Orace heard the girl give a strangled cry that choked in her throat. She would have rushed past him, but he caught and held her, though she fought him like a fury. “Wyte—in a minnit!” he urged hoarsely. He kept her back and edged towards the trap-door, testing the soundness of the floor inch by inch as he advanced. It was not until he had thus satisfied himself about the safety of the footing right up to the edge of the opening that he would allow her to approach it. They knelt down and turned the light of the torch into the gap. It shot down far into the blackness till it lost itself in space. Higher up they could see that the shaft was circular and lined with green, slimy brick. Evidently they were looking down the remains of a well over which the Old House had been built: Patricia thought that she could detect a faint glimmer of reflection of the torch’s light from the surface of the water. Orace fetched one of the empty beer bottles from across the room, and they dropped it down the pit. It seemed an eternity before the hollow sound of the splash returned to their ears. “Bouter nundred feet,” Orace guessed, and in this he was approximately right, being no more than sixty feet out. The girl leaned over and cupped her hands. “Simon!” she called. “Simon!” Only the echo answered her. “Mr. Templar, sir—Orace speakin,” bellowed the man, but it was only his own voice that boomed back out of the darkness in reply. Patricia’s face was bowed in her hands. “Saint, Saint. . . . Oh, God. . . . My darling. . . .” The words came brokenly, dazedly. “Dear God, if you can save him now, give me his life!” Presently she looked at Orace. “Are you sure he went that way? The other trap didn’t catch him.” Orace had been examining the pitfall, and now, by the light of the torch, he pointed to the evidence. A square of the flooring had been cut out with a keyhole saw, leaving only the flimsiest connections at the corners which the weight of a man would destroy at once. The jagged ends of broken wood could be seen at once, and from one of these Orace plucked a shred of tweed and brought it close to the light. “That there’s is,” he said huskily. “Looks like ’e weren’t expectin’ it. . . . But don chew lose art, miss—’e always wuz the luckiest man wot ever stepped. P’raps ’e’s as right as ryne, lyin aht comfitible somewhere jus’ lettin the Tiger _think_ ’e’s a goner an get keerless, an orl set ready ter pop up an’ ’av the larf on ’im lyter.” It was not Orace’s fault if he did not sound very convincing. His arm went clumsily about her, and drew her gently away and outside the room. “One thing,” he observed in an exaggeratedly commonplace tone, “ther carn’t be no Tiger Cubs angin arahnd ’ere naow—the noise we’ve myde, they’d uv bin buzzin in like ornets be this time, if ther ’ad bin.” “Could we get a rope and go down?” she asked, striving to master her voice.