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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.

‘We have not found any place where Miss Cara could have met with a fatal accident. It seems likely that she had been in these passages, but I think we must conclude that she died, or was murdered, elsewhere. I do not think it possible that her body could have been taken to where it was found by way of the steep steps and narrow passages which we have traversed. There would have been a great deal more than a little dust upon her clothing if that had been the case. She may have walked through one of the passages, but I think her body must have been brought back by some easier way.’

Thoughts which Stephen had been holding by main force thrust past his desperate guard. By what way had Candida gone – by what way had she been taken? And if they found her, what was it they would find – herself, or only the body she had worn? He had no answer to these things. He said harshly, ‘Miss Silver is right. If there was such a thing as the Benevento Treasure, it wouldn’t have been hidden where anyone who knew the house might stumble on it. And if Miss Cara came by her death whilst she was looking for it, she must certainly have been taken back into the house by some easier way than the one by which we have come. Only as to where she was murdered – if she really was murdered – there simply isn’t any evidence. And what does it matter? What we have to do is to find this other hiding-place – if it exists.’

He had started out to say, ‘What we have to do is to find Candida,’ but he couldn’t say it. He turned abruptly and went back along the passage leading to the steps. There was something – passed over at the time but coming back as one of those impressions which come, and go, and come again. It was something to do with the passage. The light had been focussed ahead of him as they came through it, the cellar door had been in view. Now it was the passage itself which had his whole attention – rough brick walls, propped by wooden posts and crossed between every two posts by a wooden lateral. Old cottages had half-timbering like that, but what was it doing in an underground passage?

The answer came with the question. One of these squares could be a door.

The light ran up and down, and there was the latch, fitted smoothly against one of the wooden uprights. A turn of the hand and the door swung outwards. He stooped, and came up again. The lifted lamp showed him where he was – in the main cellar of Underhill.

Chapter Forty

It was all to do again. And there was no clue. As the others came through the gap and joined him, Stephen was looking about him with something very like despair in his heart. This was the main cellar of the house, with an easy flight of steps going up to a passage behind the kitchen, and a second flight which led to the courtyard at the side of the house. Along the far wall there was a row of doors. When Miss Olivia had brought him down here she had dismissed them briefly.

‘The wine-cellar. Coals. Wood. The others are empty.’

He had not been permitted to examine any of them. When he had said bluntly that he could not make a satisfactory report without a much more detailed examination he had been put in what Miss Olivia considered to be his place. Any of the cellars might conceal an opening, and ‘The wine-cellar is locked.’ He found he was saying these words aloud.

It was Miss Silver who answered him.

‘Is it your opinion that the entrance to this hiding-place would be in a locked cellar? It is not mine.’

‘Why?’

She said in her usual composed manner,

‘It would attract too much attention. The locked room would be the very first to be investigated. The aim would rather be to put the Treasure in a place which would attract no attention at all.’

Stephen said bitterly. “This place is about thirty by twenty – there is plenty of choice.’

She came nearer to him and put a hand on his arm.

‘Have you thought about the steps – the ones coming down from the house? Or the others?’

He stared at her.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I talked to Anna. She is in great distress about Candida. She has grown fond of her. I asked her whether she could bear to think for the rest of her life that she might have saved her and had refrained. She cried bitterly, and said what could she do? She was very much afraid. She said, “They would kill me!” I told her that she would be protected, and that she must tell what she knew. She declared with vehemence that she knew nothing – only that there were secret places, and that she had seen the dust on Miss Cara’s shoes, and that she was very much afraid. When I pressed her she said it was because of what old Mr. Benevent had told her.’

They were all listening, but as far as she and Stephen Eversley were concerned they might have been alone. He reached out and took her by the arm.

‘What did he tell her?’

Miss Silver repeated what Anna had said.

‘He was very old, and he used to talk about the Treasure. He said it was quite safe in a secret place – “A man may walk over it and not know it is there. He may go up, and he may go down, and he will not know. And if he knew, and if he went, it would never do him any good.” There is a rhyme about it, you know, among the family papers:

‘ “Touch not nor try,

Sell not not buy,

Give not nor take,