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. Gaydon could no longer even pretend to doubt who had walked with Whittington to the Caprara Palace the night before. It was none of his business, however, he assured himself. If his King dwelt with emphasis upon the dangers of the enterprise, it was not his business to remark upon it or to be thereby disheartened. The King said very graciously that he would hold the major and his friends in no less esteem if by any misfortune they came back empty-handed. That was most kind of him, but it was none of Gaydon's business. The King was ill at ease and looked as though he had not slept a wink the livelong night. Well, swollen eyes and a patched pallid face disfigure all men at times, and in any case they were none of Gaydon's business. He rode out of Rome that afternoon as the light was failing. He rode at a quick trot, and did not notice at the corner of a street a big stalwart man who sauntered along swinging his stick by the tassel with a vacant look of idleness upon the passers-by. He stopped and directed the same vacant look at Gaydon. But he was thinking curiously, "Will he tell Charles Wogan?" The stalwart man was Harry Whittington.