"What an infernal night!" he exclaimed, looking out of the carriage for a moment; "almost enough to give one the miserables. Come, we'll shut it out." He struck a match and, turning round, lit a lamp which was fixed at the back of the carriage. Then he quietly pulled down the blinds and began to tell me a story, of which I heard not a word. My thoughts were engrossed by another matter. M. de Cartienne's action, coupled with the strangeness of his manner, could bear but one interpretation. He had some reason for keeping me as much as possible in the dark as to the route we were taking. For a few moments I felt, to put it mildly, uneasy. Then several possible explanations of such conduct occurred to me, and my apprehensions grew weaker. What more natural, after all, than that M. de Cartienne should desire to keep secret from me the exact whereabouts of an establishment which, by his own admission, was maintained contrary to the law? The more I considered it, the more reasonable such an explanation appeared to me. I began to wonder, even, that he had not asked me for some pledge of secrecy. But there was time enough for that. By degrees the rattling of vehicles around us grew less and less, until at last all traffic seemed to have died away. Once, during a pause in the conversation, I raised the blind a little way and looked out. We had left even the region of suburban semi-detached villas; and, blurred though the prospect was by the mud which the fast-rolling wheels drew incessantly into the air and on to the window-panes, I could just distinguish the dim outline of hedges and fields beyond. I looked at the carriage-clock and found that we had been already an hour and a quarter on our journey. From the furious pace at which we were travelling we must have come nearly fifteen miles. "This place is a long way out," I remarked. The Count laughed and lit a cigarette. "Oh, there's a good reason for that. But the men don't drive here from town--at least, not in the winter. There's a railway-station only a mile away." "We're almost there now, then, I suppose?" He let the blind up with a spring and looked out. "Nearer than I imagined," he remarked. "We shall be there in three minutes." He was just drawing in his head when he gave a visible start and leaned right out of the window, with his face upturned to the beating rain, listening intently. Suddenly he withdrew it, and, snatching at the check-string, pulled it violently. I looked at him in amazement. His face was ghastly pale, but his thin lips were set firmly together and his features rigid with determination. It was the face of a brave, desperate man preparing to meet some terrible danger.