She woke to a cramped position and stiff limbs, and for a moment she did not know where she was. With returning memory, she put on the torch again. There was no sense in staying here. The door wouldn’t move, and the air was fresher below. She went down the steps and back along the way that she had come. There must be other ways out of these passages. There was the one behind the bookcase in her room, and certainly one in the room which Nellie had had, or how could Miss Cara have come into it walking in her sleep? There might be a dozen ways in, a dozen ways out. Any one of them would serve her turn, but she must find it before the light began to fail.
She came back to the place from which she had started. At least she thought it was that place, because looking back, she had seen, or thought she had seen, that the passage ran away to the right. She went on and found that the right-hand bend had become a turn. There was something that lay across the path. The light fell on it. It was an iron bar coated with rust. She stepped across it without thinking what it might be.
The passage ran on a few feet and ended in a kind of hollow cave or niche. The niche was narrower than the passage, and it was raised above it. The beam of the torch played over it and showed an iron-bound box or chest with the lid thrown back. It filled the niche and it disclosed, piled up within, the treasure which Ugodi Benevento had stolen three hundred years ago.
At the first glance she had held the torch too high, but even then she had no doubt as to what she had stumbled upon. There was a dish or platter standing on its edge and leaning against one of the hinges. There was a pair of candlesticks fallen in a St. Andrew’s cross. There were other things. She remembered that there had been a golden dish – no, ‘sundry golden plates and dishes’ – in the list which she and Derek had read, sitting safely in the daylight with the table between them. They had looked across the three-hundred-year gap, and Derek had warned her to have nothing to do with the Treasure. She could remember that he had said to let it alone. And then he had spoken about Alan Thompson – just his name and, ‘I’ve got a feeling he didn’t leave it alone.’
It was something like that – in her mind, but vaguely, with memory playing on it as the beam of the torch played on the hidden things in the niche.
The beam was still too high. The hand that held the torch was rigid, reluctant to bring it down. She did not direct it consciously, but began, to move as if she could no longer hold it up. The shimmering light slid over the stones of a necklace. They were great red stones, and they were linked with diamonds. It slid lower. Now what it touched was not stone, but bone. Fleshless bones of a skeleton hand which clutched the edge of the chest.
Lower, down the shape of an arm, to a heap of huddled clothes pressed close against the niche. Someone had knelt there to clutch at the Treasure – had knelt – and clutched – and died. Even to Candida’s failing senses there could be no doubt as to who that someone had been. She had no doubt at all that it was Alan Thompson who had laid hands on the Benevento Treasure and died for it. She took a wavering step backwards and went down.
Chapter Thirty-nine
The back of the bookcase swung in. Stephen stepped back with the chisel in his hand and said, ‘There!’
Major Warrender said, ‘Well, I don’t know, I’m sure,’ his tone a doubting one, because it had been necessary to force an opening and he couldn’t help seeing that some damage had been done. Of course it would have been a good deal worse if the damage had been done and no opening found. He turned for reassurance to Mr. Tampling and surprised an unexpected gleam in his eye. For the moment the streak of romance had got the upper hand of him. Candida Sayle had said that there was a secret passage, and there was one. The wooden back of the recess was a door, and it stood open.
Miss Silver had returned to the room. She looked gravely at the dark entry which the open door disclosed. She looked at Stephen Eversley’s face. He took the powerful electric lamp with which he had provided himself and passed into the gap. There was a small platform and steps that led from it. He went down, the light withdrawn as he did so and leaving only a reflected glow. When he got to the bottom he called back.
‘There are ten steps. Someone ought to stay behind to see we don’t get shut in.’
There was a delay whilst Rock went to fetch the constable who had been told to wait in the car. On his return they climbed down after Stephen. There was an old worn handrail stapled to the wall, and they were glad of it. The steps were high and irregular.
When they had come to the bottom there was a short length of passage. It was dark, and narrow, and dusty. Miss Silver reflected upon the probable presence of spiders. If Miss Cara had wandered here, there might very easily have been dust upon her slippers and a cobweb on the tassel of her gown. But she wondered, very deeply she wondered, whether she could have come this way or climbed that steep, irregular stair in a dream. There might, of course, be other and easier ways into the passages.
There were certainly other ways. They came to a place where this one divided. There were steps that went up and steps that went down. Stephen left them standing in the dark and climbed, taking the light with him. It dwindled and was gone. They stood close together, feeling the heaviness of the air and the weight of the dark. Only to Mr. Tampling was the experience other than an anxious and sinister one. Not all his concern for Candida – and he was truly concerned for her – could deny him the thrill of adventure. Buried memories of stories in the Boy’s Own Paper read surreptitiously by candlelight when he ought to have been enjoying his lawful slumbers woke up and magicked him. The passage under the castle moat – secret ways that led to the smuggler’s cave – the skeleton… Well, thank goodness there could be no skeleton here. They stood together, touching one another, and did not move. After a long time, the light glimmered and returned. Stephen came back. He said briefly,
‘There is a way out into several of the rooms. All quite easy to open from this side. We are at ground-floor level here. Those other steps will take us to the cellar level. I’ve always thought that if there was a hiding-place, there would be an entrance to it from those cellars. Miss Olivia wouldn’t let me examine them, you know.’
He went on before them with the light. The steps were easier here. They led by way of a short passage into a small brick-lined chamber. But this did not lead to anywhere at all. It was empty. The air was heavy. The beam of the torch travelled over all the walls in turn. They showed an unbroken surface.
Miss Silver gave her slight hortatory cough.
‘I think,’ she said, ‘that a review of some of the facts would be beneficial. This is an old house. It was old when Ugo di Benevento bought it and built on to it. I think we may assume that these passages were part of the original building. But would he have considered them a sufficiently safe hiding-place for the Benevento Treasure? I believe not. He could have no certainty that their existence was not known. I believe that he would have constructed a hiding-place which was known only to himself.’
Major Warrender said,
‘To make sure of that he would have had to do all the work himself.’
‘He may have done so, or he may have taken means to ensure that whoever did the work would never speak of it.’
With a thrill that was only partly horror Mr. Tampling recalled that dead men tell no tales.
Miss Silver continued.