"Want a gun?" said Oakes. [Pg 115] [Pg 115] "No, sorr, not if youse all are armed. Guess we can give him all the scrap he wants." We descended the stairs, Oakes last, as became his condition. He touched Moore and myself, and pointed to Mike. "Watch him; he may be already armed," he whispered. The cellar was lighted by one window at the western end. A door at the same end, which evidently led to some stairs, was padlocked, and, as Oakes said, had not been recently opened. The dust lay upon it undisturbed and the padlock was very rusty. This corroborated Mike's story. The door above that opened on the ground. It was boarded up, he said. No means was found of passing beneath the dance hall, as Oakes had said. From the lay of the ground, we concluded that the cellar was very low there and not bottomed—a shut-in affair such as one finds in old buildings of the Colonial epoch. Across the cellar, to the other side—the south—the same thing pertained except at the western extremity under the dining-room; there a door opened into a cellar room or chamber. "Here! take this," said Oakes, handing Mike a small pocket taper. "Light it." [Pg 116] [Pg 116] Mike did as told, and stepped into the room, I after him. Oakes held the cellar door open, and I, happening to look at him, saw that he was watching Mike as a cat watches a mouse. He had dropped a match at the moment, and, with his eye still on the gardener, stooped to pick it up. His hand made a swift, double movement, he had the match and something else besides; but Mike had not observed, and I, of course, said nothing. The room was low and without windows, but the air was remarkably clean and fresh. "Plenty of ventilation in here," said I. "Yes, and blood too," said the gardener. Sure enough, the floor was spattered with it. "Mine, I guess," said Oakes. "Moore, kindly fetch a lamp from upstairs. Ask Annie for one."
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