Malipieri was convinced that Volterra not only knew exactly how far the
work under the palace had proceeded, but was also acquainted with the
general nature of the objects found in the inner chamber, beyond the
well shaft. The apparent impossibility of such a thing was of no
importance. The Baron would never have been so anxious to get rid of
Malipieri unless he had been sure that the difficult part of the work
was finished and that the things discovered were of such dimensions as
to make it impossible to remove them secretly. Malipieri knew the man
and guessed that if he could not pocket the value of everything found
in the excavations by disposing of the discoveries secretly, he would
take the government into his confidence at once, as the surest means of
preventing any one else from getting a share.
What was hard to understand was that Volterra should know how far the
work had gone before Malipieri had told him anything about it. That he
did know, could hardly be doubted. He had practically betrayed the fact
by the mistake he had made in assuring himself that Malipieri was
willing to leave the house, before even questioning him as to the
progress made since they had last met. He had been a little too eager
to get rid of the helper he no longer needed. It did not even occur to
Malipieri that Masin could have betrayed him, yet so far as it was
possible to judge, Masin was the only living man who had looked into
the underground chamber. As he walked home, he recalled the
conversation from beginning to end, and his conviction was confirmed.
Volterra had been in a bad temper, nervous, a little afraid of the
result and therefore inclined to talk in a rough and bullying tone. As
soon as he had ascertained that Malipieri was not going to oppose him,
he had become oily to obsequiousness.
On his part Malipieri had accepted everything Volterra proposed, for
two reasons. In the first place he would not for the world have had the
financier think that he wanted a share of the treasure, or any
remuneration for what he had done. Secondly, he knew that possession is
nine points of the law, and that if anything could ever be obtained for
Sabina it would not be got by making a show of violent opposition to
the Baron's wishes. If Malipieri had refused to leave his lodging in
the palace, Volterra could have answered by filling the house with
people in his own employ, or by calling in government architects,
archaeologists and engineers, and taking the whole matter out of
Malipieri's hands.
The first thing to be ascertained was, who had entered the vaults and
reported the state of the work to Volterra. Malipieri might have
suspected the porter himself, for it was possible that there might be
another key to the outer entrance of the cellar; but there was a second
door further in, to which Masin had put a patent padlock, and even
Masin had not the key to that. The little flat bit of steel, with its
irregular indentations, was always in Malipieri's pocket. As he walked,
he felt for it, and it was in its place, with his silver pencil-case
and the small penknife he always carried for sharpening pencils.
The porter could not possibly have picked that lock; indeed, scarcely
any one could have done so without injuring it, and Malipieri had
locked it himself at about seven o'clock that evening. Even if the
porter could have got in by any means, Malipieri doubted whether he
could have reached the inner chamber of the vaults. There was some
climbing to be done, and the man was old and stiff in the joints. The
place was not so easy to find as might have been supposed, either,
after the first breach in the Roman wall was past. Malipieri intended
to improve the passage the next morning, in order to make it more
practicable for Sabina.
He racked his brains for an explanation of the mystery, and when he
reached the door of the palace, after eleven o'clock, he had come to
the conclusion that in spite of appearances there must be some entrance
to the vaults of which he knew nothing, and it was all-important to
find it. He regretted the quixotic impulse which had restrained him
from exploring everything at once. It would have been far better to go
to the end of his discovery, and he wondered why he had not done go. He
would not have insulted himself by supposing that Sabina could believe
him capable of taking the gem from the ring of the statue, in other
words, of stealing, since whoever the rightful owner might be, nothing
in the vault could possibly belong to him, and he regarded it all as
her property, though he doubted whether he could ever obtain for her a
tenth part of the value it represented. He had acted on an impulse,
which was strengthened until it looked plausible by the thought of the
intense pleasure he would take in showing her the wonderful discovery,
and in leading her safely through the mysterious intricacies of the
strange place. It had been a very selfish impulse after all, and if he
really let her come the next day, there might even be a little danger
to her.
