With the very greatest of care she moved the chair that was under the picture a yard or two to the left. It weighed as though it were made of lead instead of oak, and she was gasping as she set it down, but she had made no noise. Renata’s cork soles slipped as she climbed on to the polished seat, but she gripped the solid back and did not fall. Raymond had pressed something in the wall with both hands at once. Jane began to feel carefully along the lower edge of the portrait until she came to the massively foliated corner with its fat gilt acanthus leaves. A cross-piece of the panelling came just on the same level. She felt along it with light, sensitive finger-tips. There was a knot in the wood, but nothing else. “If there is another knot in the corner, I’ll try pressing on them,” she thought to herself, and on the instant her left hand found the second knot. She pressed with all her might, and for the third time that evening she heard the little scarcely audible click. This time it spelt victory. In a curiously methodical manner Jane got down, put the chair carefully back into its place, and pushed against the wall as she had seen Lady Heritage do. The panelling yielded to her hand and swung inwards. There was a black gap in the corner. Jane passed through it without any hesitation, and pulled the panelling to. She meant to leave it just ajar, but her hand must have shaken, or else there was some controlling spring, for as she stood in the black dark she heard the click again. She drew a long breath and stood motionless for a moment, but only for a moment. She had come there to follow Raymond Heritage, and follow her she would. She put out a cautious foot and it went down, so far down that for a sickening instant she thought that she must overbalance and fall headlong; then, just in time, it touched a step, the first of ten which went down very steeply. At the bottom she felt her way round a corner, and then with intensest thankfulness she saw, a good way ahead, a moving figure with a light. The passage that stretched before her was about six feet high and four feet wide. The air felt very damp and heavy. At intervals there were openings on the left-hand side where other passages seemed to branch off. Jane began to have a growing horror of these other passages. If she lost Lady Heritage, how would she ever find her way back, and—yet more horrid thought—who, or what, might at any moment come out of one of those dark tunnels behind her? It was at this point that she began to run, only to check herself severely. “She’ll hear you, you fool. Jane, I absolutely forbid you to be such a fool; and Renata’s slippers will come off if you run, nasty sloppy things, and then you’ll tread in green slime, and get it between all your toes. _It will squelch._” The horror of the black passages was eclipsed; Jane stopped running obediently, but she took longer steps and diminished the distance between herself and her unconscious guide.