Chapter Eight.
The Smuggler’s Cave—Taken Captive—A Terrible Situation.
As soon as Charley was joined by Tom, he commenced a more thorough examination of the vault; but no outlets could they discover, and they began to doubt whether their nocturnal visitors could have got through it into the Tower. Could there be another passage independent altogether of the vault? They went round and round and could find no door or trap, or opening of any sort.
“I doubt if we are right, after all,” observed Charley; “we must try and find some other way down—for way there is, of that I am certain.”
“We are right; still, though,” answered Tom, “that ladder has had other feet on it of late besides ours; and just let me see how the bolt of the trap-door could have been fastened from below if there wasn’t some one to do it. It wasn’t the ghosteses, I suppose, Mister Charles? and look here—what’s this?” he added, as stooping down he picked up another small slipper, the fellow to the one which was known to be Margery’s.
The sight of it induced Charley to renew his search, and directly afterwards he discovered in one of the cells a ring, which looked, he thought, as if it was intended to serve as a handle to a stone door. He pulled it with all his strength, and slowly turning on a pair of heavy rusty hinges it opened, and showed a flight of steps cut in the rock, and leading downwards.
“Come along,” he whispered to Tom, “we shall soon solve the mystery.”
He led, Tom following, and holding the lantern with a torch ready to light at the end of his hook arm, while he held a pistol in his other hand. At first they descended by very steep steps cut in the rock, then the passage was almost on a level and turned and twisted considerably, showing that it had been formed in the first place by nature, and had been simply enlarged by the hand of man.
Charley was, however, thinking all the time far more of little Margery, and how frightened she must have been when carried along it, than of the way in which the passage had been formed. He was expecting also every instant to find himself confronted by a number of fierce smugglers, who would naturally be exasperated at having their long-concealed haunt at length discovered. There could be no longer any doubt as to who represented the ghosts, nor how they had entered the Tower and so speedily disappeared. The passage was somewhat slippery from the moisture which here and there trickled through the rock, and was clearly not often traversed, which it would have been had the vault above been used as a store-house.