Marco slept peacefully for several hours. There was nothing to awaken
him during that time. But at the end of it, his sleep was penetrated by
a definite sound. He had dreamed of hearing a voice at a distance, and,
as he tried in his dream to hear what it said, a brief metallic ringing
sound awakened him outright. It was over by the time he was fully
conscious, and at once he realized that the voice of his dream had been
a real one, and was speaking still. It was the Lovely Person's voice,
and she was speaking rapidly, as if she were in the greatest haste. She
was speaking through the door.
"You will have to search for it," was all he heard. "I have not a
moment!" And, as he listened to her hurriedly departing feet, there came
to him with their hastening echoes the words, "You are too good for the
cellar. I like you!"
He sprang to the door and tried it, but it was still locked. The feet
ran up the cellar steps and through the upper hall, and the front door
closed with a bang. The two people had gone away, as they had
threatened. The voice had been excited as well as hurried. Something had
happened to frighten them, and they had left the house in great haste.
Marco turned and stood with his back against the door. The cat had
awakened and she was gazing at him with her green eyes. She began to
purr encouragingly. She really helped Marco to think. He was thinking
with all his might and trying to remember.
"What did she come for? She came for something," he said to himself.
"What did she say? I only heard part of it, because I was asleep. The
voice in the dream was part of it. The part I heard was, 'You will have
to search for it. I have not a moment.' And as she ran down the passage,
she called back, 'You are too good for the cellar. I like you.'" He
said the words over and over again and tried to recall exactly how they
had sounded, and also to recall the voice which had seemed to be part of
a dream but had been a real thing. Then he began to try his favorite
experiment. As he often tried the experiment of commanding his mind to
go to sleep, so he frequently experimented on commanding it to work for
him--to help him to remember, to understand, and to argue about things
clearly.
"Reason this out for me," he said to it now, quite naturally and calmly.
"Show me what it means."
What did she come for? It was certain that she was in too great a hurry
to be able, without a reason, to spare the time to come. What was the
reason? She had said she liked him. Then she came because she liked him.
If she liked him, she came to do something which was not unfriendly. The
only good thing she could do for him was something which would help him
to get out of the cellar. She had said twice that he was too good for
the cellar. If he had been awake, he would have heard all she said and
have understood what she wanted him to do or meant to do for him. He
must not stop even to think of that. The first words he had heard--what
had they been? They had been less clear to him than her last because he
had heard them only as he was awakening. But he thought he was sure that
they had been, "You will have to search for it." Search for it. For
what? He thought and thought. What must he search for?
He sat down on the floor of the cellar and held his head in his hands,
pressing his eyes so hard that curious lights floated before them.
"Tell me! Tell me!" he said to that part of his being which the Buddhist
anchorite had said held all knowledge and could tell a man everything if
he called upon it in the right spirit.
And in a few minutes, he recalled something which seemed so much a part
of his sleep that he had not been sure that he had not dreamed it. The
ringing sound! He sprang up on his feet with a little gasping shout.
The ringing sound! It had been the ring of metal, striking as it fell.
Anything made of metal might have sounded like that. She had thrown
something made of metal into the cellar. She had thrown it through the
slit in the bricks near the door. She liked him, and said he was too
good for his prison. She had thrown to him the only thing which could
set him free. She had thrown him the _key_ of the cellar!
For a few minutes the feelings which surged through him were so full of
strong excitement that they set his brain in a whirl. He knew what his
father would say--that would not do. If he was to think, he must hold
himself still and not let even joy overcome him. The key was in the
black little cellar, and he must find it in the dark. Even the woman who
liked him enough to give him a chance of freedom knew that she must not
open the door and let him out. There must be a delay. He would have to
find the key himself, and it would be sure to take time. The chances
were that they would be at a safe enough distance before he could get
out.
"I will kneel down and crawl on my hands and knees," he said.
"I will crawl back and forth and go over every inch of the floor with my
hands until I find it. If I go over every inch, I shall find it."
So he kneeled down and began to crawl, and the cat watched him and
purred.
"We shall get out, Puss-cat," he said to her. "I told you we should."
He crawled from the door to the wall at the side of the shelves, and
then he crawled back again. The key might be quite a small one, and it
was necessary that he should pass his hands over every inch, as he had
said. The difficulty was to be sure, in the darkness, that he did not
miss an inch. Sometimes he was not sure enough, and then he went over
the ground again. He crawled backward and forward, and he crawled
forward and backward. He crawled crosswise and lengthwise, he crawled
diagonally, and he crawled round and round. But he did not find the key.
If he had had only a little light, but he had none. He was so absorbed
in his search that he did not know he had been engaged in it for several
hours, and that it was the middle of the night. But at last he realized
that he must stop for a rest, because his knees were beginning to feel
bruised, and the skin of his hands was sore as a result of the rubbing
on the flags. The cat and her kittens had gone to sleep and awakened
again two or three times.
"But it is somewhere!" he said obstinately. "It is inside the cellar. I
heard something fall which was made of metal. That was the ringing sound
which awakened me."
When he stood up, he found his body ached and he was very tired. He
stretched himself and exercised his arms and legs.
"I wonder how long I have been crawling about," he thought. "But the key
is in the cellar. It is in the cellar."
He sat down near the cat and her family, and, laying his arm on the
shelf above her, rested his head on it. He began to think of another
experiment.
"I am so tired, I believe I shall go to sleep again. 'Thought which
Knows All' "--he was quoting something the hermit had said to Loristan
in their midnight talk--"Thought which Knows All! Show me this little
thing. Lead me to it when I awake."
And he did fall asleep, sound and fast.
* * * * *
He did not know that he slept all the rest of the night. But he did.
When he awakened, it was daylight in the streets, and the milk-carts
were beginning to jingle about, and the early postmen were knocking big
double-knocks at front doors. The cat may have heard the milk-carts, but
the actual fact was that she herself was hungry and wanted to go in
search of food. Just as Marco lifted his head from his arm and sat up,
she jumped down from her shelf and went to the door. She had expected to
find it ajar as it had been before. When she found it shut, she
scratched at it and was disturbed to find this of no use. Because she
knew Marco was in the cellar, she felt she had a friend who would assist
her, and she miaued appealingly.
This reminded Marco of the key.
"I will when I have found it," he said. "It is inside the cellar."
The cat miaued again, this time very anxiously indeed. The kittens
heard her and began to squirm and squeak piteously.
"Lead me to this little thing," said Marco, as if speaking to something
in the darkness about him, and he got up.
He put his hand out toward the kittens, and it touched something lying
not far from them. It must have been lying near his elbow all night
while he slept.
It was the key! It had fallen upon the shelf, and not on the floor at
all.
Marco picked it up and then stood still a moment. He made the sign of
the cross.
Then he found his way to the door and fumbled until he found the keyhole
and got the key into it. Then he turned it and pushed the door open--and
the cat ran out into the passage before him.