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into the hotel itself, for fear of unexpectedly meeting them somewhere in the corridors. They were nowhere to be seen. He was about to give up in despair when he saw two shadows in the doorway, and—he shrank back, ducking into the cover of darkness—his mother and her now inseparable companion came out. So he’d come at just the right moment. What were they talking about? He couldn’t hear. They were speaking in low voices, and the wind was rustling in the trees. However, now he clearly heard a laugh, his mother’s. It was a laugh that he had never heard from her before, a strangely high-pitched, nervous laugh, as if someone had tickled her. It was new and alarming to him. She was laughing, so it couldn’t be anything dangerous they were hiding from him, nothing really huge and powerful. Edgar was slightly disappointed.
    Why were they leaving the hotel, though? Where were they going by night, all by themselves? High above, the winds must be racing past on huge wings, for the sky, only a little while ago clear and moonlit, was dark now. Black scarves flung by invisible handscovered the moon from time to time, and then the night was so impenetrable that you could hardly see where you were going. Next moment, when the moon fought free, it was bright and clear again, and cool silver flowed over the landscape. This play of light and shade was mysterious, as intriguing as the game of revelation and concealment played by a woman. At this moment the landscape was stripping itself naked again. Edgar saw the two silhouettes on the other side of the path, or rather one silhouette, for they were as close as if some inner fear had merged them together. But where were the two of them going now? The pine trees were groaning in the wind, there was mysterious activity in the woods, as if the Wild Hunt were racing through them. I’ll follow, thought Edgar, they can’t hear my footsteps, not with all the noise the wind and the trees are making. And as the two figures went along the broad, well-lit road, he stayed in the undergrowth of the bank above it, hurrying quietly from tree to tree, from shadow to shadow. He followed them tenaciously and implacably, blessing the wind for drowning out his footsteps and then cursing it because it kept carrying the couple’s words away from him. Just once, when he managed to catch their conversation, he felt sure he was about to discover the secret.
    Down below him, the two of them walked along suspecting nothing. They felt happily alone in this wide, bewildering darkness, lost in their growing excitement. No premonition warned them that someone upamong the dark bushes was following every step they took, two eyes were fixed on them with all the force of hatred and curiosity. Suddenly they stopped. Edgar immediately stopped as well, pressing close to a tree. He felt a thrill of anxiety. Suppose they turned now and reached the hotel ahead of him, suppose he couldn’t get safely back to his room and his mother found it empty? Then all would be lost, they’d know he had been secretly watching them, and he could never hope to get that secret out of them. But they hesitated; there was obviously some difference of opinion. Luckily the moon was shining again, and he could see everything clearly. The Baron was pointing to a dark, narrow path going off to one side and down into the valley, where the moonlight did not fall in a broad stream as it did on the road here, but merely filtered through the undergrowth in droplets with a few direct rays of light. Why, Edgar wondered, does he want to go down there? His mother seemed to be saying no, but he, the Baron, was talking to her. Edgar could tell, from his gestures, how urgently he was pressing her to do something. The child felt afraid. What did the Baron want from his mother? Why was that bad man trying to drag her off into the darkness? Suddenly memories came to him from his books, which were the whole world to him, memories of murders and kidnappings, of