“No, no, Rob! I cannot leave you.”
“Eh?” he said, smiling bitterly, as he took out another key. “Yes; he has promised me, dear, and he is as true as steel. There, I trust him, and you feel as if you can. Take her somewhere, doctor, where the police cannot find her out. She’s innocent enough, but no one would believe. Come, we may as well get right away, though I suppose it would be hours before they could get through here. I never thought I should some day be showing you our secrets, sis,” he continued lightly; “certainly not to Dr Chester. There we are.”
He had thrust the small bright key he had held into the lock of the iron door, and turned it, the bolts yielding easily in spite of the grit of powder still left in; and clinging now to Chester’s arm as the door was swung open, Marion, at a word from her brother, stepped forward into the iron-floored receptacle, then he followed and closed the door behind him with a sharp metallic clang.
In the demoralisation which had ensued it had been undoubtedly sauve qui peut, only one of the party seeming to think of anyone else. This was the old professor, who hurried upstairs, unlocked the chamber door, and brought down his wife, who proved well enough to follow him.
The result was that when Robert Clareborough, to Chester’s wonderment, hurried his companions through passage and crypt, and up again into the book-cumbered house, all was perfectly still, the dusty place looking as if it had not had a soul therein for years.
“This way, Marion,” said Robert, coolly. “Poor old uncle! he will break his heart about leaving his books; pretty choice, too, some of them.”
There was no reply, and he led sister and doctor out through the back door, down a weed-grown, desolate-looking garden, and into the stables at the bottom, the entrance being open.
“Now then,” he said, “you must lose no time. Once out in the mews, make for the street, and you are safe. Good-bye, Marion dear.”
“No, no, Robert!” cried Marion, flinging her arms about his neck; “you are still weak and ill. I cannot leave you.”
“You prefer to go with me?” said the young man, smiling.