He let himself in and locked the postern door behind him. The porter
and his wife were asleep and the glass window of the lodge door was
quite dark. Malipieri lighted a wax taper and went upstairs.
Masin was waiting, and opened when he heard his master's footsteps on
the landing. As a rule, he went to bed, if Malipieri went out in the
evening; both men were usually tired out by their day's work.
"What is the matter?" Malipieri asked.
"There is somebody in the vaults," Masin answered. "I had left my pipe
on a stone close to the padlocked door and when you were gone I took a
lantern and went down to get it. When I came near the door I was sure I
heard some one trying it gently from the other side. I stopped to
listen and I distinctly heard footsteps going away. I ran forward and
tried to find a crack, to see if there were a light, but the door is
swollen with the dampness and fits tightly. Besides, by the time I had
reached it the person inside must have got well away."
"What time was it?" asked Malipieri, slipping off his light overcoat.
"You went out at nine o'clock, sir. It could not have been more than
half an hour later."
"Light both lanterns. We must go down at once. See that there is plenty
of oil in them."
In five minutes both men were ready.
"You had better take your revolver, sir," suggested Masin.
Malipieri laughed.
"I have had that revolver since I was eighteen," he said, "and I have
never needed it yet. Our tools are there, and they are better than
firearms."
They went down the staircase quietly, fearing to wake the porter, and
kept close to the north wall till they reached the further end of the
courtyard. When they had passed the outer door at the head of the
winding staircase, Malipieri told Masin to lock it after them.
"We cannot padlock the other door from the inside," he explained, "for
there are no hasps. If the man managed to pass us he might get out this
way."
He led the way down, making as little noise as possible. Masin held up
his lantern, peering into the gloom over Malipieri's shoulder.
"No one could pass the other door without breaking it down," Malipieri
said.
They reached the floor of the cellars, which extended in both
directions from the foot of the staircase, far to the left by low, dark
vaults like railway tunnels, and a short distance to the right, where
they ended at the north-west corner. The two men turned that way, but
after walking a dozen yards, they turned to the left and entered a damp
passage barely wide enough for them both abreast. It ended at the
padlocked door, and before unlocking the latter Malipieri laid his ear
to the rough panel and listened attentively. Not a sound broke the
stillness. He turned the key, and took off the padlock and slipped it
into his pocket before going on. Without it the door could not be
fastened.
The passage widened suddenly beyond, in another short tunnel ending at
the outer foundation wall of the palace. In this tunnel, on the
right-hand side, was the breach the two men had first made in order to
gain access to the unexplored region. Now that there was an aperture,
the running water on the other side could be heard very distinctly,
like a little brook in a rocky channel, but more steady. Both men
examined the damp floor carefully with their lanterns, in the hope of
finding some trace of footsteps; but the surface was hard and almost
black, and where there had been a little slime their own feet had
rubbed it off, as they came and went during many days. The stones and
rubbish they had taken from the wall had been piled up and hardened to
form an inclined causeway by which to reach the irregular hole. This
was now just big enough to allow a man to walk through it, bending
almost double. Masin lighted one of the lamps, which they generally
left at that place, and set it on a stone.
Malipieri began to go up, his stick in his right hand, the lantern in
his left.
"Let me go first, sir," said Masin, trying to pass him.
"Nonsense!" Malipieri answered sharply, and went on.
Masin kept as close to him as possible. He had picked up the lightest
of the drilling irons for a weapon. It must have weighed at least ten
pounds and it was a yard long. In such a hand as Masin's a blow from it
would have broken a man's bones like pipe stems.
The wall was about eight feet thick, and when Malipieri got to the
other end of the hole he stopped and looked down, holding out his
lantern at arm's length. He could see nothing unusual, and he heard no
sound, except the gurgle of the little black stream that ran ten feet
below him. He began to descend. The masonry was very irregular, and
sloped outwards towards the ground, so that some of the irregularities
made rough steps here and there, which he knew by heart. Below, several
large fragments of Roman brick and cement lay here and there, where
they had fallen in the destruction of the original building. It was not
hard to get down, and the space was not large. It was bounded by the
old wall on one side, and most of the other was taken up by a part of a
rectangular mass of masonry, of rough mediaeval construction, which
projected inward.
