How were the entombed men to be delivered? Various ways suggested themselves in the heat of the moment. It was plain to all that the first thing to be done was to force the door. This was no trivial matter. How it was to be forced was the consideration. There were those among the crowd who had seen the door open, and noticed the huge bolt of the lock which shot into an iron holdfast let into the solid stonework of the tower. They knew that the old man had never omitted to lock the door on the inside when he came in, and that the young man had been no less careful. There was a general belief that something secret, and, upon the whole, uncommendable, was going on in that tower, and the desire to rescue the two imprisoned men was largely augmented by curiosity. The laneway from which the door opened was seldom crowded. There was usually a brisk traffic up and down it; but in that part of the City the narrow laneways that feed the great thoroughfares are seldom blocked, although the main thoroughfares themselves may be impassable. A man in the crowd cried out: "Someone get a pole or a beam, and we'll soon have them out." Then several men rushed off in various directions. By this time the traffic in the laneways and in Porter Street itself was interrupted. The workmen ran out of the stores and wharfs, the waggoners and carters deserted their horses, and even the bargemen from the river had come up on hearing that some terrible accident had befallen St. Prisca's Tower. In a few minutes three men were seen advancing, carrying a heavy beam of wood. Other men ran to help them. A dozen willing arms had now seized the beam, and a hundred men were anxious to lend their aid if opportunity offered. A way was cleared for the men with the beam. The people separated on both sides. The men turned out of Porter Street and ran up into the lane. The men engaged in carrying the baulk were too intent upon getting it to its destination as quick as possible to observe one fatal defect. One onlooker shouted out: "Too long. Too long." Then the men carrying it swept up, way was made for them, and they tried to bring the beam into position for use as a battering-ram against the door. Then the onlooker's words were confirmed by experience, and it was seen that it would be utterly impossible to use the baulk effectually as a ram, for, owing to the narrowness of the lane, it was impossible to get it at right angles to the door, and striking the door with it at an acute angle would not be likely to produce the desired effect. However, it was better to try this which was at hand, than to do nothing at all. In the meantime some better means might be devised of bursting open the door. Once, twice, thrice, half-a-dozen times the men thrust the beam obliquely against the massive woodwork. It merely glanced off the thick stubborn oak, and more than two-thirds of its power was expended upon the solid and immovable stonework of the doorway. Other pieces of timber were brought, but all proved too long to be of any effective use. The shortest, it is true, could be brought into a horizontal position against the door, but it allowed of no play, and therefore was incapable of receiving the necessary impetus. Then the crowd began to clamour for sledges. A great, brown-bearded man, tall, lank, and rounded in the shoulders, broke away from the crowd crying: "I'll soon get it open; I'll soon break it in." This man was celebrated in Porter Street for his enormous strength. No sooner had he undertaken to burst in the door than all other efforts were suspended, in the full faith that he would make good his words. In a few moments he returned, bearing in each hand a square half-hundredweight. He hastened up to the door and said: "Someone must hold me." But how are they to hold him? "I want," he said, "to put my back against the door, lift these up this way" (he raised the half-hundreds above his head as though they were no heavier than boxing-gloves), "then I'll bring them down against the door; but if it bursts open I don't want to fall in, for there's a pit inside." The difficulty now was how to hold him, and at the same time give him free play with the weights, and avoid any possibility of the weights in the downward swoop touching anyone who might aid him. Some time was lost in trying to arrange so that he might be held, prevented from falling inward, and, at the same time, not impeded. At last he cried: "Let me alone; I can manage it myself. Stand back. Don't be afraid of me." Then they cleared a semicircle round him. He put his back to the door, raised his arms aloft, directly over his head, bowed himself backward, so that his head and heels alone touched the door, and his back was bowed forward as a bent bow is against the string. Then, setting his teeth and putting all the energy of his body into the muscles of his arms and shoulders, he swung the two weights downward with prodigious force, loosed them from his hold when they came level with his legs, sprang forward, and turned swiftly round with a look of expectant success. The crowd cheered. The two half-hundredweights had crushed through the lower portion of the door as though it were so much cardboard. The lock remained unshaken. The blows had been delivered too low down, and, while the wood had given way, the iron had remained firm. Then, while the people were standing admiring the result of his great strength, a man cried out: "Here's a crowbar, Bill. You can finish it with that." Bill caught the crowbar in his hand, whirled it over his head as though it were but a walking-cane, leaped back from the door as far as the narrowness of the lane would allow him; then, holding the crowbar lightly in his hand, as a soldier holds his gun at the charge, he dashed forward and flung the crowbar with its blunt edge against the place where the lock held fast. The lock had been loosened on the door by the previous assault, and now, with a tearing screech, the bolts drew out of the tough wood, and the door swung back on its hinges. When Bill had succeeded, and seen that he had succeeded, he turned round, surveyed the crowd steadily for a few moments, and then said: "That's my share of it. You do the rest." Then, as one who had no further concern with the matter, he strode off, the people making way for him as he went. Two or three men approached the door and looked in. Below was a wild jumble of planks and beams and stones and earth, all mixed up, higgledy-piggledy, in the