Miss Wickham pointed to a door in the oak panelling, a door set in a corner of the room, across which hung a heavy curtain of red plush, only halfdrawn.
"There's a door there," she remarked, "but I suppose it's only a cupboard."
"Sure to be," said Viner. "However, we'll see." He went across, drew the curtain aside, tried the door, looked within, and uttered an exclamation. "I say!" he called back. "Stairs!"
Miss Wickham came across and looked past his shoulder. There was certainly the head of a staircase before him, and a few stairs to be seen before darkness swallowed up the rest--but the darkness was deep and the atmosphere that came up from below decidedly musty.
"Are you going down there?" she asked. "I don't like it!"
"It seems our only chance," answered Viner. He looked back into the room, and seeing some wax candles standing on a writing-table, seized one and lighted it. "Come along!" he said. "Let's get out of this altogether."
Miss Wickham gathered up her skirts and followed down the stairs, Viner going cautiously in front, with the light held before him in such a fashion that he could see every step. At a turn in the stairway he came across a door, and opening it, saw that it stood at the end of a narrow passage running through the house; at the farther end of the passage he recognized an oak cabinet which he had noticed when Mrs. Killenhall first admitted him.
"I see how these people, whoever they are, manage matters," he remarked over his shoulder as he led his companion forward. "This place has a front and a back entrance. If you don't want to be seen, you know, well, it's convenient. We're approaching the back--and here it is."
The stairs came to an end deep down in the house, terminating in a door which Viner, after leaving his silver-sticked candle, only blown out, on the last step, carefully opened. There before him lay a narrow whitewashed yard, at the end of which they could see a street, evidently pretty much like the rest of the streets in that district. But in the yard a pale-cheeked, sharp-eyed urchin was feeding a couple of rabbits in a wire-faced soap-box, and him Viner immediately hailed.
"You're a smart-looking lad," he said. "Would you like five shillings? Well, have you seen Dr. Martincole this afternoon? You know, the doctor who comes to the house behind us?"