In the morning Edgar, the Chevalier's secretary, came privately to him.
"The King will receive you now," said he. "Let us go."
"It is broad daylight. We shall be seen."
"Not if the street is empty," said Edgar, looking out of the window.
The street, as it chanced, was for the moment empty. Edgar crossed the
street and rapped quickly with certain pauses between the raps on the
door of that deserted house into which Gaydon had watched men enter. The
door was opened. "Follow me," said Edgar. Gaydon followed him into a
bare passage unswept and with discoloured walls. A man in a little hutch
in the wall opened and closed the door with a string.
Edgar walked forward to the end of the passage with Gaydon at his heels.
The two men came to a flight of stone steps, which they descended. The
steps led to a dark and dripping cellar with no pavement but the mud,
and that depressed into puddles. The air was cold and noisome; the walls
to the touch of Gaydon's hand were greasy with slime. He followed Edgar
across the cellar into a sort of tunnel. Here Edgar drew an end of
candle from his pocket and lighted it. The tunnel was so low that
Gaydon, though a shortish man, could barely hold his head erect. He
followed Edgar to the end and up a flight of winding steps. The air grew
warmer and dryer. They had risen above ground, the spiral wound within
the thickness of a wall. The steps ended abruptly; there was no door
visible; in face of them and on each side the bare stone walls enclosed
them. Edgar stooped down and pressed with his finger on a round
insignificant discolouration of the stone. Then he stood up again.
"You will breathe no word of this passage, Major Gaydon," said he. "The
house was built a century ago when Rome was more troubled than it is
to-day, but the passage was never more useful than now. Men from
England, whose names it would astonish you to know, have trodden these
steps on a secret visit to the King. Ah!" From the wall before their
faces a great slab of the size of a door sank noiselessly down and
disclosed a wooden panel. The panel slid aside. Edgar and Gaydon stepped
into a little cabinet lighted by a single window. The room was empty.
Gaydon took a peep out of the window and saw the Tiber eddying beneath.
Edgar went to a corner and touched a spring. The stone slab rose from
its grooves; the panel slid back across it; at the same moment the door
of the room was opened, and the Chevalier stepped across the threshold.