The Benevent Treasure

Chapter Forty

It was all to do again. And there was no clue. As the others came through the gap and joined him, Stephen was looking about him with something very like despair in his heart. This was the main cellar of the house, with an easy flight of steps going up to a passage behind the kitchen, and a second flight which led to the courtyard at the side of the house. Along the far wall there was a row of doors. When Miss Olivia had brought him down here she had dismissed them briefly.

‘The wine-cellar. Coals. Wood. The others are empty.’

He had not been permitted to examine any of them. When he had said bluntly that he could not make a satisfactory report without a much more detailed examination he had been put in what Miss Olivia considered to be his place. Any of the cellars might conceal an opening, and ‘The wine-cellar is locked.’ He found he was saying these words aloud.

It was Miss Silver who answered him.

‘Is it your opinion that the entrance to this hiding-place would be in a locked cellar? It is not mine.’

‘Why?’

She said in her usual composed manner,

‘It would attract too much attention. The locked room would be the very first to be investigated. The aim would rather be to put the Treasure in a place which would attract no attention at all.’

Stephen said bitterly. “This place is about thirty by twenty – there is plenty of choice.’

She came nearer to him and put a hand on his arm.

‘Have you thought about the steps – the ones coming down from the house? Or the others?’

He stared at her.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I talked to Anna. She is in great distress about Candida. She has grown fond of her. I asked her whether she could bear to think for the rest of her life that she might have saved her and had refrained. She cried bitterly, and said what could she do? She was very much afraid. She said, “They would kill me!” I told her that she would be protected, and that she must tell what she knew. She declared with vehemence that she knew nothing – only that there were secret places, and that she had seen the dust on Miss Cara’s shoes, and that she was very much afraid. When I pressed her she said it was because of what old Mr. Benevent had told her.’

They were all listening, but as far as she and Stephen Eversley were concerned they might have been alone. He reached out and took her by the arm.

‘What did he tell her?’

Miss Silver repeated what Anna had said.

‘He was very old, and he used to talk about the Treasure. He said it was quite safe in a secret place – “A man may walk over it and not know it is there. He may go up, and he may go down, and he will not know. And if he knew, and if he went, it would never do him any good.” There is a rhyme about it, you know, among the family papers:

‘ “Touch not nor try,

Sell not not buy,

Give not nor take,

For dear life’s sake.” ’

His hand closed on her. He said in a hard voice,

‘An old man in his dotage babbling. What a clue!’

‘Old men remember the past.’

‘Say it again.’

She repeated the words.

‘ “A man may walk over it and he will not know. He may go up and he may go down, and he will not know.” ’

He let go of her abruptly and went over to the steps which led to the house, but before reaching them he swerved and crossed diagonally to the flight which gave upon the courtyard. It was set in a corner, but a little away from the wall. There was a space there wide enough for a man to enter. A little straw lay about, as if carelessly dropped. It was old trodden straw. He came into the narrow place with the electric lamp in his hand. He may go up, and he may go down, and he will not know. This unregarded corner might be passed a thousand times. The steps were of stone – old steps, hollowed by the passing of many feet. The wall on the other side was also of stone – big square blocks of it, quarried from the hill beyond and set in place three hundred, four hundred years ago. If there were a secret entrance to Ugo di Benevento’s hiding-place it might very well be here. A tunnel dug from this point would pass under the courtyard. There might be such a tunnel. The steps would screen it. His mind was quite clear, quite logical. A hundred men might search for a hundred days and never find the entrance. The light passed backwards and forwards, up and down. It showed stone and straw, and a little round black thing that lay at his foot. He stooped and picked it up, and it was a shoe-button. Just an ordinary black shoe-button.

He held it in the palm of his hand and the light fell on it. Miss Silver’s voice seemed to come from a long way off. ‘What is it?’

