Free She Walks in Darkness by Evangeline Walton Page A

devising ways to kill his neighbor before that neighbor kills him.’
    “He paused, searching my face for an answering light. I think I only looked bewildered and a little troubled, and his own face changed subtly. I wish it hadn’t.”

Chapter V

    he old chap is mad,” Roger wrote. “But at least it’s a relief to hear of a master-race that isn’t blond.”
    “I’m ashamed to say it, but I wish I had played up to him. He might have let a convert work with him. He is doing some sort of work in a place even deeper in the earth than this; he’s never made any secret of that. And I don’t think he’s unbalanced enough to have said so positively, ‘I will soon prove it,’ if he hadn’t found something. There are scraps of old tradition about early Etruscans in Egypt. Who knows? I might have been able to help him, to put his discovery on a sound scientific basis. And Lord knows I need something to do.”
    For several days Prince Mino did not come again. And in his loneliness Roger began to imagine things, or to think he did.
    On May 24th he wrote: “I am nervy; all this black wilderness of stone around my own snug little tomb gets me. I’m afraid that part of my desire to explore it is really desire to prove that there’s nothing moving in it. That all the spooks are painted on the walls.
    “So often I feel that there’s something in the darkness, just beyond the light of my lamp. Something watching me. The other morning—if it was morning—I woke up thinking I heard footsteps. And this book was lying open, though I’d have sworn I shut it before I went to bed. That was one of my bad mornings, too; sometimes I sleep too hard and wake up feeling rotten. It must be the air down here.”
    Or was something being added to your trays, Roger? Slipped into your coffee, perhaps, while some casual-seeming remark made old Mattia look the other way? It must have been done deftly, cunningly, so that Mattia never knew.
    Roger never knew, either. His next entry shows how good sense can blind a man.
    “May 25th: I’m glad I wrote that yesterday; seeing it down in black and white shows me just how big a fool I’ve been making of myself. I need exercise, real exercise. If I took a nice long walk, nobody would ever know. If the prince comes, he always comes not long after Mattia has served my meals. Going would be so confounded easy! But it wouldn’t be cricket. Bluebeard’s wife was lucky; she had the run of his castle, except for one room. I’ve got to stay in just this one. The second time I saw him—when my legs were still wobbly—Prince Mino cautioned me about that. Very politely. ‘You would run no risk of meeting my servants; only Mattia ever descends to this level. But you could easily become lost; also if the Germans should return, we would need to be able to find you quickly.’
    “I said, ‘If they should come, you’d better just let Mattia lead me out onto the hillside, sir. I wouldn’t want to get you into trouble.’ But he smiled, rather grimly.
    “‘No such violation of my hospitality will be necessary. Should the Germans penetrate too far into these vaults, they will encounter a small landslide. As Sulla’s men encountered a large one when that Roman butcher was besieging Volterra and thought to plunder the temple here. The priests of that day had to bury themselves with their treasure, but I have had time to lay my plans. To place explosives at strategic points. None of the treasures of this most ancient and holy shrine of the Rasenna ever will go to adorn the blond savages’ so-called museums in Berlin.’
    “I jumped. ‘You mean you’ve got explosives down here? They’re risky stuff to handle, sir. You might blow up a lot more than you intended to.’
    “For just a second, icy wrath stiffened my host’s face. ‘You think I do not understand what I do? What I guard will be buried, not destroyed. My explosions—if any—will be carefully sized and timed. Only barbarians will die; a