“Go where?” demanded Sir Tristram.
“Oh, to the Dower House!” replied Ludovic airily. “There’s a secret panel. You wouldn’t know it.”
“A secret panel?” repeated Miss Thane in an awed voice. “You mean actually a secret panel?”
Ludovic regarded her in some slight concern. “Yes, why not?”
“I thought it too good to be true,” said Miss Thane. “If there is one thing above all others I have wanted all my life to do it is to search for a secret panel! I suppose,” she added hopefully, “it would be too much to expect to find an underground passage leading from the secret panel?”
Eustacie clasped her hands ecstatically. “But yes, of course! An underground passage—”
“With bats and dead men’s bones,” shuddered Miss Thane.
French common sense asserted itself. Eustacie frowned. “Not bats, no. That is not reasonable. But certainly some bones, chained to the wall.”
“And damp—it must be damp!”
“Not damp; cobwebs,” put in Ludovic. “Huge ones, which cling to you like—”