"Easy enough. A foot below the mouth of the oubliette above, there is a broken hook--I saw it as I descended. On that hook hung this chain, and he knew it--it not being broken then. He descended part way by. that--as I think--then the hook broke and he fell the rest, on to this platform--the chain coming with him, grasped in his hand. No great harm that--if he missed this smaller opening, as without doubt he did. Had he not so missed it--poof! he would be lying somewhere below a mangled corpse."
"Suppose--suppose," said Debrasques, "that, nevertheless, he did not miss it--fell through, the chain remaining behind."
"Then, 'tis as I have said. We shall find him there--dead. Yet, what use surmise? Let us on; I will go first."
As he spoke, he lifted up the coils of their own rope and let them fall down through the opening, observing that the cord did not tighten nor spin round a moment later. By that he judged that it had struck some bottom, since, otherwise, it would doubtless have done both, instead of, as now, lying against the side as though not extended its full length.
"The end of the journey is near," he muttered again, "near now," and, so speaking, he grasped the rope as it hung down through the orifice from the iron beam above, and began to descend once more. Yet, in an instant, he stopped and put out his hand in front of him, clutching the rope now with the other alone, yet still seeming as though easily supported and without effort.
"There are," he said to Debrasques, glancing up at him as though able to see his face as plainly as the Marquis could himself see his by the light of the lamp at his waist, "long staples let into the wall at short intervals. They serve the use of a ladder, being bent at the sides, thereby to enter the wall. Come, the rope is unnecessary. Let yourself down the hole, feel with your feet until they touch the staples, use the platform as a hold till your hands grasp the uppermost bar; the rest is easy. Come."
And he went lower down himself, discarding the use of the rope entirely now.
Behind, from above, followed Debrasques. Hand under hand, foot succeeding foot, they went down those staples, the air growing more chilly and damp and penetrating as still they descended, and giving sure proof that they were now below the level of the earth; were among the foundations of the great old house. Also, the feeble lamp-flicker showed this, too--showed that they had reached the vaults and actual basement on which the whole building had been placed--vaults, or dungeons, separated from each other by short, round shafts of rough, untrimmed stone, and with the earth into which they were set unlevelled. And now there was no damp; instead, only the dull mildewed smell that such places have, places to which no air has penetrated for centuries.
"He is not here," Andrew said, as they stood upon this earthen floor, the crown of his hat touching almost the roof of the vault above him. "Not here. He has gone on. Knew a way out. We must find it." While, as he spoke, he flashed the lantern, which he had now taken in his hand, around the dark and gloomy place, it casting fantastic shadows behind the pillars and shafts as he did so.
"Come," he said once more.