"Come, Madam," I said at last, "reassure yourself, I give you my word that I will help you, and you can trust me absolutely not to reveal your confidences. But I cannot imagine anything your father could have done so terrible that it would cause anyone to hate so fair and sympathetic a woman as you."
"Ah, you little know," she breathed.
Then, with her head bowed in shame and her eyes averted from mine, she told a tale of depravity so terrible that my brows knitted in loathing, and I involuntarily clenched my fists in fierce anger to think that such creatures as this woman's father could ever exist on this fair earth of ours. I even included her in my intense loathing, as her voice broke and trailed off incoherently in the midst of the most revolting details. But when she raised her eyes again, and I saw the horror and fear in them, a great wave of pity surged over me for the unfortunate daughter of a man who could wreak such terrible barbarities upon innocent peasant girls within the dungeons of his castle.
What she told me that night I am under oath never to reveal, and I cannot violate that oath. If I said that her father was a beast in human form, I would be insulting the whole animal order of creation. He was far worse, far lower, than any beast. His daughter's narrative told of the disappearance of women and young girls in the blackness of night, and how the Count had organized searching parties to fool the peasants into believing that he was earnestly trying to find the women and girls who had disappeared, whereas these poor creatures in the dungeons of his castles were undergoing—but I must not forget my oath. Suffice it to say that the mother of the Count's two daughters died from shame and terror, and the two girls (my fair visitor and her sister Rosicka), learning from the ravings of their dying father the truth that they already half suspected, shut themselves off in part of the castle and lived apart from the world, until recently, when they had gone to Hermannstadt, where love entered the life of my visitor, the Countess D—.
"You see well, Mr. Houdini," the Countess continued, "that all my dreams of love and happiness will be over if these terrible secrets are found out. They. must remain locked in the breasts of myself and my sister Rosicka, to be buried forever in the grave when we die. Surely no man, no matter how much he might love me, could consent to link his name and family to a line accursed by such a beast as my father, the Count D—. And yet he bore a good name during his life, and his memory is respected, though I cannot hope for his happiness now that he is dead."
It was on the tip of my tongue to remark that nobody could refuse to forgive one so lovely for sins committed by her ancestors. But the full horror of the story she had just told me caused me to shudder, and I remained silent.
"Three months ago," said the Countess D—, "my sister met, in Hermannstadt, a noblewoman who was deeply interested in spiritualism. She took my sister to several seances, and introduced her to a medium named Popkens. This medium has converted her completely to spiritualism, and he is using his influence to get from her the secrets that would ruin our line.
"Four days ago she brought him to our castle, which stands on the banks of the Maros River two leagues from here. The moment I saw him, I knew that I had seen him before—dark, with small, beady eyes that show a great deal of white; nervous hands with long fingers; a thin, foppishly curled black mustache; and a horrible manner of repeatedly plucking at his beaklike chin with his left hand. There is something sinister about the man. I know that I have seen him before, and in the very castle itself, while my father was still alive. Who he is and what he knows, it is beyond my power to say, but I am certain that I have seen him before, and that he is diabolical. If I could only place him definitely, I know I could convince my sister that he is an impostor who purposes nothing good.
"In the last seance that my sister attended in Hermannstadt, she says, he went into a trance, and my father's spirit spoke through Popken's lips, in my father's very voice, commanding her to release his soul from torment by putting into writing the whole revolting, hideousness of his evil deeds on earth, as my sister had heard it from the dying lips of my conscience-tortured father in that terrible delirium that preceded his death—the terrified ravings of a fiend trying to make his peace with God before he dies. As only my sister and I and the deaf-mute caretaker attended him in his final illness, my sister is satisfied that it was really our father's spirit speaking to her. He ordered her to write out clearly and legibly everything he had told her in his delirium, and sign it in the presence of two other persons who would be named by him in a later seance.
"Of course Rosicka refused. She would take no commands from the father whose memory she loathes, but she was greatly worried. Then last night this false medium, Popkens (for I am sure that he is an unprincipled impostor and adventurer), held a seance in the castle itself, which I attended. He claimed to produce the spirit of our saintly mother. The apparition commanded Rosicka to rescue our father from torment by yielding to his wishes, and it named two men who are to witness the affidavit of my sister. As a sign that she was indeed the spirit of our mother, speaking to us from beyond the grave, she said that she had appeared to these two witnesses in dreams, and they were even now on their way from Hermannstadt to witness the document that my sister Rosicka was to write, although our mother's spirit had not informed them what the document was.
"The voice was indeed like that of our mother, but there was also a difference. It was that difference which prevented Rosicka from then and there going into her bedroom and spending the rest of the night writing out the fragmentary record of my father's depravities—a record that would cause the countryside to rise against us, and mean the ending of my dream of happiness, if indeed we escaped with our lives from those whose daughters and sisters suffered from the unbelievable debaucheries perpetrated by my father.
"The apparition of our mother, appearing dimly in the darkened-room like a wraith of mist, adjured my sister that she had no right to condemn even the worst of sinners to eternal torment, and his torment would be unending unless a record were left that might be discovered by future generations to expose his shame to the world, so that his spirit could atone. Such a written record of his misdeeds would jeopardize Rosicka's happiness, said the voice, for after the document was duly witnessed she was to bury it behind a certain stone in the famous black dungeon. I knew what was meant by the black dungeon, where in medieval times terrible tortures were inflicted, and I cringed helplessly at the thought of ever going down into that den of iniquity, last visited by my father, whose death was caused by poisoning from the bite of the insane girl he kept shackled there.
"But with that thought, sudden light came in upon me. This man, this fake medium, whom I am certain I had once seen in the castle, knew of the dungeon, knew of my father's crimes, and wanted to lay his hands upon the evidence. The men on their way from Hermannstadt to witness the document are his accomplices. They aim to obtain the document out of the dungeon, after Rosicka has put it there, and then blackmail us out
