"That is where I used to live," he said to Wuellersdorf.
"It looks strange, rather deserted and abandoned."
"It may be. In the city it was called a haunted house and from the way
it stands there today I cannot blame people for thinking so."
"What did they tell about it?"
"Oh, stupid nonsense. An old ship's captain with a granddaughter or a
niece, who one fine day disappeared, and then a Chinaman, who was
probably her lover. In the hall a small shark and a crocodile, both
hung up by strings and always in motion, wonderful to relate, but now
is no time for that, when my head is full of all sorts of other
phantoms."
"You forget that it may all turn out well yet."
"It must not. A while ago, Wuellersdorf, when you were speaking about
Crampas, you yourself spoke differently."
Soon thereafter they had passed through the "Plantation" and the
coachman was about to turn to the right toward the mole. "Drive to the
left, rather. The mole can wait."
The coachman turned to the left into the broad driveway, which ran
behind the men's bathhouse toward the forest. When they were within
three hundred paces of the forest Wuellersdorf ordered the coachman to
stop. Then the two walked through grinding sand down a rather broad
driveway, which here cut at right angles through the three rows of
dunes. All along the sides of the road stood thick clumps of lyme
grass, and around them immortelles and a few blood-red pinks.
Innstetten stooped down and put one of the pinks in his buttonhole.
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