“Point number four—the ‘hands-up’ phase is over. From now on seeing is shooting, and shooting to kill. Rose Noble’s still hoping to break me, for the sake of doing a deal: but he knows it’s a chance in a million and he’s not going to risk his life by sparing mine.”
And there, I remember, he happened to cast down his eyes.
We were not without light, for he had the torch in his hand, but this he was holding downward, so that its beam made a circle upon the floor.
For a moment he did not move. Then he was out of his chair and down on his knees. …
Clean around the table there was a crack in the floor.
It was a very fine cleft and was choked with dust and the wax with which the floor had been rubbed; but these gave way at once to the point of a knife, and then we could see that the floor had been sawn asunder with the finest of saws.
I could scarcely believe that here was another trapdoor, for, for one thing only, the cleft was surrounding the table with a fair two inches to spare, and a trapdoor some eight feet by five seemed out of reason: yet, for some purpose or other, the floor had been cut, and, what seemed to me still more strange, except by the dust and the wax, the cleft had never been stopped.
Mansel was speaking in my ear.
“The table sinks through the floor. I saw it once before in some castle. The idea was to gain privacy. No servants in the room; but the table descended and rose between each course.” He touched the smooth oak beneath the table. “This piece of the floor is really no more than a lift: and, if we can find out its trick. …”
I sought to move the table, but it was fixed to the floor.
“That’s right,” breathed Mansel. “The other I saw was fixed. I remember they said it was raised by a system of pulleys and weights. The weights weighed far more than the table, so it couldn’t descend on its own or so much as budge, but had to be hauled down by a windlass between each course.”
“It’s as firm as a rock,” said I, stooping. “You don’t think it’s locked into place.”
Mansel shrugged his shoulders.
“We must try to find out,” he said. “If we can weight it enough. …”
Then I saw that, with four counterweights, each, let us say, of the weight of the table and lift, these two would seem as much fixed as though they had beneath them a girder to hold them in place—until there was laid upon them a burden three times their own weight; but that if we could manage to load them to this extent the table would sink through the floor and open a way of escape.
In silence we lifted the chairs and set them upon the board: they were immensely heavy, but the table stood fast. Ten more chairs we added, bringing them one by one from the other rooms and using our rope to lash the perilous pile. But, though we added our weight, the mass never budged.
And here we were brought to a standstill, for, though there were yet more chairs, we had used all the rope we had and we could not think how to get them on to the top of the structure their fellows made.
Suddenly I thought of the slab which Mansel and I had hidden beneath the King’s bed. …
We had dragged this into the chamber, and I was under the table, with my feet braced against the great stretcher, hauling the stone into place, and sitting, as it happened, directly upon the cleft, when I felt a definite movement beneath my seat.
At once I told Mansel, and, after a short consultation, we lay down upon opposite sides and, taking hold of the stretcher, began to pass by inches on to the lift.
As I drew myself on, I felt this beginning to move, and all at once we were sinking into some cold, dark place.
We must have come down with a crash, but the chairs we had piled on the table were overlapping the lift, and, when these were prevented by the floor, the lift, thus relieved of their weight, immediately stopped.
The torch now showed us a cellar, with a door in its eastern wall. About us was the massive cage in which the lift ran, and at each of its corners were a pulley and a rope and a great counterweight of stone. A little to one side stood the windlass, as Mansel had said.
And now, once again, as they say, we had the wolf by the ears.
The floor was but eight feet away, but, if one of us was to descend, the lift would instantly rise and, taking the other up, lock him once more into the Dining-room; while, if both descended at once, the lift would shoot back into place with a shock which would shake the castle and send the twelve chairs crashing to wake the dead.
But, after a little reflection, Mansel found out a way.
On the under side of the lift, right in its middle, was a hook: to this was attached the great rope which the windlass controlled. If we could reach this rope, the trick was ours.
Mansel took my left wrist in his hands and lowered me clear of the lift. At once I swung to and fro until I could reach and lay hold of the great iron hook. With my left hand I then laid hold of the edge of the lift, and Mansel climbed round my body and seized the rope. Then we came down the rope