The place was familiar, but Malipieri looked about him carefully, while
Masin was climbing down. Along the base of the straight wall there was
a channel about two feet wide, through which the dark water flowed
rapidly. It entered from the right-hand corner, by a low, arched
aperture, through which it seemed out of the question that a man could
crawl, or even an ordinary boy of twelve. When they had first come to
this place Masin had succeeded in poking in a long stick with a bit of
lighted wax taper fastened to it, and both men had seen that the
channel ran on as far as it could be seen, with no widening. At the
other end of the chamber it ran out again by a similar conduit. What
had at first surprised Malipieri had been that the water did not enter
from the side of the foundations near the Vicolo dei Soldati, but ran
out that way. He had also been astonished at the quantity and speed of
the current. A channel a foot deep and two feet wide carries a large
quantity of water if the velocity be great, and Malipieri had made a
calculation which had convinced him that if the outflow were suddenly
closed, the small space in which he now stood would in a few minutes be
full up to within three or four feet of the vault. He would have given
much to know whence the water came and whither it went, and what
devilry had made it rise suddenly and drown a man when the excavations
had been made under Gregory Sixteenth.
From below, the place where an entrance had then been opened was
clearly visible. The vault had been broken into and had afterwards been
rebuilt from above. The bits of timber which had been used for the
frame during the operation were still there, a rotting and mouldy nest
for hideous spiders and noisome creatures that haunt the dark.
The air was very cold, and was laden with the indescribable smell of
dried slime which belongs to deep wells which have long been almost
quite dry. It was clearly a long time since the little stream had
overflowed its channel, but at the first examination he had made
Malipieri had understood that in former times the water had risen to
within three feet of the vault. Up to that height there was a thin
coating of the dry mud, which peeled off in irregular scales if lightly
touched. The large fragments of masonry that half covered the floor
were all coated in the same way with what had once been a film of slime.
The air, though cold, could be breathed easily, and the lights did not
grow dim in it as they do in subterranean places where the atmosphere
is foul. The stream of water, flowing swiftly in its deep channel from
under the little arch, brought plentiful ventilation into it. Above,
there was no aperture in the vaulting, but there was one in the
mediaeval masonry that projected into the chamber. There, on the side
towards the right, where the water flowed in, Malipieri had found a
narrow slit, barely wide enough to admit a man's open hand and wrist,
but nearly five feet high, evidently a passage intended for letting the
water flow into the interior of the construction when it overflowed its
channel and rose above the floor of the chamber.
At first Malipieri had supposed that this aperture communicated with
some ancient and long-forgotten drain by which the water could escape
to the Tiber; it was not until he had gained an entrance to the hollow
mass of masonry that he understood the hideous use to which it had been
applied.
It had not been hard to enlarge it. Any one who has worked among ruins
in Italy could tell, even blindfold, the difference between the work
done in ancient times and that of the middle ages. Roman brickwork is
quite as compact as solid sandstone, but mediaeval masonry was almost
invariably built in a hurry by bad workmen, of all sorts of fragments
embedded in poorly mingled cement, and it breaks up with tolerable ease
under a heavy pickaxe.
In half a day Malipieri and Masin had widened the slit to a convenient
passage, but as soon as it had been possible to squeeze through, the
architect had gone in. He never forgot what he felt when he first
looked about him. Masin could not follow him until many blows of the
pick had widened the way for his bulkier frame.
