The House of the Wolf Read Online Free PDF Page B

briefcase and removed his heavy fur hat as he followed the man across the stone floor of what looked like a gatehouse within the inner arch of the Castle courtyard.
    The clatter of the horses’ hooves across the cobbles in the icy air was already receding and was then cut off altogether by the slam of the massive gatehouse door. They reemerged into the open air again, crossing a smaller courtyard where the snow and ice had been meticulously cleared from the massive setts.
    Facing them was a graceful arched portico whose glass doors, set back in the shadow, showed forth slanting beams of yellow light. The servant held the door courteously aside for Coleridge to enter, and he was at once aware of the rush of warm air. He blinked as another servant, more elegant than the first and in smartly cut livery of a military pattern, ushered them across a black-and-white tiled hall.
    A large log fire burned in a vast fireplace at the right, and sporting trophies were ranged about the uneven stone walls. A marble balustraded staircase made right-angled turns in the far corner as it ascended to the upper floors, and Coleridge made out the carved blazons on the heraldic shields which bore the coat of arms of his noble host and which were set at intervals in the staircase balustrade.
    Three enormous brass lanterns suspended from the darkened beams of the far-off ceiling held quivering banks of large red candles, which cast a shifting, mysterious light downward onto the tiling of the floor as Coleridge followed the two men across to one of a number of doors set into the fireplace wall. Already his painfully tingling ears were attesting the return of circulation.
    The second servant patiently waited while Coleridge divested himself of his heavy outer clothing. He sat down by the fireplace and changed into indoor shoes while the bearded man removed his boots and other garments to some inner chamber.
    When he had thawed out and felt himself to be sufficiently presentable, he picked up his briefcase and followed the uniformed man, who was patently some sort of household major-domo, toward the far door which the white-haired man held ajar for him.
    It was a smaller room into which he showed the guest, panelled with some rare wood and furnished with great taste and elegance. The lighting here came from electric bulbs set into wrought-iron wall lanterns and from overhead chandeliers, and Coleridge guessed that this was a more modern part of the Castle, though still of great antiquity.
    There was no sound except for the faint sputtering of the logs on the fire and the sonorous clicking of a large-pendulum clock which meticulously measured out the minutes against the far wall. So far as Coleridge could gather in his first glimpses, there was no-one in the room, and he looked about curiously as the servant courteously indicated a great carved chair at the right-hand side of the fireplace.
    It was almost a repetition of the scene at the inn earlier, and Coleridge felt a certain inward satisfaction that he was at last at his journey’s end and would not have to venture out into the bitter air and on his seemingly endless travelling again tonight. He put down his briefcase on the huge polished refectory table which stood near the chair and thawed out.
    The majordomo had reappeared from behind him with an embossed silver tray on which stood several tall crystal goblets of amber glass and a flagon of some reddish wine. Despite the professor’s protestations he filled a goblet and put it down on the tray within the guest’s reach.
    It was obvious the man did not speak English, as he merely smiled without answering Coleridge’s thanks, and the American then saw with a slight sense of shock that he had no tongue; only the remains of a pink root which showed like a gaping sore in his mouth before he closed it again.
    It was a barbarous glimpse of something of which Coleridge had been dimly aware on his journeyings in Hungary, and it merely emphasised the