He turned so that she could see the button on his palm. ‘Candida has shoes with a strap and a button like this.’ The words horrified him. If Candida had come this way, how had she come? And why had the button come off her shoe? Frightful images rose before his thought. If she had been dragged along this rough floor, the button might have caught and been wrenched -

Miss Silver said quickly and insistently, ‘It means that this is the place. It means that we are on the right track.’

Mr. Tampling was at some disadvantage. Both the Chief Constable and Inspector Rock were taller than he was, especially the Inspector. He really could not see what was happening. It occurred to him that if he went a little way up the steps he would be able to see very well. He saw Miss Silver step aside, and he saw the Inspector take the lamp whilst Stephen Eversley examined the wall. There was no hand-rail to the steps, so to be sure of keeping his balance Mr. Tampling kneeled down upon the fifth step, which gave him a very good view. He heard the Chief Constable say, ‘Well, it all looks as solid as the Cathedral to me.’

And then the thing happened. Rock made a step forward and slipped on the mouldy straw. He had the lamp in his right hand, and with his left he thrust out against the wall to recover his balance. The slip landed him in a heavy plunging step with all his weight behind it. He came down sprawling, because the wall against which he thrust had given way.

Stephen snatched the lamp and held it up. Rock got to his knees and stared at the slanting hole in the wall, which had been a solid block of stone. Stephen leaned across him and pushed it. It swung in like a door. The chance of a heavy man coming down with all his weight upon a stone slab in the floor while he pitched against just the right block in the wall had released the mechanism which controlled the entrance to Ugo di Benevento’s hiding-place. Mr. Tampling from his vantage point could see the open doorway, narrow and low, and beyond it a platform of bricks, and steps that went down into the dark.

There was another of those delays whilst Rock went for the constable who had been left on guard in Candida’s room. The entrance there was no longer of any importance. It was this one which must be guarded now. The longest minutes of Stephen’s life dragged by. By the clock there were no more than four of them – in terms of heart-wrung suspense they seemed to have no end and no beginning. If there had been a second lamp, he could have gone on, but there was no second lamp.

The footsteps of the two men returning broke in upon the strain. The Chief Constable looked at the hole in the wall and decided to take no chances. He had no fancy for being trapped underground, and he told Rock to stay with the constable.

Stephen went in, and the light went with him down the steps. On the inner side the stone was faced with wood. Against this door Candida had beat in vain – on this small brick platform she had sunk down in despair. There was nothing to tell them these things.

They followed Stephen to the foot of the steps and along the passage which ran under the courtyard and tunnelled into the hill. The lamp which he held picked up an iron bar flung down across the path. He checked momentarily. The light fell on it. It showed a coating of rust – and something else – shreds of hair that had been soaked in blood. They all stood looking at it.

For a moment there was just one picture in every mind – Miss Cara dead at the foot of the stairs in her own house. But not killed by any fall from those stairs – struck down here by this rusty bar in this strange place. Stephen stepped over the bar and threw the light ahead.

Mr. Tampling’s excitement had reached a dizzying height. He now saw what Candida had seen, but far more brightly illumined – the cave or niche which had closed the passage, the iron-bound box that filled it, the raised lid and the Treasure within. The light dazzled on the golden dish, the candlesticks, the stones of a fabulous necklace. It struck fire from the stones – blood-red fire. And then -

He saw the skeleton hand that had clutched at the Treasure and fallen upon death – the bones and the rags which were all that were left of Alan Thompson. And nearer, right across their path, Candida Sayle, her face hidden against the arm thrown out to save herself as she fell.

The lamp was thrust on Major Warrender, and Stephen was on his knees, saying her name.

‘Candida – Candida – Candida!’

She came back to the sound of his voice, and she was never to forget it. After the darkness that had been like death, after the burial of hope and life itself, to wake with his arms about her and his voice calling her name -

She opened her eyes, and the place was light. Stephen was holding her as if he would never let her go. She said,

‘I found the treasure – don’t touch it – it killed poor Alan – ’