Malipieri stopped at the entrance now, holding his lantern close to the
ground, and looking for traces of footsteps. He found none, but as he
was about to move forward he uttered an exclamation of surprise, and
picked up a tiny object which he held close to the light. It was only a
wax match, of which the head had been broken off when it had been
struck, so that it had not been lighted. That was all, but neither he
nor Masin carried wax matches in the vaults, because the dampness soon
made them useless. They took common sulphur matches in tin match-boxes.
Besides, this was an English wax light, as any one could tell at a
glance, for it was thicker, and stiffer, and longer than the cheaper
Italian ones.
Malipieri drew back and showed it to his man, who examined it,
understood, and put it into his pocket without a word. Then they both
went in through the aperture in the wall.
The masonry outside was rectangular, as far as it could be seen.
Inside, it was built like a small circular cistern, smoothly cemented,
and contracting above in a dome, that opened by a square hole to the
well-shaft above. Like the stones in the outer chamber, the cement was
coated with scales of dried mud. The shaft was now certainly closed at
the top, for in the daytime not a ray of light penetrated into its
blackness.
The lanterns illuminated the place completely, and the two men looked
about, searching for some new trace of a living being. The yellow light
fell only on the remains of men dead long ago. Some of the bones lay as
they had lain since then, when the drowned bodies had gently reached
the floor as the "lost water" subsided. Malipieri had not touched them,
nor Masin either. Two skeletons lay at full length, face downwards, as
a drowned body always sinks at last, when decay has done its loathsome
work. A third lay on its side, in a frightfully natural attitude, the
skull a little raised up and resting against the cemented wall, the
arms stretched out together, the hands still clutching a rusty crowbar.
This one was near the entrance, and if, in breaking their way in,
Malipieri and Masin had not necessarily destroyed the cement on each
side of the slit, they would have found the marks where the dead man's
crowbar had worked desperately for a few minutes before he had been
drowned. Malipieri had immediately reflected that the unfortunate
wretch, who was evidently the mason of whom Sassi had told him, had
certainly not entered through the aperture formerly made from above in
the outer chamber, since the narrow slit afforded no possible passage
to the well. That doubtless belonged to some other attempt to find the
treasure, and the fact that the mason's skeleton lay inside would alone
have shown that he had got in from above, most likely through a low
opening just where the dome began to curve inward. A further search had
discovered some bits of wood, almost rotted to powder, which had
apparently once been a ladder.
A much less practised eye than the architect's would have understood at
a glance that if a living man were let down through the shaft in the
centre of the dome, and left on the floor, he could not possibly get up
even as far as the other hole, since the smooth cement offered not the
slightest hold; and that if the outflow of the stream from the first
chamber were arrested, the water would immediately fill it and rise
simultaneously in the well, to drown the victim, or to strip his bones
by its action, if he had been allowed to die of hunger or thirst. It
was clear, too, that if the latter form of death were chosen, he must
have suffered to the last minute of his life the agony of hearing the
stream flowing outside, not three paces from him, beyond the slit.
Human imagination could hardly invent a more hideously cruel
death-trap, nor one more ingeniously secret from the world without.
The unhappy mason's ladder had perhaps broken with his weight, or his
light had gone out, and he had then been unable to find the horizontal
aperture, but he had probably entered through the latter, when he had
met his fate. The fact was, as Malipieri afterwards guessed, that the
hole through the vault outside had been made hastily after the
accident, in the hope of recovering the man's body, but that it had
been at once closed again because it appeared to open over a deep pit
full of still water.
A stout rope ladder now dangled from the lateral aperture in the dome,
which Malipieri had immediately understood to have been made to allow
the water to overflow when the well was full. He had also felt
tolerably sure that the well itself had not been originally constructed
for the deadly use to which it had evidently been put in later times,
but for the purpose of confining the water in a reservoir that could be
easily cleaned, since it could be easily emptied, and in which the
supply could be kept at a permanent level, convenient for drawing it
from above. In the days when all the ancient aqueducts of Rome were
broken, a well of the "lost water" was a valuable possession in houses
that were turned into fortresses at a moment's notice and were
sometimes exposed to long and desperate sieges.
