"Yes sir." Dollops was beside him in an instant. Cleek took the first step carefully, and very slowly descended into the darkness, with Dollops close behind him. Down and down they went, and on reaching the bottom, found the place opened out into a sort of roughly-made tunnel, just as high as a man's head, which ran on straight into the darkness in front of them. "Gawd! gives yer the fair creeps, don't it?" muttered Dollops as they stood in the gloom and tried to take their bearings. "What yer goin' ter do, sir?" "Find out where it leads to--if there's time," whispered Cleek rapidly. "We've got to find out what these human moles are burrowing in the earth like this for. I'd give a good deal to know. Hear anything?" "Not a blinkin' sound, sir." "All right. We'll try the torch, and if any one turns up we'll have to run for it. Now." He touched the electric button, and a blob of light danced out upon the rough clay floor, revealing as it swung in Cleek's swift fingers the whole circumference of the place from ground to ceiling. "Cleverly made," muttered that gentleman in an admiring whisper. "It reminds me of the old 'Twisted Arm' days, Dollops, and the tunnels that ran to the sewers. Remember?" "I should just jolly well think I do, guv'nor! Them were days, if yer like it! Never knew next minute if yer were goin' ter see daylight again." "And this little adventure of ours seems a fair imitation of them!" returned Cleek, with a noiseless laugh. "Let's move a bit farther on and get our bearings. Hello! here's a little sort of cupboard without a door. And ... look at those sacks standing there against that other side in that little cut-out place, Dollops. Now I wonder what the devil _they_ contain. Talk about the Catacombs! They aren't in it with this affair." Dollops crept up noiselessly and laid a hand upon one of the great sacks that stood one upon the other in three double rows, and tried to feel the contents with his fingers. It gave an absolutely unyielding surface, as though it might be stuffed with concrete. "'Ard as a ship's biscuit, sir," he ejaculated. "Now I wonder what the dickens?..." His voice trailed off suddenly, and he stood a moment absolutely still, every nerve in his slim young body taut as wire, every muscle rigid. For along the passage--not so very far in front of them, from where it seemed to terminate--came the thud of men's feet upon the soft clayey ground. The torch went out in an instant. In another, Cleek had caught Dollops's arm and drawn him into the narrow aperture, where, with faces to the wall, they stood tense and rigid, listening while the steps came nearer and nearer. They waited in the darkness, as men in the _Bonnet Rouge_ days must have waited for the stroke of Madame Guillotine.