It lasted another three days, what with snow-choked roads and the coach shedding a wheel, and damned uncomfortable it was. I guessed we were travelling west, at about twenty miles a day, but beyond that there was nothing to be learned from the dreary German landscape. The snow stuck to the windows, and the coach was like an ice-house; I cursed and grumbled a good deal, but Starnberg sat patiently in his corner, huddled in his greatcoat, whistling softly through his teeth—his observations were either insolently cheerful or caustic, and I couldn’t decide which I disliked more.

It was towards evening on the third day that I awoke from a doze to find Rudi with the window down, peering out into the dusk. The snow had stopped for the moment, but there was a keen wind whistling into the coach, and I was about to tell him brusquely to shut the window before we froze, when he pulled his head in and said:

“Journey’s end, thank God. Now for some decent food at last and a proper bed.”

I leaned forward to look out, and I’ve seen cheerier prospects. We were rolling slowly up a long avenue of trees towards a huge, bleak house, half mansion, half castle; in the fading light, with the wintry sky behind it, it looked in silhouette like the setting for some gothic novel, all towers and spires and rugged stonework. There were lights in some of the windows, and a great lantern shone yellow above the pointed archway of its main door, but they served only to exaggerate the ancient gloom of the place. Childe Flashy to the Dark Tower came, thinks I, and tried not to imagine what lay within.

It proved to be a match for the exterior. We were shown into an immense, stone-flagged hall, hung round with faded tapestries and a few old trophies of arms and the chase; there were archways without doors leading out of it, and in keeping with a general air of medieval ghastliness, there were even torches burning in brackets on the walls. The place felt like a tomb, and the ancient butler who received us would have made an excellent gravedigger.

But what daunted me most of all was the presence in the hall of a strapping trio of fellows, all of military cut, who welcomed Rudi and weighed me up with cold, professional eyes. One was a massive, close-cropped, typical Prussian, whose fleshy face was wealed with a great sabre cut from brow to chin; the second was a tall, supple, sinister gentleman with sleek black hair and a vulpine smile; the third was stocky and stout, balding and ugly. All were in undress uniforms, and as tough-looking a set of customers as you could wish for; my spirits sank even farther as I realised that with this crew on hand my chances of escape had dwindled out of sight.