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And then with a smile she lowered the weapon and Campe replaced it upon the wall.

“I don’t think,” said the young man, “there’s anything else of interest.”

But Miss Knowles held up a protesting finger.

“The vaults!” she said. “No one could say he had seen a castle without visiting those parts of it that are underground.”

But Campe did not at all take to the suggestion.

“They are damp and gloomy,” he said. “We seldom go into them.” He turned to Ashton-Kirk. “However, if you care to see them, I’ll be only too glad.”

“If it is no trouble,” said the crime specialist, his singular eyes upon the beautiful face of Miss Knowles, “I’d be pleased to explore them.”

With Kretz carrying a lamp, the three men descended into the regions beneath Schwartzberg. The damp from the near-by river had stained the walls and the stones of the pavement, the heavy arches hung with growths of fungus. The place was vast and gloomy; the radius of the lamp was small and beyond it the shadows thickened away into absolute blackness. The whole progress through the place seemed a bore to Scanlon.