“I am quite ready,” she answered; “but I feel very undecided what to do. My father told me to prepare for a journey, and to be ready to leave the chateau with you at any moment, but do you think I should be justified in doing so, now that he is in such dreadful peril?”
“The peril is by no means as great as you appear to think,” said I, “and your compliance with your father’s instructions will relieve him of a very serious embarrassment; so let us not linger another moment, I entreat you.”
The suggestion that her presence might possibly prove embarrassing to her father at once decided her, and, placing her hand in mine, she said simply, “I am ready; let us go,” and moved to the door of the apartment.
We passed down the entire length of the corridor, and presently reached the head of a staircase leading to the rear portion of the house, and ordinarily used exclusively by the servants. Descending this, we traversed a short passage at its foot, and finally emerged through a door into the garden at the rear. A path closely bordered with mulberry-trees led down through the centre of this garden, passing down which we eventually reached a rustic building ordinarily used as a tool-house. Entering this, Francesca turned to me and said,—
“Now, Ralph, there is a secret door in that back wall, but I have never been through it, so I do not know its exact position. But it is opened by pressing a spring, the head of which is formed like an ordinary nail-head, differing from the others only in that it projects a little more from the woodwork than the others. Do you think you can find it?”
I ran my hand over the boarding, and soon encountered what would have seemed to any one unacquainted with the secret merely an ill-driven nail. Pressing firmly upon this, it yielded; a cleverly-concealed door opened and revealed a very narrow passage-like space between the wooden partition and the solid stone boundary-wall of the garden. Entering this and turning my back upon the open door, in accordance with Francesca’s directions, and feeling cautiously before me with my feet, I found myself standing at the head of a flight of stone steps. These I cautiously descended, Francesca following closely behind me after closing the secret door in her rear, and in a few seconds we found ourselves at the foot of the steps, and standing in an arched tunnel apparently about six feet high and as many feet wide. We then moved cautiously but rapidly forward, hand-in-hand, meeting with no difficulty or inconvenience during our passage, excepting such as arose from the mephitic atmosphere. This, however, was in itself sufficiently trying, and I was heartily glad when, after the lapse of nearly a quarter of an hour, we suddenly experienced a delicious whiff of cool pure night-air, and immediately afterwards emerged from the confined tunnel-like passage into a moderately spacious cavern, through the foliage at the mouth of which a broad patch of the luminous star-lighted sky was visible.
“Who goes there?” ejaculated a voice from a mass of deep shadow on one side of the cave.
I recognised Giaccomo’s voice, and at once replied, adding an inquiry as to whether he had detected any signs of the presence of the enemy in the neighbourhood of the cavern.
“None whatever, signor,” he replied. “I have seen nothing all the time I have been here, and have heard nothing except the sound of distant firing in the direction of the chateau.”
“Then let us be off at once,” said I. “The sooner we get into the main road the less likelihood will there be of our meeting with molestation.”