Haunted Castles Read Online Free PDF Page B

Madam—” I realized for the first time that I did not know her husband’s name.
    The servant—a taciturn fellow with Slavic features—spoke in a thick accent: “I am in the employ of Mr. Sardonicus, sir.”
    Sardonicus! A name as flamboyant as the seal, I thought to myself. “Then deliver this note, if you please, to Madam Sardonicus, immediately you return.”
    He bowed slightly and took the note from my hand. “I shall deliver it to my master straightway, sir,” he said.
    His manner nettled me. I corrected him. “To your mistress,” I said coldly.
    â€œMadam Sardonicus will receive your message, sir,” he said.
    I dismissed him, and only then did it strike me that I had not the faintest idea where the castle of Mr. Sardonicus was located. I referred once again to Maude’s letter:
    â€œ. . . Please relay your answer by way of him and pray make it affirmative, for I do hope to make your stay in ____________a pleasant one.”
    I consulted an atlas. The locality she mentioned, I discovered, was a district in a remote and mountainous region of Bohemia.
    Filled with anticipation, I finished my breakfast with renewed appetite, and that very afternoon began to make arrangements for my journey.

II
THE SIGHT OF A GIANT SKULL
    I am not—as my friend Harry Stanton is—fond of travel for its own sake. Harry has often chided me on this account, calling me a dry-as-dust academician and “an incorrigible Londoner”—which I suppose I am. For, in point of fact, few things are more tiresome to me than ships and trains and carriages; and although I have found deep enjoyment and spiritual profit in foreign cities, having arrived, the tedium of travel itself has often made me think twice before starting out on a long voyage.
    Still, in less than a month after I had answered Maude’s invitation, I found myself in her adopted homeland. Sojourning from London to Paris, thence to Berlin, finally to Bohemia, I was met at _____________ by a coachman who spoke imperfect English but who managed, in his solemn fashion, to make known to me that he was a member of the staff at Castle Sardonicus. He placed at my disposal a coach drawn by two horses, and after taking my bags, proceeded to drive me on the last leg of my journey.
    Alone in the coach, I shivered, for the air was brisk and I was very tired. The road was full of ruts and stones, and the trip was far from smooth. Neither did I derive much pleasure by bending my glance to the view afforded by the windows, for the night was dark, and the country was, at any rate, wild and raw, not made for serene contemplation. The only sounds were the clatter of hooves and wheels, the creak of the coach, and the harsh, unmusical cries of unseen birds.
    â€œWe receive but rarely,” Maude had written, and now I told myself—Little wonder! In this ragged and, one might say, uninhabitable place, far from the graces of civilized society, who indeed is there to
be
received, or, for the matter of that, to receive one? I sighed, for the desolate landscape and the thought of what might prove a holiday devoid of refreshing incident had combined to cloak my already wearied spirit in a melancholic humour.
    It was when I was in this condition that Castle Sardonicus met my eye—a dense, hunched outline at first, then, with an instantaneous flicker of moonlight, a great gaping death’s head, the sight of which made me inhale sharply. With the exhalation, I chuckled at myself. “Come, come, Sir Robert,” I inwardly chided, “it is, after all, but a castle, and you are not a green girl who starts at shadows and quails at midnight stories!”
    The castle is situated at the terminus of a long and upward-winding mountain road. It presents a somewhat forbidding aspect to the world, for there is little about it to suggest gaiety or warmth or any of those qualities that might assure the wayfarer of welcome. Rather,