"Well?" said I, starting up. "You came downstairs in the dark, took the key from the mantelshelf, and went out into the garden and locked it. That occasion was the once." "You were in the room!" I exclaimed. "I remember. The door was open again in the morning. I had a locksmith to it. There was nothing amiss with the lock, and I wondered how it happened." Otto laughed again quietly. "Right. I was in the room, and I was not alone either." "The Countess was with you. Why?" "There was a book in your rooms which she wished to see--a poetry book, eh?--with a date on one page, and a plan of Castle Lukstein on the page opposite. My mistress was at your lodging with some company that afternoon." "True," said I, interrupting him. "She proposed the party herself." "Well, it seems that she got no chance of examining the book then. But she unlocked the garden door. You had told her where you kept the key." I recollected that I had done so on the occasion of her first visit. "And so Countess Lukstein and yourself were in the room when I passed through that night." Otto began to chuckle again. "'Twas lucky you came down in the dark, and didn't stumble over us. Lord! I thought that I should have burst with holding my breath." "Otto," I said, "tell me the whole story; how your suspicions set towards me, and what confirmed them." "Very well," said he, after a pause, "I will; for my mistress consulted me throughout. But you will get no sleep." "I shall get less if you don't tell me." "Wait a moment!" He filled his tobacco-pipe and lighted it. I followed his example, and between the puffs he related the history of those far-away days in London. To me, lying back upon the boughs which formed my bed in the dark loft, it seemed like the weaving of a fairy tale. The house in Pall Mall--St. James's Park--the piazza, of Covent Garden! How strange it all sounded, and how unreal! The odour of pine-wood was in my nostrils, and I had but to raise my arm to touch the sloping thatch above my head. CHAPTER XXII. A TALK WITH OTTO. I ESCAPE TO INNSPRUCK. "Of what happened at Bristol," he began, "you know well-nigh as much as I do, in a sense, maybe more; for I have never learnt to this day why my master, the late Count, left me behind there to keep an eye upon the old attorney and Sir Julian Harnwood's visitors. There's only one thing I need tell you. The night you came from the Bridewell, after--well, after----" He hesitated, seeming at a loss for a word. I understood what it was that he stuck at, and realising that my turn had come to chuckle, I said, with a laugh: "The blow was a good one, Otto."