“Mrs. Dove!” I called out. “O Mrs. Dove!”
There was chowder scorching in the bottom of a kettle on the stove, which she must have forgotten. I ran through the house, looking into corners and stairways for her and crying everywhere, “Mrs. Dove!”
But there was no one in them; the rooms were so quiet that they seemed to have been deserted for a long time.
Jasper’s voice followed me. “Come here!” he kept shouting.
I let myself backward through the trap-door in the kitchen floor and felt the top rung of a ladder under my feet. The next rung was gone, and I slid. Jasper caught me.
We were in a circular underground room, like a dry cistern, about twelve feet across, with plastered sides and a damp earth floor. The first thing I saw was a mattress, strewn with clothing, overalls, shirts, and trousers. On a hanging shelf were quantities of cans, some of them empty. A portable stove with dozens of boxes of condensed cubes showed how cooking had been done. I remembered the coffee I had smelled, not made by human hands. There was a can of oil and a pail half-full of water. I picked up a ship’s lantern with a red bull’s-eye.
“The aura,” said I, handing it to Jasper.
“The what?”
“The aura.”
But he had never seen it; the red light meant nothing to him.