Peppino was as obstinate as a mule in his fear of ghosts, so leaving him to smoke his long Italian cigar and watch the brown lizards scuttling over the hot stones in the sunshine, I advanced towards the palace with the determination to find out the secret chamber. As I knew it would be dark therein, owing to its want of windows, I had taken the precaution to provide myself with a candle and a box of matches. Feeling that these were safe in my pocket, I went to the iron gate and entered the courtyard in the same way as I had done on that night. This time, however, I examined the ironwork, and found to my surprise that the missing bar had been half filed through and then wrenched away. The marks left were quite fresh, and it had been done so recently that the bar had not had time to grow rusty. This discovery astonished me not a little, as I did not see the reason of such an entrance being made. If it were the Contessa who used the palace, she would have the key of the side door, and could thus admit herself and her lover at her pleasure, while this breach could only have been made by some one who could not enter in any other way. I thought of the person into whose arms I had fallen, the person who had placed a handkerchief wet with some liquid over my face, and although, according to Peppino's story, this watcher at the door was the phantom of Count Mastino Morone, yet dismissing such an explanation as due to superstition, I began to think that another person had followed the lady of the sepulchre besides myself. Yes, there could be no doubt about it, some third person had tracked her to the palazzo, and, unable to enter in the ordinary way, had filed through and broken the iron bar in the gate. Gaining access to the interior of the palazzo in this way, the unknown had penetrated to the secret chamber, and doubtless had witnessed the same strange scene as I had done. My presence had been discovered, and to preserve for some unknown reason, the secret of this terrible chamber, I had been seized, rendered insensible by chloroform, and taken to the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele, so that I would be unable to re-discover the Palazzo Morone. All these thoughts flashed through my brain with the rapidity of lightning, and I wondered whom this unknown could be--a friend of Pallanza? an accomplice of the Contessa! I did not know what to think, so leaving all such conjectures to a more seasonable time, I crossed over the dreary courtyard and entered the great hall.