Snippet #1901042

"As you pointed out Abby, this is a recent event, so there are no documents from which we might gleam some useful information." Walter said. Looking around the private room in which he and Abigail sat, he continued. "The reason we are here is because I was told that there is a secret passageway in one of the private rooms within this library, this room."

Placing his hands on the edge of the desk to push himself into a standing position Walter started the search. "Its here somewhere, help me find it." Walter proceeded with the search, first checking the obvious. "Maybe, if we're lucky there will be a hidden lever disguised as a book on one of these shelves."

Walter joked as he pulled back on each and every book. "Unfortunately I have no idea what kind of clue is hidden within the secret passageway, perhaps a document. Any number of things." Walter's voice became strained as he stretched to reach the top shelf, pulling on the last book -finding nothing, clearly this was not the way.

Walter let out a sigh of frustration. "We're not going to find it, we'd have to run our fingers over every inch of this room."

Walter took a step toward the medieval style table, he had only applied the tiniest bit of pressure upon the right corner when he noticed a slight imballance. Looking down at the floor where the right leg was positioned he noticed that the tile beneath the foot of the table on the right side was set lower within the concrete.

"Found it." Walter said with great joy. Crouching down Walter pressed down on the single tile with his fingers, the tile forced even lower by the pressure of his touch -it was a release mechanism. Directly beneath the table a solid slab of tiled floor slid back, revealing the secret passageway that Walter had mentioned only minutes before.

Walter now on all fours shimmied his way beneath the medieval table to look down into the darkness below. It was pitch black inside, all Walter could see were the first few rungs of a wooden ladder which were illuminated by the ambient light within the private room.


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Several hours later as the three Inn keepers stood within the reception area Gottberg Von Adalwolf returned, but this time he had brought along some support in the form of five heavily armed American soldiers. Using the telegram he had sent as an excuse to travel to the regional headquarters of the occupying forces -in the case of Austria at this point in time, it was the Americans.

The soldiers were fully aware that Gottberg was a war criminal -a Nazi, but they were under orders, and they were obligated to do whatever Adalwolf might demand of them. The fat sweaty man was still wearing his thick leather coat when he entered the Inn.

"Achtung!"