The Benevent Treasure (23 page)

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 He went down, the light withdrawn as he did so and leaving only a reflected glow.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.

‘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.

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,

For dear life’s sake.” ’

His hand closed on her. He said in a hard voice,

‘An old man in his dotage babbling. What a clue!’

‘Old men remember the past.’

‘Say it again.’

She repeated the words.

‘ “A man may walk over it and he will not know. He may go up and he may go down, and he will not know.” ’

He let go of her abruptly and went over to the steps which led to the house, but before reaching them he swerved and crossed diagonally to the flight which gave upon the courtyard. It was set in a corner, but a little away from the wall. There was a space there wide enough for a man to enter. A little straw lay about, as if carelessly dropped. It was old trodden straw. He came into the narrow place with the electric lamp in his hand. He may go up, and he may go down, and he will not know. This unregarded corner might be passed a thousand times. The steps were of stone — old steps, hollowed by the passing of many feet. The wall on the other side was also of stone — big square blocks of it, quarried from the hill beyond and set in place three hundred, four hundred years ago. If there were a secret entrance to Ugo di Benevento’s hiding-place it might very well be here. A tunnel dug from this point would pass under the courtyard. There might be such a tunnel. The steps would screen it. His mind was quite clear, quite logical. A hundred men might search for a hundred days and never find the entrance. The light passed backwards and forwards, up and down. It showed stone and straw, and a little round black thing that lay at his foot. He stooped and picked it up, and it was a shoe-button. Just an ordinary black shoe-button.

He held it in the palm of his hand and the light fell on it. Miss Silver’s voice seemed to come from a long way off. ‘What is it?’

He turned so that she could see the button on his palm. ‘Candida has shoes with a strap and a button like this.’ The words horrified him. If Candida had come this way, how had she come? And why had the button come off her shoe? Frightful images rose before his thought. If she had been dragged along this rough floor, the button might have caught and been wrenched —

Miss Silver said quickly and insistently, ‘It means that this is the place. It means that we are on the right track.’

Mr. Tampling was at some disadvantage. Both the Chief Constable and Inspector Rock were taller than he was, especially the Inspector. He really could not see what was happening. It occurred to him that if he went a little way up the steps he would be able to see very well. He saw Miss Silver step aside, and he saw the Inspector take the lamp whilst Stephen Eversley examined the wall. There was no hand-rail to the steps, so to be sure of keeping his balance Mr. Tampling kneeled down upon the fifth step, which gave him a very good view. He heard the Chief Constable say, ‘Well, it all looks as solid as the Cathedral to me.’

And then the thing happened. Rock made a step forward and slipped on the mouldy straw. He had the lamp in his right hand, and with his left he thrust out against the wall to recover his balance. The slip landed him in a heavy plunging step with all his weight behind it. He came down sprawling, because the wall against which he thrust had given way.

Stephen snatched the lamp and held it up. Rock got to his knees and stared at the slanting hole in the wall, which had been a solid block of stone. Stephen leaned across him and pushed it. It swung in like a door. The chance of a heavy man coming down with all his weight upon a stone slab in the floor while he pitched against just the right block in the wall had released the mechanism which controlled the entrance to Ugo di Benevento’s hiding-place. Mr. Tampling from his vantage point could see the open doorway, narrow and low, and beyond it a platform of bricks, and steps that went down into the dark.

There was another of those delays whilst Rock went for the constable who had been left on guard in Candida’s room. The entrance there was no longer of any importance. It was this one which must be guarded now. The longest minutes of Stephen’s life dragged by. By the clock there were no more than four of them — in terms of heart-wrung suspense they seemed to have no end and no beginning. If there had been a second lamp, he could have gone on, but there was no second lamp.

The footsteps of the two men returning broke in upon the strain. The Chief Constable looked at the hole in the wall and decided to take no chances. He had no fancy for being trapped underground, and he told Rock to stay with the constable.

Stephen went in, and the light went with him down the steps. On the inner side the stone was faced with wood. Against this door Candida had beat in vain — on this small brick platform she had sunk down in despair. There was nothing to tell them these things.

They followed Stephen to the foot of the steps and along the passage which ran under the courtyard and tunnelled into the hill. The lamp which he held picked up an iron bar flung down across the path. He checked momentarily. The light fell on it. It showed a coating of rust — and something else — shreds of hair that had been soaked in blood. They all stood looking at it.

For a moment there was just one picture in every mind — Miss Cara dead at the foot of the stairs in her own house. But not killed by any fall from those stairs — struck down here by this rusty bar in this strange place. Stephen stepped over the bar and threw the light ahead.

Mr. Tampling’s excitement had reached a dizzying height. He now saw what Candida had seen, but far more brightly illumined — the cave or niche which had closed the passage, the iron-bound box that filled it, the raised lid and the Treasure within. The light dazzled on the golden dish, the candlesticks, the stones of a fabulous necklace. It struck fire from the stones — blood-red fire. And then —

He saw the skeleton hand that had clutched at the Treasure and fallen upon death — the bones and the rags which were all that were left of Alan Thompson. And nearer, right across their path, Candida Sayle, her face hidden against the arm thrown out to save herself as she fell.

The lamp was thrust on Major Warrender, and Stephen was on his knees, saying her name.

‘Candida — Candida — Candida!’

She came back to the sound of his voice, and she was never to forget it. After the darkness that had been like death, after the burial of hope and life itself, to wake with his arms about her and his voice calling her name —

She opened her eyes, and the place was light. Stephen was holding her as if he would never let her go. She said,

‘I found the treasure — don’t touch it — it killed poor Alan — ’