In order to reach the horizontal opening, Malipieri had climbed upon
Masin's sturdy shoulders, steadying himself as well as he might till he
had laid his hands on the edge of the orifice. As he hung there, Masin
had held up the handle of a pickaxe as high as he could reach against
the smooth wall, as a crossbar on which Malipieri had succeeded in
getting a slight foothold, enough for a man who was not heavy and was
extraordinarily active. A moment later he had drawn himself up and
inward. At the imminent risk of his life, as he afterwards found, he
had crawled on in total darkness till the way widened enough for him to
turn round and get back. He had then lowered a string he had with him,
and had drawn up a lantern first, then the end of a coil of rope, then
the tools for carrying on the exploration. The rest had been easy.
Masin had climbed up by the rope, after making knots in it and when
Malipieri had called out, from the inner place to which he had retired
with the end, that it was made fast. But the light showed the architect
that in turning round, he had narrowly escaped falling into an open
shaft, of which he could not see the bottom, but which was evidently
meant for the final escape of the overflowing water.
There was room to pass this danger, however, and they had since laid a
couple of stout boards over it, weighted with stones to keep them in
place. Beyond, the passage rose till it was high enough for a man to
walk upright. Judging from the elevation now reached this passage was
hollowed in the thickness of one of the main walls of the palace, and
it was clear that the water could not reach it. A few yards from the
chasm, it inclined quickly downwards, and at the end there were half a
dozen steps, which evidently descended to a greater depth than the
floor of the first outer chamber.
So far as it had hitherto been possible to judge, there was no way of
getting to these last steps, except that opened by the two men, and
leading through the dry well. In former times, there might have been an
entrance through the wall at the highest level, but if it had ever
existed it had been so carefully closed that no trace of it could now
be found.
This tedious explanation of a rather complicated construction has been
necessary to explain what afterwards happened. Reducing it to its
simplest terms, it becomes clear that if the water rose, a person in
the passage, or anywhere beyond the overflow shaft, could not possibly
get back through the well, though he would apparently be safe from
drowning if he stayed where he was; and to the best of Malipieri's
knowledge there was no other way out. Any one caught there would have
to wait till the water subsided, and if that did not happen he would
starve to death.
The two men stood still and listened. They could still distinguish the
faint gurgling of the water, very far off, but that was all.
"I believe you heard a rat," said Malipieri, discontentedly, after a
long pause.
"Rats do not carry English wax matches," observed Masin.
"They eat them when they can find them," answered Malipieri. "They
carry them off, and hide them, and drop them, too. And a big rat
running away makes a noise very like a man's footsteps."
"That is true," assented Masin. "There were many of them in the prison,
and I sometimes thought they were the keepers when I heard them at
night." "At all events, we will go to the end," said Malipieri,
beginning to walk down the inclined way, and carrying his lantern low,
so as not to be dazzled by the light.
Masin followed closely, grasping his drilling-iron, and still expecting
to use it. The end of the passage had once been walled up, but they had
found the fragments of brick and mortar lying much as they had fallen
when knocked away. It was impossible to tell from which side the
obstacle had been destroyed.
Going further, they stepped upon the curve of a tunnel vault, and were
obliged to stoop low to avoid striking against another overhead. The
two vaults had been carefully constructed, one outside the other,
leaving a space of about five feet between them. The one under their
feet covered the inner chamber in which Malipieri had seen the bronze
statue. He and Masin had made a hole a little on one side of the
middle, in order not to disturb the keystones, working very carefully
lest any heavy fragments should fall through; for they had at once been
sure that if any thing was to be found, it must be concealed in that
place. Before making the opening, they had thoroughly explored the dark
curved space from end to end and from side to side, but could discover
no aperture. The inner vault had never been opened since it had been
built.
