He went over to it as he spoke, and tried the handle. The door was locked, but the key remained in the lock. It creaked and grated when he turned it, as though it had rusted in the keyhole. Together we went down the little winding stairway and into the chamber at the bottom. What wonder that I hesitated on the last step with a failing heart, and needed the invitation of the priest to nerve me to cross the threshold! Not a single thing had been moved since I stood there last. But for the clouds of dust, which rose at each movement that we made, I could have believed this day was the morrow of our deadly encounter. The table still lay overturned upon the floor, the rugs and skins were heaped and disordered by the trampling of our feet, the curtain hung half-torn from the vallance, where I had cowered in it with clutching hands as the Countess passed through the window on to the snow. Nothing had been touched. Yes, one thing; for as I glanced about the room, I saw my pistol dangling from a nail upon the hood of the fireplace. "The room, you think, Mr. Buckler, does little credit to our housekeeping?" said the priest. "But 'tis unswept and uncleansed of a set purpose. As you see it now, so it was on the fifteenth night of last November, and the Countess our mistress wills that so it shall remain." "There is some story," I replied, with such indifference as I could assume, "some story connected with the room." "Ay, a story of midnight crime--of crime that struck at the roots of the Lukstein race, that breaks the line of a family which has ruled here for centuries, and must in a few years make its very name to perish off the earth. Count Lukstein was the last of his race, and in this room was he slain upon his bridal night." Sombre as were the words, the priest's voice seemed to have something of exultation in its tone, and unwarily I remarked on it. "God works out His purposes by ways we cannot understand," he explained, with a humility that struck me as exaggerated and insincere. "Unless Countess Lukstein marries again, the Castle and its demesne will pass into the holy keeping of the Church." He looked steadily at me while he spoke, and I wondered whether he meant his utterance to convey a menace and warning. "What if the Countess married a true son of the Church?" I hastened to answer. "Would he not second and further her intention?" "I think, Mr. Buckler, that you have more faith in mankind than knowledge of the world. But 'twas of the room that we were speaking. Until that crime is brought to light, the room may neither be swept nor cleansed." "You hope, then, to discover----" I began.