The Adjutant took Dehra’s hand and having located the stone and the opening, he guided her through. Jessac closed the stone into place and then, by the light of Moore’s electric torch, he showed them how it was so balanced that by pressure at the top (from without) or at the bottom (from within) it would swing around parallel with the floor.
The passage was large enough for two of them to walk abreast and without stooping, and extended through the heart of the wall, about a hundred feet, until opposite the keep, as Jessac informed them; here it narrowed to half, and by a dozen stone steps descended below the level of the bailey, and thence under it to another set of steps leading up inside the wall of the keep.
Thus far they had come rapidly and without incident. Suddenly a drove of rats, blinded by the light and squeaking in terror, ran among their feet, and the Princess instinctively caught up the skirts of her long coat, and, with a little shriek of fright, tried to climb up the side of the passage.
The cry, slight as it was, let loose all the echoes of the vault with appalling resonance; instantly Moore extinguished the torch and laid his hand on her arm.
“What a fool I am!” she exclaimed in a whisper; “now, I’ve spoiled everything.”
“Not likely,” he assured her; “the castle is asleep and the walls are thick, but we best wait a bit.”
Presently the rats commenced to squeak again, and to scurry about, and the Princess beginning to tremble, he switched on the torch and motioned Jessac to proceed.
Treading as lightly as one of his own mountain cats, the old fellow went swiftly up the stairs, and when the others reached the top he was not to be seen. Moore shot the light down the passage; thirty feet away, if the draft were correct, were the stairs that ended at the library; when they reached them, Jessac was on the landing signaling to come on.
He drew the Colonel over to the big stone.
“There used to be a crack along the edge here,” he said, very low, “where I could listen, and also see a very little, but it seems to have been closed. Shall I swing the stone, sir?”