Malipieri, reconstructing the circumstances of the accident in the last
century, came to the conclusion that the mason who had been drowned had
been already between the vaults, when some of the men behind had
discovered that the water was rising in the well, and that they had
somehow got out in time, but that their unfortunate companion had come
back too late, or had perished while trying to break his way out by the
slit, through which the water must have been rushing in. How they had
originally entered the place was a mystery. Possibly they had been
lowered from above, down the well-shaft, but it was all very hard to
explain. The only thing that seemed certain was that the treasure had
never been seen by any one since it had been closed in under the vault,
ages ago. Malipieri had not yet found time to make a careful plan of
all the places through which he had passed. There were so many turns
and changes of level, that it would be impossible to get an accurate
drawing without using a theodolite or some similar instrument of
precision. From the measurements he had taken, however, and the rough
sketches he had made, he believed that the double vault was not under
the palace itself, but under the open courtyard, at the depth of about
forty feet, and therefore below the level of the Tiber at average high
water.
Both men now knelt by the hole, and Masin thrust his lantern down to
the full length of his arm. The light shone upon the vast hand of the
statue, and made a deep reflection in the great ruby of the ring, as if
the gem was not a stone, but a little gold cup filled with rich wine.
The hand itself, the wrist and the great muscles of the chest on which
it lay, seemed of pure gold. But Malipieri's eyes fixed themselves on
something else. There were marks on the bright surface of the metal
which had not been there when he had looked at it in the afternoon;
there were patches of dust, and there were several small scratches,
which might have been made by the nails of heavy shoes.
"You were right after all," said Malipieri, withdrawing the lantern and
setting it down beside him. "The man is here."
Masin's china-blue eyes brightened at the thought of a possible fight,
and his hold tightened again on his drill.
"What shall we do with him?" he asked, looking down into the hole.
Cunning, as the Italian peasant is by nature, Masin made a sign to his
master that the man, if he were really below, could hear all that was
said.
"Shall I go down and kill him, sir?" Masin enquired with a quiet grin
and raising his voice a little.
"I am not sure," Malipieri answered, at once entering into his man's
scheme. "He is caught in his own trap. It is not midnight yet, and
there is plenty of time to consider the matter. Let us sit here and
talk about it."
He now turned himself and sat beside the hole, placing his lantern near
the edge. He took out a cigar and lit it carefully. Masin sat on the
other side, his drill in his hand.
"If he tries to get out while we are talking," he said, "I can break
his skull with a touch of this."
"Yes," Malipieri answered, puffing at his cigar. "There is no hurry.
Keep your iron ready."
"Yes, sir." Masin made the heavy drill ring on the stones of the vault.
A pause followed.
"Have you got your pipe with you?" asked Malipieri presently. "We must
talk over this quietly."
"Yes, sir. Will you hold the iron while I get a light? He might try to
jump out, and he may have firearms. Thank you, sir."
Masin produced a short black pipe, filled it and lighted it.
"I was thinking, sir," he said, as he threw away the wooden match,
"that if we kill him here we may have trouble in disposing of his body.
Thank you, sir," he added as he took over the drill again and made it
clang on the stones.
"There will be no trouble about that," Malipieri answered, speaking
over the hole. "We can drop him down the overflow shaft in the passage."
"Where do you think the shaft leads, sir?" asked Masin, grinning with
delight.
"To some old drain and then to the Tiber, of course. The body will be
found in a week or two, jammed against the pier of some bridge,
probably at the island of Saint Bartholomew."
"Yes, sir. But the drain is dry now. The body will lie at the bottom of
the shaft, where we drop it, and in a few days the cellars will be
perfumed."
He laughed roughly at his horrible joke, which was certainly calculated
to affect the nerves of the intruder who was meant to hear it.
Malipieri began to wonder when the man would give a sign of life.
"We can fill the well by plugging the arch in the outer chamber," he
suggested. "Then the water will pour down the shaft and wash the body
away."
"Yes, sir," assented Masin. "That is a good idea. Shall I go down and
kill him now, sir?"
