We were prompt to time and Kitty took us through the park to some very rough ground at the rear of the house, though not far away from it, and there she showed us a narrow cleft in a mass of rock and told us that was the entrance. It was partly choked by a jumble of fallen boulders overgrown with the rough vegetation of the moor, probably rank enough at some periods of the year, but lying now for the most part dry and dead. I looked for any sign of recent entrance, especially for footmarks; but the ground was too hard and revealed nothing, though the rubbish at the entrance seemed to have some appearance of being trampled. I took out my flash lamp and pushed my way into the opening, followed by the others, though it was a very tight fit for Thoyne.
A wall of rock confronted us at about four feet, but Kitty bade us turn to the left and there I saw an opening low down which seemed to lead to a passage that descended somewhere into a mass of pitch darkness. We had to get on hands and knees and crawl along so for quite a long distance through a low, narrow tunnel that appeared to be for the most part natural, though here and there, it had evidently been widened at least, if not entirely pierced by human agency.
Presently, after going steadily downwards for many yards, it went forward on the level, and was there a little higher and wider; but at no point did it enable us to stand erect. It was a case of creeping all the way. I understood now why Kitty had advised the oldest possible clothing. It meant ruin to the knees of one’s trousers. And then the tunnel ended abruptly against a wall of solid rock; but Kitty cried out that there was an iron ring close to my right hand, and that I must take hold of it and pull hard.
I obeyed; there was a grinding and groaning as of rusty machinery and then the rock in front swung back and we found ourselves in an open chamber with walls and floor of natural rock, but a roof of worked stone formed of square flags, all save one supported by pillars of rusty iron. There were nine stone flags, each six feet by four, and eight pillars, and the dimensions of the cellar or cave were thus eighteen feet by twelve. The height would probably be about eight feet. We could at least stand upright. I took my flash lamp and carefully examined every corner, not, as it turned out, quite unremuneratively. I dropped my hat and then stooped to pick it up again—and with it something I had noticed lying there.
My find was a hairpin still fresh and bright and with no sign of rust about it.
If Kitty Clevedon had passed that way I should have supposed that she had dropped it. Ladies shed things of that sort as they go. But she had assured us that she had not been near the spot; in which case a knowledge of the existence of the passage, supposed to be confined to Kitty and her brother, was shared by someone else, and that a woman.
“Which is the way out?” I asked, saying nothing of the hairpin which, at a favourable opportunity, I thrust into my waistcoat pocket.
Kitty pointed to the one unsupported flagstone and told us that it worked on a swivel and could be pushed up if one could reach it, whereupon Thoyne swarmed up the nearest pillar and tried to move the stone but failed, though whether because the axle was rusty or because there was some fastening on the other side we could not say. Thoyne selected another pillar and once more gave the stone a push, but with no more success than before. From his position, clinging monkey-like to the pillar, he could exert very little leverage. He slid down again and suggested that I should mount his shoulders so as to be right under the stone, a manœuvre which was promptly attempted with satisfactory results.
The stone moved, though slowly and stubbornly and with much creaking and, swinging myself up through the opening thus disclosed, I found myself in a cellar full of a miscellaneous collection of rubbish, baskets, boxes, barrels, chairs, broken furniture of all sorts, books and papers and so on. I fixed the stone in position, because left to itself it would simply have swung back again into its place, and then I passed down to the others a short ladder which I found lying against one of the walls of the cellar.
When the others had joined me, Kitty explained that we were under the older portion of White Towers, the East Wing, which was partly in ruins and uninhabited.