“That leaves the ceiling or the floor, or the bars. The ceiling is too high to reach, so let’s try the floor. We want to go down, anyway, so let’s start. Besides, the boards are wide and old.”
“And fastened together with nice little wooden pegs instead of nails.”
“Dowels, you call them,” John said. “If we select a shortish board and dig out said dowels, we might get through to something interesting.”
John had a pen knife, too, a little larger than mine, but no bowie knife. We selected a suitable board after a little search. Fifteen minutes loosened the board. The wood had shrunk a little in the years since it had been laid, and we dug the dowels out almost easily. Then, by sticking our little fingers into the holes and pulling upward gently and together, we raised the board from the floor. I looked into the hole before we had it up more than a few inches. There was only darkness below. John blew out our candle, and we took the board away, and peered down. There was a room much like ours below; though it was dark, we could see its outlines. It was quite empty. Looking farther we saw that the door was closed, and it smelled damp and musty, but not poisonously so. It was also bare of any sort of furniture, which indicated that it was never used.
“I’ll jump down,” John said, “and have a go at those bars. I may be able to get them out. Better make a lump under the bedclothes, so if that man comes back he’ll think I’m asleep; and drop the board back in place after I’m through. If I have to get up again you can tie the sheets together for a rope.” Then he dropped through the hole, and I wrapped my overcoat around most of the blankets, which made a passable body except for the head. I finally decided on an old brown angora sweater from the painting stuff where it had been used as packing, with John’s cap tipped at an angle over it, as though to keep the light out of his eyes. Then I carried the candle to the other side of the room, and decided that it was a good enough mummy to deceive a casual eye in that light. There was one rug in the room. Instead of replacing the board I decided to throw it over the hole, and pulled the table over that. Then I turned to Helena’s side of the room.
