He stooped and raised the lantern, casting the light slowly all round him, so that when he had finished his inspection nothing that was in that vault could be unknown to him. Then he knelt down beside the prostrate form of the man, and turned the face upward. Lionel Crawford! There was no other way of getting out of that vault but by climbing up that rope. He tried to climb that rope and failed. His strength was gone. He sat down on the floor of the vault, and covered his face with his hands. With the exception of himself, the lantern, and the corpse of Lionel Crawford, the vault was empty! Part II. CHAPTER I. For a while Lavirotte sat on the floor of that vault, immovable. He was confounded, stunned. He found himself confronted by three terrible facts. There was no treasure here. Here was the dead body of Lionel Crawford. Here was he himself entombed. When he closed the door of the tower, he locked it on the inside, and put the key in his pocket. How was anyone to find out he was here? Lionel Crawford had told him that during all the months and months he had lived in that place no one, to his knowledge, had ever rapped at the door. Was it likely anyone would rap now? And, if anyone did, what use would the rapping be? From the top of the vault to the threshold of the door was at least twenty feet; and he was twelve feet below the top of the vault. And all day long, around and about the base of St. Prisca's Tower the heavy traffic of one of the great waterside streets groaned and screeched and murmured, continually pierced by the shouts and oaths of men, until such a dull, dead, loud tumult reared itself against the walls of the tower that no single human voice could by any possibility be, in the daytime, heard without from where he now sat. By night things would not improve. If he happened to be on a level with the door leading from the tower into the lane, he could, no doubt, hear the footfall of the infrequent policeman. But here, thirty feet down, and with the concave shield of the vault between him and the doorway, and the massive door between him and the lane, it would be insanity to expect he could hear so slight a sound. There, it is true, dangled the rope through the hole. He could read the last chapter in the life of Lionel Crawford by the aid of that rope. Would someone else, years, ay perhaps a century hence, be able to read the last chapter of his life by the aid of what would then remain of that rope? He saw how it had been with the dead old man. During his (Lavirotte's) absence, Crawford's pickaxe had struck upon the roof of the vault. Crawford then felt that the labours of his life were at an end. While he (Lavirotte) was sleeping, the old man must have worked like a giant. They had found the floor above the vault a few days ago. Now, here was hard against the steel pick the very stone that kept the treasure from the old man's eyes.