“Nothing but space,” replied the Captain, straining his eyes to peer into the darkness, “at least that’s all I can see from here. Give me your flashlight, Slim, I’m going down.”
Slim handed him his pocket flash and the Captain began to descend the ladder. He counted twelve rungs before he felt solid footing under him. He found himself in a tiny room about six feet square, whose walls and floor were of stone. The top was open to allow the passage of the ladder. The Captain figured out that he was standing level with the floor of the basement and that the space above the opening at the top of the little room was the space under the stairway. There was a door in the outside wall, next to the ladder.
“What’s down there?” asked Sahwah from above.
“Just a little place with a door in it,” replied the Captain, retracing his steps up the ladder.
“The passage isn’t inside the house at all,” he reported when he reached the top. “It’s outside. There’s a door down there that probably opens into it. I’m going to get my coat and see where the passage leads to.”
“We’ll all go with you,” said Sahwah, and it was she who went down the ladder first when the expedition started.
The Captain came next, carrying a lantern he had found in the kitchen. At the bottom of the ladder he lit the lantern. The first thing its light fell upon was a broken glass jar, lying in a corner, and from it there extended across the floor a bright red stream. Sahwah recoiled when she saw it, but the Captain stooped over and streaked his finger through it.
“Paint!” he exclaimed. “Red paint.”
“Oh!” said Sahwah. “It looked just like blood. Why—that’s what must have made the footprints on the stairs! The man must have stepped in this paint! He came in through this passage!”
The other three had come down by that time, and they all looked at each other in dumb astonishment. How clear it all was now! The footprints beginning under the stair landing—the mystery connected with the entrance of the intruder—they all fitted together perfectly.