"Not yet," Malipieri answered, knocking the ash from his cigar. "We
have not finished smoking, and there is no hurry. Besides, it occurs to
me that if we drive anything into the hole when the water runs out, we
shall not be able to get the plug away afterwards. Then we ourselves
could never get here again."
A long silence followed. From time to time Masin made a little noise
with the drill.
"Perhaps the fellow is asleep," he observed pleasantly at last. "So
much the better, he will wake in Paradise!"
"It is of no use to run any risks," said Malipieri. "If we go down to
kill him he may kill one of us first, especially if he has a revolver.
There is no hurry, I tell you. Do you happen to know how long it takes
to starve a man to death?"
"Without water, a man cannot live a week, sir. That is the best idea
you have had yet."
"Yes. We will wall him up in the vault. That is easy enough. Those
boards that are over the shaft will do to make a little frame, and the
stones are all here, just as we got them out. We can fasten up the
frame with ends of rope."
"We have no mortar, sir."
"Mud will do as well for such a small job," answered Malipieri. "We can
easily make enough. Give me your iron, in case he tries to get out, and
go and get the boards and the rope."
Masin began to rise.
"In a week we can come and take him out," he remarked in a
matter-of-fact way. "By that time he will be dead, and we can have his
grave ready."
He laughed again, as he thought of the sensations his cheerful talk
must produce in the mind of the man below.
"Yes," said Malipieri. "We may as well do it at once and go to bed. It
is of no use to sit up all night talking about the fellow's body. Go
and get the rope and the boards."
Masin was now on his feet and his heavy shoes made a grinding noise on
the stones. At that moment a sound was heard from below, and Malipieri
held up a finger and listened. Somebody was moving in the vault.
"You had better stay where you are," said Malipieri, speaking down. "If
you show yourself I will drop a stone on your head."
A hollow voice answered him from the depths.
"Are you Christians," it asked, "to wall a man up alive?"
"That is what we are going to do," Malipieri answered coolly. "Have you
anything to say? It will not take us long to do the job, so you had
better speak at once. How did you get in?"
"If I am to die without getting out, why should I tell you?" enquired
the voice.
Malipieri looked at Masin.
"There is a certain sense in what the man says, sir," Masin said
thoughtfully.
"My good man," said Malipieri, speaking down, "we do not want anybody
to know the way to this place for a few days, and as you evidently know
it better than we do, we intend to keep you quiet."
"If you will let me out, I can serve you," answered the man below.
"There is nobody in Rome who can serve you as I can."
"Who are you?" asked Malipieri.
"Are you going to let me out, Signor Malipieri?" enquired the man. "If
you are, I will tell you."
"Oh, you know my name, do you?"
"Perfectly. You are the engineer engaged by the Senator Volterra to
find the treasure."
"Yes. Quite right. What of that?"
"You have found it," answered the other. "Of what use will it be to
kill me? I cannot take that statue away in my waistcoat pocket, if you
let me out, can I?"
"You had better not make too many jokes, my man, or we will put the
boards over this hole in five minutes. If you can really be of use to
me, I will let you out. What is your name?"
"Toto," answered the voice sullenly.
"Yes. That means Theodore, I suppose. Now make haste, for I am tired of
waiting. What are you, and how did you get in?"
"I was the mason of the palace, until the devil flew away with the
people who lived in it. I know all the secrets of the house. I can be
very useful to you."
"That changes matters, my friend. I have no doubt you can be useful if
you like, though we have managed to find one of the secrets without
you. It happens to be the only one we wanted to know."
"No," answered Toto. "There are two others. You do not know how I got
in, and you do not know how to manage the 'lost water.'"
"That is true," said Malipieri. "But if I let you out you may do me
harm, by talking before it is time. The government is not to know of
this discovery until I am ready."
"The government!" exclaimed Toto contemptuously, from his hiding-place.
"May an apoplexy seize it! Do you take me for a spy? I am a Christian."
"I begin to think he is, sir," put in Masin, knocking the ash from his
pipe.
