"What shall we do?" said Moore.
"Go quickly and investigate," was the answer. "Here, Mike, you lead the way."
Mike did not hesitate. If playing a game, he did it well.
"Want a gun?" said Oakes.
"No, sorr, not if youse all are armed. Guess we can give him all the scrap he wants."
We descended the stairs, Oakes last, as became his condition. He touched Moore and myself, and pointed to Mike. "Watch him; he may be already armed," he whispered.
The cellar was lighted by one window at the western end. A door at the same end, which evidently led to some stairs, was padlocked, and, as Oakes said, had not been recently opened. The dust lay upon it undisturbed and the padlock was very rusty. This corroborated Mike's story. The door above that opened on the ground. It was boarded up, he said.
No means was found of passing beneath the dance hall, as Oakes had said. From the lay of the ground, we concluded that the cellar was very low there and not bottomed—a shut-in affair such as one finds in old buildings of the Colonial epoch. Across the cellar, to the other side—the south—the same thing pertained except at the western extremity under the dining-room; there a door opened into a cellar room or chamber.
"Here! take this," said Oakes, handing Mike a small pocket taper. "Light it."