"He is a mason, as he says," said Masin, catching sight of the rough fingers.
"Did you take me for a coachman?" enquired Toto, thrusting his shaggy head forward cautiously, and looking up through the aperture.
"Before you come up here," Malipieri answered, "tell me how you got in."
"You seem to know so much about the overflow shaft that I should think you might have guessed. If you do not believe that I came that way, look at my clothes!"
He now crawled upon the body of the statue, and Malipieri saw that he was covered with half-dried mud and ooze.
"You got through some old drain, I suppose, and found your way up."
"It seems so," answered Toto, shaking his shoulders, as if he were stiff.
"Are you going to let him go free, sir?" asked Masin, standing ready. "If you do, he will be down the shaft, before you can catch him. These men know their way underground like moles."
"Moles, yourselves!" answered Toto in a growl, putting his head up above the level of the vault.
Masin measured him with his eye, and saw that he was a strong man, probably much more active than he looked in his heavy, mud-plastered clothes.