He took the electric torch, and dropped the sack of lime down the hole in the fireplace. We climbed after it, one by one. The first stairs were extremely steep and the roof was so close that we had to stoop; but after we had descended perhaps fifteen feet, they turned to the right and the roof lifted to a little more than six feet.
"This is where the passage strikes off from the house," remarked Hugh.
The stairs continued to descend for another fifteen or twenty feet, and then straightened out. At the foot of the last step lay the body of the Gypsy. Hugh was carrying the lime-sack, so Nikka and I picked up the dead man, following Hugh, who lighted the way with the torch.
The passage was beautifully built, with an even floor, and wide enough for one man to walk comfortably. Despite a damp odor, it was not muddy, and there must have been some means of ventilation, for the air was reasonably fresh. According to a compass on Nikka's watch-chain, it trended across the Park towards the ruins of the Priory.
The Gypsy's body was a clumsy load to manage in so confined a space, and we halted every two or three hundred feet to rest. We estimated that we had walked a kilometer when we noticed a gradual upward slope in the flooring. The passage turned a corner, and the light of Hugh's torch was reflected on the rusty ironwork of what once had been a massive door.
Of the wood only a pile of dust remained, cluttered about the broken lock; but the great hinges still stretched across the path, upholding a ghostly barrier of bolted darkness. We deposited the dead Gypsy on the floor, and helped Hugh to bend back the creaking iron frame. Beyond loomed a vast emptiness, a spreading, low-roofed chamber, studded with squat Norman pillars that marched in dim columns into unseen depths.
The torch scarcely could penetrate the heaped-up shadows, but as our eyes became accustomed to the room's proportions we realized that we stood on the threshold of a mausoleum similar to the one in which we had seen Lord Chesby laid to rest. Hugh stepped across the stone sill of the doorway, and swung the light back and forth between the pillars. Suddenly it glinted on metal.
We all pressed closer, staring at the picture that took shape under the white glare. On a stone shelf lay a skeleton in armor. The peaked helmet had rolled aside from the naked skull, but the chainmail of the hauberk still shrouded trunk and limbs. Next to it lay a smaller skeleton, clad in threads of rich vestments. There was a twinkle of tarnished gold cloth, a fragment of fur. A bygone Lord of Chesby and his lady!
"We are intruders in this place," I exclaimed. "It doesn't seem right, Hugh."
My voice rolled thunderously from roof to floor and wall to wall and back again, and the pillars split the echoes into parodies of words.