"I never take advice. But you may have been mistaken. I can scarcely believe that Herr Windt had the skill to trace us here--unless----"
"But it was he. I was peering through the slit in the postern, not twenty feet away. I could have killed him easily."
"But twenty feet is a long distance when two hundred feet yawn beneath. Let him come. We have food enough for a siege--ah, there it is again!"
There was a significant silence between the two men, but Renwick listened the more keenly, for he heard the deep rumble, as of thunder, which had perplexed him in the afternoon--a reverberation, repeated and continued, which seemed to make the very flags beneath him tremble. But since he could hear and feel it within these solid walls, much nearer and louder, he realized now that it meant the roar of artillery--the defiant blasts of the Austrian guns at the end of the Pass, or the triumphant salvos of the Russians. And the voice of Goritz confirmed him.
"The thing has come rather sooner than I expected," he growled. "_Donnerwetter!_ Why couldn't the Russians have put off the attack for a week!"
"Perhaps it is just as well for us if they do. Herr Windt may neglect us in the general scramble for safety."
"He is not of that sort, Herr Hauptmann."
"Then let him come. Twenty feet is a long jump even for the legs of the Windt."
Goritz laughed at his joke and then yawned sleepily.
"You may go now, Karl. Is Strohmeyer at the gate?"
"You are sure that he will not go to sleep?"
"The signal is one stroke of the postern bell. He understands?"
"None except these. That he is on no account to fire unless attacked. But this fact is to be understood. No man is to pass into Schloss Szolnok tonight."
The chauffeur, Karl, passed across Renwick's range of vision and the steps of Goritz resumed their pacing of the floor--more slowly now. The Englishman had been kneeling, scarcely daring to breathe, and now he wondered what he had better do next. Taking infinite pains to make no sound he investigated the wall of the Hall with his finger tips. There was a door here, a secret door, he thought, hidden from the interior of the Hall in the paneling of the wainscoting. Did Goritz know of its existence? The floor of the crypt, it was true, had shown no sign of footsteps, and the door below, Renwick was sure, had not been opened for many years. But if Goritz knew of this passage, there was a chance of his entering and finding him. Renwick dared not strike matches now, and determined to go on until he had mastered all the architectural details of the passage, and then devise some plan to reach Marishka. Balked in other directions he could return to this secret door into the Hall, and awaiting the departure of Goritz, force an entrance and trust to luck.