Following the path to the tower leisurely, they had reached the tower.  Feller’s door was open.  Marta looked into the room, finding in the neat arrangement of its furniture a new significance.  He was absent, for it was the dinner hour.

“And on my recommendation you took him,” Lanstron continued.

“Yes, on yours, Lanny, on a friend’s!  You”—­she put a cold emphasis on the word—­“you wanted him here for your plans!  And why?  You haven’t answered that yet.  What purpose of the war game does he serve in our garden?”

His look pleaded for patience, while he tried to smile, which was rather difficult in face of her attitude.

“Not altogether in the garden; partly in the tower,” he replied.  “You are to be in the whole secret and in such a way as to make my temptation clear, I hope.  First, I think you ought to see the setting.  Let us go in”

Impelled by the fascination of Feller’s romantic story and by a curiosity that Lanstron’s manner accentuated, she entered the room.  Apparently Lanstron was familiar with the premises.  Passing through the sitting-room into the room adjoining, where Feller stored his tools, he opened a door that gave onto the circular stone steps leading down into the dungeon tunnel.

“I think we had better have a light,” he said, and when he had fetched one from the bedchamber he descended the steps, asking her to follow.

They were in a passage six feet in height and about three feet broad, which seemed to lead on indefinitely into clammy darkness.  The dewy stone walls sparkled in fantastic and ghostly iridescence under the rays from the lantern.  The dank air lay moist against their faces.

“It’s a long time since I’ve been here,” said Marta, glad to break the uncanny sound of their footsteps in the weird silence with her voice.  “Not since I was a youngster.  Then I came on a dare to see if there were goblins.  There weren’t any; at least, none that cared to manifest himself to me.”

“We have a goblin here now that we are nursing for the Grays—­an up-to-date one that is quite visible,” said Lanstron.  “This is far enough.”  He paused and raised the lantern.  With its light full in her face, she blinked.  “There, at the height of your chin!”

She noted a metal button painted gray, set at the side of one of the stones of the wall, which looked unreal.  She struck the stone with her knuckles and it gave out the sound of hollow wood, which was followed, as an echo, by a little laugh from Lanstron.  Pressing the button, a panel door flew open, revealing a telephone mouthpiece and receiver set in the recess.  Without giving him time to refuse permission, her thought all submissive to the prompting spirit of adventure, she took down the receiver and called:  “Hello!”

“The wire isn’t connected,” explained Lanstron.

Marta hung up the receiver and closed the door abruptly in a spasm of reaction.