"It's your own funeral, if you insist on going down there."
"I do insist. Get on!"
He obeyed. The door under the main staircase was open, and the light was on. Essenden led straight to it; and Jill followed, tensely alert for the faintest hint of treachery. They went down the flight of steps. The iron-barred door at the far end of the wine cellar had also been left open by the Saint in his passage.
They followed the tunnel, with Essenden moving slowly and hesitantly in the lead, hardly spurred on by the girl's tongue, and Jill Trelawney keyed up to a tingling wariness. But he went on without an attempt at active resistance, and scrambled in front of her down the last ten yards of steep furrowed slope. She descended after him, slowly, with infinite precautions against a false step that might have given him a chance to turn the tables.
"Where now?"
"This is the cave."
He turned the angle of the passage, and she followed quickly.
But not quite quickly enough.
He had played his card superbly — with such an innocent naturalness had he vanished for one instant from her sight. But when she herself rounded the corner, she could not see him.
Then he stepped out of a dark crevice in the rock beside her, and grappled desperately.