"I think so, too," said Malipieri. "Throw away that iron, Masin. He
shall show himself, at all events, and if we like his face we can talk
to him here."
Masin dropped the drill with a clang. Toto's hairy hand appeared,
grasping the golden wrist of the statue, as he raised himself to
approach the hole.
"He is a mason, as he says," said Masin, catching sight of the rough
fingers.
"Did you take me for a coachman?" enquired Toto, thrusting his shaggy
head forward cautiously, and looking up through the aperture.
"Before you come up here," Malipieri answered, "tell me how you got in."
"You seem to know so much about the overflow shaft that I should think
you might have guessed. If you do not believe that I came that way,
look at my clothes!"
He now crawled upon the body of the statue, and Malipieri saw that he
was covered with half-dried mud and ooze.
"You got through some old drain, I suppose, and found your way up."
"It seems so," answered Toto, shaking his shoulders, as if he were
stiff.
"Are you going to let him go free, sir?" asked Masin, standing ready.
"If you do, he will be down the shaft, before you can catch him. These
men know their way underground like moles."
"Moles, yourselves!" answered Toto in a growl, putting his head up
above the level of the vault.
Masin measured him with his eye, and saw that he was a strong man,
probably much more active than he looked in his heavy, mud-plastered
clothes.
"Get up here," said Malipieri.
Toto obeyed, and in a moment he sat on the edge of the hole, his legs
dangling down into it.
"Not so bad," he said, settling himself with a grunt of satisfaction.
"I like you, Master Toto," said Malipieri. "You might have thought that
we really meant to kill you, but you did not seem much frightened."
"There is no woman in the affair," answered Toto. "Why should you kill
me? And I can help you."
"How am I to know that you will?" asked Malipieri.
"I am a man of honour," Toto replied, turning his stony face to the
light of the lanterns.
"I have not a doubt of it, my friend," returned Malipieri, without
conviction. "Just now, the only help I need of you, is that you should
hold your tongue. How can I be sure that you will do that? Does any one
else know the way in through the drain?"
"No. I only found it to-night. If there is a day's rain in the
mountains, and the Tiber rises even a little, nobody can pass through
it. The lower part is barely above the level of the river now."
"How did you guess that you could get here by that way?"
"We know many secrets in our trade, from father to son," answered Toto
gruffly.
"You must have lifted the boards, with the stones on them, to get out
of the shaft. Why did you put them back in their place?"
"You seem to think I am a fool! I did not mean to let you know that I
had been here, so I put them back, of course. I supposed that I could
get out through the cellars, but you have put a padlock on the inner
door."
"Is there any way of turning water into that shaft?"
"Only by filling the well, I think. If the Tiber rises, the water will
back up the shaft through the drain. That is why the ancients who built
the well made another way for the water to run off. When the river is
swollen in a flood it must be much higher in the shaft than the bottom
of the well, and if the 'lost water' were running in all the time, the
air would probably make it back, so that the shaft would be useless and
the well would be soiled with the river water."
"You evidently know your trade, Master Toto," said Masin, with some
admiration for his fellow-craftsman's clear understanding.
"You know yours," retorted Toto, who was seldom at a loss, "for just
now you talked of killing like a professional assassin."
This pleasing banter delighted Masin, who laughed heartily, and patted
Toto on the back.
"We shall be good friends," he said.
"In this world one never knows," Toto answered philosophically. "What
are you going to do?"
"You must come back with as to my apartment," said Malipieri, who had
been considering the matter, "You must stay there a couple of days,
without going out. I will pay you for your time, and give you a
handsome present, and plenty to eat and drink. After that you will be
free to go where you please and say what you like, for the secret will
be out."
"Thank you," answered Toto without enthusiasm. "Are you going to tell
the government about the treasure?"
"The Senator will certainly inform the government, which has a right to
buy it."
To this Toto said nothing, but he lifted his legs out of the hole and
stood up, ready to go. Malipieri and Masin took up their lanterns.