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.

I stood on one side of the hole and meditated. I was awfully tired, and the stale air was giving me a headache. I didn’t expect to find a hiding place in these walls; they were too accessible, if not to servants, then to the innocent inhabitant of the countess’s room. Burckhardt wouldn’t hide the shrine in any place where Konstanze might have found it. So what was I after?

It was no use. Even fatigue doesn’t deaden my insatiable curiosity. With a sigh I stepped over the gap in the floor and mounted the stairs that led up.

They ended in the outlines of a door, which yielded, as mine had done, to the leverage of my handy coat hanger. It only opened an inch or so, though, and then it stuck. I put my flashlight and one eye up against the opening and saw a blank wooden surface beyond. I poked at it with my coat hanger. Nothing happened.