage I found a variation where I had expected a repetition of the arrangement outside my own room—that is to say, steps leading up to the count’s chamber. The steps were there, but at the foot of them was a narrow opening just wide enough to admit a human body, through which the stairs went on down.