Reilly went first, bending low, lamp in one hand and a short crowbar in the other, while I followed with an axe as one of the most useful of implements.
The door had been forced from its fastenings and had gone far back upon its hinges, almost uninjured, save that it was split in places and badly twisted. Within we found a rough-walled, close-smelling chamber, about 4 ft. across and about 9 ft. long, low, dark as pitch, and, to our abject disappointment, absolutely empty.
One object alone we found within—an old leather drinking mug, hard, dry and cracked, that lay in one corner long forgotten.
Reilly’s idea was that the place was a “priests’ hole,” one of the secret hiding-places of the Roman Catholic priests after the Reformation, so often found in old houses, and in this I was inclined to agree with him. Still, after a whole day’s work, and a hard one, too, our raised hopes had only been dashed by a negative discovery. The wreck we had made of the wall was appalling, and if we proceeded for long in that manner I dreaded to think what might be the amount claimed for dilapidations.
My young friend was, however, enthusiastic and nothing daunted. He lit a cigarette and, puffing at it vigorously, silently regarded the yawning hole in the wall.
“No doubt it was a place of concealment for those unfortunate Johnnies who were so badly badgered after Henry VIII’s decree,” he remarked. “Old Bartholomew was a staunch Catholic and, of course, in his house any priest found shelter and concealment who asked for it. That accounts for the mug being there. The last man who occupied the place before it was closed up and plastered over probably drank his ale out of it.”
“Well,” I said, disappointedly, “we’ve made a pretty mess, and we’d best start to clear it up tidily before we do anything more. Method is everything in a complete search like this.”
“Of course,” was my young friend’s remark; “only I wish we could get a sight of that parchment which that drunken sot sold for half a sovereign. If we could, we shouldn’t go on working in the dark like this.”
“Ah, Philip,” I said, with a sigh, “we shall never get sight of that, I fear. Purvis and his friends keep it too safely guarded.”
“I wonder if they know that we are tenants of this place?”