A rasping voice shattered the silence.
“You boys down there,” said the voice, “come here immediately. Come here, I say.”
It was the well-known voice of Mr Robert Dexter, O'Hara and Moriarty's beloved house-master.
The two Irishmen simultaneously clutched one another, each afraid that the other would think—from force of long habit—that the house-master was speaking to him. Both stood where they were. It was the men of mystery and tobacco that Dexter was after, they thought.
But they were wrong. What had brought Dexter to the vault was the fact that he had seen two boys, who looked uncommonly like O'Hara and Moriarty, go down the steps of the vault at a quarter to six. He had been doing his usual after-lock-up prowl on the junior gravel, to intercept stragglers, and he had been a witness—from a distance of fifty yards, in a very bad light—of the descent into the vault. He had remained on the gravel ever since, in the hope of catching them as they came up; but as they had not come up, he had determined to make the first move himself. He had not seen the six unknowns go down, for, the evening being chilly, he had paced up and down, and they had by a lucky accident chosen a moment when his back was turned.
“Come up immediately,” he repeated.
Here a blast of tobacco-smoke rushed at him from the darkness. The candle had been extinguished at the first alarm, and he had not realised—though he had suspected it—that smoking had been going on.
A hurried whispering was in progress among the unknowns. Apparently they saw that the game was up, for they picked their way towards the door.
As each came up the steps and passed him, Mr Dexter observed “Ha!” and appeared to make a note of his name. The last of the six was just leaving him after this process had been completed, when Mr Dexter called him back.
“That is not all,” he said, suspiciously.
“Yes, sir,” said the last of the unknowns.
Neither of the Irishmen recognised the voice. Its owner was a stranger to them.
“I tell you it is not,” snapped Mr Dexter. “You are concealing the truth from me. O'Hara and Moriarty are down there—two boys in my own house. I saw them go down there.”
“They had nothing to do with us, sir. We saw nothing of them.”
“I have no doubt,” said the house-master, “that you imagine that you are doing a very chivalrous thing by trying to hide them, but you will gain nothing by it. You may go.”
He came to the top of the steps, and it seemed as if he intended to plunge into the darkness in search of the suspects. But, probably realising the futility of such a course, he changed his mind, and delivered an ultimatum from the top step.
“O'Hara and Moriarty.”
No reply.
“O'Hara and Moriarty, I know perfectly well that you are down there. Come up immediately.”
Dignified silence from the vault.
“Well, I shall wait here till you do choose to come up. You would be well advised to do so immediately. I warn you you will not tire me out.”
He turned, and the door slammed behind him.
“What'll we do?” whispered Moriarty. It was at last safe to whisper.
“Wait,” said O'Hara, “I'm thinking.”
O'Hara thought. For many minutes he thought in vain. At last there came flooding back into his mind a memory of the days of his faghood. It was after that that he had been groping all the time. He remembered now. Once in those days there had been an unexpected function in the middle of term. There were needed for that function certain chairs. He could recall even now his furious disgust when he and a select body of fellow fags had been pounced upon by their form-master, and coerced into forming a line from the junior block to the cloisters, for the purpose of handing chairs. True, his form-master had stood ginger-beer after the event, with princely liberality, but the labour was of the sort that gallons of ginger-beer will not make pleasant. But he ceased to regret the episode now. He had been at the extreme end of the chair-handling chain. He had stood in a passage in the junior block, just by the door that led to the masters' garden, and which—he remembered—was never locked till late at night. And while he stood there, a pair of hands—apparently without a body—had heaved up chair after chair through a black opening in the floor. In other words, a trap-door connected with the vault in which he now was.
He imparted these reminiscences of childhood to Moriarty. They set off to search for the missing door, and, after wanderings and barkings of shins too painful to relate, they found it. Moriarty lit a match. The light fell on the trap-door, and their last doubts were at an end. The thing opened inwards. The bolt was on their side, not in the passage above them. To shoot the bolt took them one second, to climb into the passage one minute. They stood at the side of the opening, and dusted their clothes.
“Bedad!” said Moriarty, suddenly.
“What?”
“Why, how are we to shut it?”
This was a problem that wanted some solving. Eventually they managed it, O'Hara leaning over and fishing for it, while Moriarty held his legs.
As luck would have it—and luck had stood by them well all through—there was a bolt on top of the trap-door, as well as beneath it.
“Supposing that had been shot!” said O'Hara, as they fastened the door in its place.
Moriarty did not care to suppose anything so unpleasant.
