The Baron smiled at the idea. "Don't be alarmed, gentlemen," he said;
"the door is safe. I had an interest in seeing to it myself,
when we first inhabited the palace. My favourite study is the study
of experimental chemistry--and my workshop, since we have been in Venice,
is down here."
'These last words explained a curious smell in the vaults,
which we noticed the moment we entered them. We can only describe
the smell by saying that it was of a twofold sort--faintly aromatic,
as it were, in its first effect, but with some after-odour very
sickening in our nostrils. The Baron's furnaces and retorts,
and other things, were all there to speak for themselves,
together with some packages of chemicals, having the name and address
of the person who had supplied them plainly visible on their labels.
"Not a pleasant place for study," Baron Rivar observed, "but my sister
is timid. She has a horror of chemical smells and explosions--
and she has banished me to these lower regions, so that my experiments
may neither be smelt nor heard." He held out his hands, on which we
had noticed that he wore gloves in the house.
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