I am glad in this way to settle the Gray Lady story, which is
still a choice morsel in Casanova. I believe the moral deduced
by the village was that it is always unlucky to throw a stone at
a black cat.
With Johnny Sweeny a cloud of dust down the road, and the dinner-
hour approaching, I hurried on with my investigations. Luckily,
the roof was flat, and I was able to go over every inch of it.
But the result was disappointing; no trap-door revealed
itself, no glass window; nothing but a couple of pipes two inches
across, and standing perhaps eighteen inches high and three feet
apart, with a cap to prevent rain from entering and raised to
permit the passage of air. I picked up a pebble from the roof
and dropped it down, listening with my ear at one of the pipes.
I could hear it strike on something with a sharp, metallic sound,
but it was impossible for me to tell how far it had gone.
I gave up finally and went down the ladder again, getting in
through the ball-room window without being observed. I went back
at once to the trunk-room, and, sitting down on a box, I gave my
mind, as consistently as I could, to the problem before me. If
the pipes in the roof were ventilators to the secret room, and
there was no trap-door above, the entrance was probably in one of
the two rooms between which it lay--unless, indeed, the room had
been built, and the opening then closed with a brick and mortar
wall.
The mantel fascinated me. Made of wood and carved, the more I
looked the more I wondered that I had not noticed before the
absurdity of such a mantel in such a place.
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