“Quite so,” said Sir Clinton. “Most ingenious.”
His voice had regained its normal easy tone; and now he seemed anxious to smooth over the ill-feeling which had come to so acute a pitch in the last few minutes.
“Will you go first, Cecil, and show us the way? I expect it’s difficult for a stranger. I’ve brought an electric torch. Here, you’d better take it.”
Now that he had failed in his attempt, Cecil seemed to recover his temper again. He took the torch from the Chief Constable and, pressing the spring to light it, stepped through the open panel.
“I think we’ll lock the museum door before we go down,” Sir Clinton suggested. “There’s no need to expose this entrance to anyone who happens to come in.”
He walked across the museum, turned the key in the lock, and then rejoined his companions.
“Now, Cecil, if you please.”
Cecil Chacewater led the way; Sir Clinton motioned to the Inspector to follow him, and brought up the rear himself.
“Look out, here,” Cecil warned them. “There’s a flight of steps almost at once.”
They made their way down a spiral staircase which seemed to lead deep into the foundations of Ravensthorpe. At last it came to an end, and a narrow tunnel gaped before them.
“Nothing here, you see,” Cecil pointed out, flashing the torch in various directions. “This passage is the only outlet.”
He led the way into the tunnel, followed by the Inspector. Sir Clinton lagged behind them for a moment or two, and then showed no signs of haste, so that they had to pause in order to let him catch up.
The tunnel led them in a straight line for a time, then bent in a fresh direction.
“It’s getting narrower,” the Inspector pointed out.
“It gets narrower still before you’re done with it,” Cecil vouchsafed in reply.
As the passage turned again Sir Clinton halted.
“I’d like to have a look at these walls,” he said.
Cecil turned back and threw the light of the torch over the sides and roof of the tunnel.
“It’s very old masonry,” he pointed out.
Sir Clinton nodded.
“This is a bit of old Ravensthorpe, I suppose?”
“It’s older than the modern parts of the building,” Cecil agreed. He seemed to have overcome his ill-humour and to be making the best of things.
“Let’s push on, then,” Sir Clinton suggested. “I’ve seen all I wanted to see, thanks.”
As they proceeded, the tunnel walls drew nearer together and the roof grew lower. Before long the passage was barely large enough to let them walk along it without brushing the stones on either side.
“Wait a moment,” Sir Clinton suggested, as they reached a fresh turning. “Inspector, would you mind making a rough measurement of the dimensions here?”
Somewhat mystified, Inspector Armadale did as he was bidden, entering the figures up in his notebook while Cecil stood back, evidently equally puzzled by these manœuvres.
“Thanks, that will do nicely,” Sir Clinton assured him when the task had been completed. “Suppose we continue?”
Cecil advanced a few steps. Then a thought seemed to strike him.
“It gets narrower farther on. We’ll have to go on hands and knees, and there won’t be room to pass one another. Perhaps one of you should go first with the torch. There’s nothing in the road.”
Sir Clinton agreed to this.
“I’ll go first, then. You can follow on, Inspector.”
Inspector Armadale looked suspicious at this suggestion.
“He might get away back and shut us in,” he murmured in Sir Clinton’s ear.
The Chief Constable took the simplest way of reassuring the Inspector.
“That’s an ingenious bit of mechanism in the panel, up above,” he said to Cecil. “I had a glance at it as I passed, since it’s all in plain sight. From this side, you’ve only to lift a bar to open it, haven’t you?”
“That’s so,” Cecil confirmed.
Armadale was evidently satisfied by the information which Sir Clinton had thus conveyed to him indirectly. He squeezed himself against the wall and allowed the Chief Constable to come up to the head of the party. Sir Clinton threw his light down the passage in front of them.
“It looks like all-fours, now,” he commented, as the lamp revealed a steadily diminishing tunnel. “We may as well begin now and save ourselves the chance of knocking our heads against the roof.”
Suiting the action to the word, he got down on hands and knees and began to creep along the passage.
“At least we may be thankful it’s dry,” he pointed out.
The tunnel grew still smaller until they found more than a little difficulty in making their way along it.
“Have we much farther to go?” asked the Inspector, who seemed to have little liking for the business.
“The end’s round the next corner,” Cecil explained.
They soon reached the last bend in the passage, and as he turned it Sir Clinton found himself at the entrance to a tiny space. The roof was even lower than that of the tunnel, and the floor area was hardly more than a dozen square feet. A stone slab, raised a few inches from the ground, seemed like a bed fitted into a niche.
“A bit wet in this part,” Sir Clinton remarked. “If I’d known that we were in for this sort of thing I think I’d have put on an old suit this morning. Mind your knees on the floor, Inspector. It’s fairly moist.”
He climbed into the niche, which was no bigger than the bunk of a steamer, and began to examine his surroundings with his torch. Inspector Armadale, taking advantage of the space thus made clear, crept into the tiny chamber.
“This place looks as if it had been washed out, lately,” he said, examining the smooth flagstones which formed the floor. He turned his attention to the roof, evidently in search of dripping water; but he could find none, though the walls were moist.
Suddenly Sir Clinton bent forward and brought his lamp near something on the side of the niche.
The Inspector, seeing something in the patch of light, craned forward to look also, and as he did so he seemed to recognize what he saw.
“Why, that’s . . .” he ejaculated.
Sir Clinton’s lamp went out abruptly, and Inspector Armadale felt his arm gripped warningly in the darkness.
“Sorry,” the Chief Constable apologized. “My finger must have shifted the switch on the torch. Out of the way, Inspector, please. There’s nothing more to be seen here.”
Inspector Armadale wriggled back into the passage again as Sir Clinton made a movement as though to come out of his perch in the recess.
“So this is where Maurice got to when he left the museum?” the Chief Constable said, reflectively. “Well, he isn’t here now, that’s plain. We’ll need to look elsewhere, Inspector, according to your scheme. If he wasn’t elsewhere he was to be here. But as he isn’t here he’s obviously elsewhere. And now I think we’ll make our way up to the museum again. Wait a moment! We’ve got to get back into that passage with our heads in the right direction. Once we’re into the tunnel there won’t be room to turn round.”
It took some manœuvring to arrange this, for the tiny chamber was a tight fit for even three men; but at last they succeeded in getting back into the tunnel in a position which permitted them to creep forwards instead of backwards. They finally accomplished the long journey without incident, and emerged through the gaping panel into the museum once more.
“Now we’ll turn our backs again, Inspector, and let Mr Chacewater close the panel.”
Again the sharp click notified them that they could turn round. The panelling seemed completely solid.
“There are just a couple of points I’d like to know about,” Sir Clinton said, turning to Cecil. “You don’t know the combination that opens the safe over there, I believe?”