"So it was for _you_ the Prince drove home early
from the theatre! But why is the door left open?"
Pretty Bianca began to whimper. "I--I do not know; unless some one
has stolen my key." She put a hand down to fumble in the pocket of
her cloak.
"Then we had best discover," said I, and drew her (though not
ungently) to the door. I found it after a little groping and,
lifting the latch--for the gust of wind had fastened it--thrust it
open upon a light which, though by no means brilliant, dazzled me
after the darkness of the alley.
I had counted on the door's opening straight into the garden.
To my dismay I found myself in a narrow vestibule floored with
lozenges of black and white marble and running, under the wall to my
left, towards an archway where a dim lamp burned before a velvet
curtain. For a moment I halted irresolute, and then, slipping a hand
under Bianca's arm, led her forward to the archway and drew aside the
curtain.
Again I stood blinking, dazzled by the light of many candles--or were
they but two or three candles, multiplied by the mirrors around the
walls and the gleams from the gilded furniture? And what--merciful
God, _what!_--was that foul thing hanging from the central
chandelier?--hanging there while its shadow, thrown upward past the
glass pendants, wavered in a black blot that seemed to expand and
contract upon the ceiling?
It was a man hanging there, with his neck bent over the curtain's
rope that corded it to the chandelier; a man in a priest's frock,
under which his bare feet dangled limp and hideous.
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