shirtsleeves. Observing him from behind the Doctor, I thought him almost too perfect a specimen of what we used to consider the typical young Nazi to be true: not heavily built, but with a suggestion of the bruiser in his figure and pose; hair and lashes so fair he would have passed for albino but for his grey eyes; a face which, in the moment of haughty enquiry before he recognised von Eichbrunn, was a mask of exaggerated arrogance and cold authority, but which, when he briefly returned the Doctor's greeting, looked only selfish and sneering, with a suggestion of careless brutality about the eyes and mouth.
They spoke in German, the Doctor evidently explaining something about me. I felt the young man's eyes on me and carefully avoided them, looking round the room instead.
It appeared to be a keeper's or huntsman's room, stored with a strange variety of equipment, all having the air of being in use, well-kept, neatly arranged and ready to hand. Even the boar-spears standing in their racks by the wall were bright and serviceable-looking: that was the oddity of the place--so much of the gear did not fit into von Eichbrunn's chronology at all. Why was there a row of cross-bows, their steel parts shining, their strings new and strong, lances and short swords, and, in a farther corner, arranged on wooden stands, what looked like several suits of armour, though rather made of tough leather, or material resembling it, than of steel? The Graf von Hackelnberg seemed to be a determined mediaevalist. There was one concession to modernity: a stand of short, single-barrelled guns of very wide bore, far wider than one of our eight-bores or anything I have seen used for wild-fowling; and there were stacks of metal boxes which, I guessed contained cartridges. Besides these there was hunting gear of the sort which I suppose time has modified only a little: hound leashes and couples, collars and whips.
There was a profusion of stuff in the room and I had time to observe only the more obvious things; I noticed, however, that though there were no trophies, such as stags' heads, foxes' masks, and so on, that one might expect to see in such a room, there was a number of skins, or parts of skins, all apparently of the same sort, hanging on the wall at the farther end near the strange suits of armour. They were not displayed as trophies but hanging on a row of pegs. I could see the down-dangling tails, and I thought they looked like leopard skins; but perhaps they were brindled wild-cat skins. It seemed likely enough that wild-cats might be fairly common vermin in a great forest like Hackelnberg.
One other thing I noticed: The fair-haired youth had been standing at a long broad table in the middle of the room, doing something with some gear among the litter of the things that strewed it. He laid down the object he had been working on as he moved a little aside to talk to the Doctor; it was some small piece of metal apparatus and he had been working on it with a file. Edging a little closer, I saw that it was a queer-looking arrangement of steel hooks, arranged like fingers of a hand, and just about the size of my hand, or a bit less. It was, in fact, remotely suggestive of a steel gauntlet without any cuff. There were several such things lying on the table, one or two fitted somehow with straps. I suppose that in another moment I should have got close enough to pick the thing up and examine it in my hands, but the Doctor took me by the arm and led me out with him.
He seemed to have allayed the suspicions of the young keeper, for he went out with us and chatted amiably enough to von Eichbrunn, though he did not address a single word to me. No doubt he knew nothing but German, and though, you know, I can just stumble along in German and understand it if it is spoken slowly enough, I had never let von Eichbrunn know that.
The keeper accompanied us across the little court and let us out into a park-like area of well-spaced trees. Here I caught a
They spoke in German, the Doctor evidently explaining something about me. I felt the young man's eyes on me and carefully avoided them, looking round the room instead.
It appeared to be a keeper's or huntsman's room, stored with a strange variety of equipment, all having the air of being in use, well-kept, neatly arranged and ready to hand. Even the boar-spears standing in their racks by the wall were bright and serviceable-looking: that was the oddity of the place--so much of the gear did not fit into von Eichbrunn's chronology at all. Why was there a row of cross-bows, their steel parts shining, their strings new and strong, lances and short swords, and, in a farther corner, arranged on wooden stands, what looked like several suits of armour, though rather made of tough leather, or material resembling it, than of steel? The Graf von Hackelnberg seemed to be a determined mediaevalist. There was one concession to modernity: a stand of short, single-barrelled guns of very wide bore, far wider than one of our eight-bores or anything I have seen used for wild-fowling; and there were stacks of metal boxes which, I guessed contained cartridges. Besides these there was hunting gear of the sort which I suppose time has modified only a little: hound leashes and couples, collars and whips.
There was a profusion of stuff in the room and I had time to observe only the more obvious things; I noticed, however, that though there were no trophies, such as stags' heads, foxes' masks, and so on, that one might expect to see in such a room, there was a number of skins, or parts of skins, all apparently of the same sort, hanging on the wall at the farther end near the strange suits of armour. They were not displayed as trophies but hanging on a row of pegs. I could see the down-dangling tails, and I thought they looked like leopard skins; but perhaps they were brindled wild-cat skins. It seemed likely enough that wild-cats might be fairly common vermin in a great forest like Hackelnberg.
One other thing I noticed: The fair-haired youth had been standing at a long broad table in the middle of the room, doing something with some gear among the litter of the things that strewed it. He laid down the object he had been working on as he moved a little aside to talk to the Doctor; it was some small piece of metal apparatus and he had been working on it with a file. Edging a little closer, I saw that it was a queer-looking arrangement of steel hooks, arranged like fingers of a hand, and just about the size of my hand, or a bit less. It was, in fact, remotely suggestive of a steel gauntlet without any cuff. There were several such things lying on the table, one or two fitted somehow with straps. I suppose that in another moment I should have got close enough to pick the thing up and examine it in my hands, but the Doctor took me by the arm and led me out with him.
He seemed to have allayed the suspicions of the young keeper, for he went out with us and chatted amiably enough to von Eichbrunn, though he did not address a single word to me. No doubt he knew nothing but German, and though, you know, I can just stumble along in German and understand it if it is spoken slowly enough, I had never let von Eichbrunn know that.
The keeper accompanied us across the little court and let us out into a park-like area of well-spaced trees. Here I caught a
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