We had established the practice of barring all the
gates and doors at nightfall. There was no way of
guarding against an attack from the lake, whose frozen
surface increased the danger from without; but we
counted on our night patrol to prevent a surprise from
that quarter. I was well aware that I must prepare to
resist the militant arm of the law, which Pickering
would no doubt invoke to aid him, but I intended to
exhaust the possibilities in searching for the lost treasure
before I yielded. Pickering might, if he would,
transfer the estate of John Marshall Glenarm to Marian
Devereux and make the most he could of that service,
but he should not drive me forth until I had satisfied
myself of the exact character of my grandfather's fortune.
If it had vanished, if Pickering had stolen it
and outwitted me in making off with it, that was another
matter.
The phrase, "The Door of Bewilderment," had never
ceased to reiterate itself in my mind. We discussed a
thousand explanations of it as we pondered over the
scrap of paper I had found in the library, and every
book in the house was examined in the search for further
clues.
The passage between the house and the chapel seemed
to fascinate Larry. He held that it must have some
particular use and he devoted his time to exploring it.
He came up at noon-it was the twenty-ninth of
December-with grimy face and hands and a grin on his
face. I had spent my morning in the towers, where it
was beastly cold, to no purpose and was not in a mood
for the ready acceptance of new theories.
"I've found something," he said, filling his pipe.
"Not soap, evidently!"
"No, but I'm going to say the last word on the tunnel,
and within an hour. Give me a glass of beer and a
piece of bread, and we'll go back and see whether we're
sold again or not."
"Let us explore the idea and be done with it. Wait
till I tell Stoddard where we're going."
The chaplain was trying the second-floor walls, and
I asked him to eat some luncheon and stand guard while
Larry and I went to the tunnel.
We took with us an iron bar, an ax and a couple of
hammers. Larry went ahead with a lantern.
"You see," he explained, as we dropped through the
trap into the passage, "I've tried a compass on this
tunnel and find that we've been working on the wrong
theory. The passage itself runs a straight line from
the house under the gate to the crypt; the ravine is a
rough crescent-shape and for a short distance the tunnel
touches it. How deep does that ravine average-about
thirty feet?"
"Yes; it's shallowest where the house stands. it
drops sharply from there on to the lake."