wildest confusion. It was impossible to make out anything clearly at first, owing to the dense dust that floated in the air. The men who had thrust in their heads withdrew them after a short time, partly suffocated and partly blinded by the fumes that arose out of the pit beneath. "Ask is there anyone there," suggested one of the crowd. A head was thrust in through the open doorway, and a stentorian voice cried out: "Anyone there!" To this a feeble voice replied from what seemed to be the bowels of the earth: "Yes. Help. Water, for God's sake." "All right," shouted the man above. "We'll get you out safe enough. Keep up your heart. Are the two of you below?" "Yes," answered the feeble voice; "but he is dead. Quick, for God's sake, or I shall die. This dust is killing me." "Keep up," shouted the man, "and we'll do the best. We'll get you out in a jiffy. There's a hundred of us here. How much of the place has fallen?" "I don't know," answered the voice below, growing fainter. "I think only the first floor. I can talk no more. I am dying." And then came some sounds, inarticulate and faint, the meaning of which the man above could not gather. A ladder was got and thrust down into the pit, and in a short time a score of willing hands were at work. The joists had drawn gradually out of the wall, and the eastern end being first freed, that side fell downward, shooting most of the stones and earth up into the pit at the eastern side. The floor doubled up in two from the north and south, almost like the leaves of a book, and in the fold of this a large quantity of clay and stones had remained. This folded part fell almost directly on the hole made by Lionel Crawford in the roof of the vault. The weight of the stones and the impetus they had gained in their fall was sufficient to cause them to smash through the doubled-up flooring, and some of them fell through the hole, carrying with them a portion of the roof of the vault. By this falling mass Lavirotte had been struck and hurt, and under some of the flooring, earth, and stones he now lay partly covered, prostrate upon the ground of the vault. Owing to the fact that most of the heavy stones and the great bulk of the earth had been shot to the eastern side of the tower, comparatively little entered the vault, and so Lavirotte escaped instant death. The men working at his release found out after a short time, partly by his moaning and partly by looking through the hole in the fallen floor, that Lavirotte was in the vault, and not immediately under the fallen floor. In less than an hour he was rescued. He was all begrimed with dirt and clay, insensible, battered, bleeding, almost pulseless. He was immediately placed in a cab and taken to an hospital. On his way he recovered consciousness and begged for water, which was given him. Upon examination it was discovered that his injuries were not of much moment, and that exhaustion had more to do with his prostrate condition than the hurts he had received. For a long time he lay quiet, expressing no wish. At length he asked what had become of the body of his companion, and was told that it had been removed from the tower. He was asked if he had any friends with whom he desired to communicate, and he said no. Now that Lionel Crawford was dead, there was no one in London whom he could call a friend. He did not wish that Dora should hear anything of the result of that awful day, when her grandfather lost his life, and he all hope of the vast fortune upon which he had been building for some time. They told him that he would be able to leave the hospital in a few days. A few days would be quite time enough to tell her all the bad news. Indeed, the longer she was kept in ignorance of it the better. To the inquiries of those around him, he had refused to give any reply beyond the facts that St. Prisca's Tower was his property; that he and the dead man, Lionel Crawford, had for some time back lived in the tower; and that, for reasons which he declined to state, they had both been engaged in excavating. John Cassidy usually left his office at about four o'clock in the evening. As he was walking in the direction of his home on the afternoon Lavirotte was rescued from the tower, his eye was arrested by a line in the bills of The Evening Record--"Mysterious affair in Porter Street." As a rule, John Cassidy did not buy newspapers. They did not interest him. His theory was that one could learn enough of public affairs from the conversation of others. But a mysterious affair always did interest him, and in this case he bought The Evening Record, and read in it a brief paragraph of what occurred in the tower, giving the names of the two men concerned. Mystery on mystery! Here was this man Lavirotte mixed up in two inexplicable affairs in a space of a few months. On the previous occasion Lavirotte had been found insensible, near a wounded man. Now he was found insensible, near a dead man. In the paragraph there was no suggestion that any suspected foul play; and yet to him, Cassidy, it seemed impossible that Lavirotte was not in some way accountable for the death of the man found with him that day. Cassidy was burning with anxiety to tell someone of Lavirotte's former predicament. It would give him such an air of importance if he could add material facts to those already known in connection with this matter. There was no use in his going back to the office, for all his fellow-clerks had left. It was impossible for him to go home to his room burdened with this news. He therefore resolved to turn into the Cleopatra Restaurant in the Strand, in the hope he might there find someone to whom he might communicate the startling addition to the news in the evening paper. It so fell out that he succeeded beyond his wishes. He found a group of men standing at the bar, and among these one named Grafton, an artist whom he had known for some time, and through whom he hoped to find himself on the track of the Lavirotte mystery, as he knew Grafton was acquainted with Lavirotte. "I say, Grafton," said he, "that's a deuce of a mysterious thing that happened to-day in Porter Street. You know, of course, this is the Lavirotte you told me you knew. He's back in London again, after being mixed up in a most extraordinary affair in my part of the world." Then he related, in a voice loud enough to be heard by the group of men standing round, all he knew concerning the affair at Glengowra. When he had finished, one of the bystanders, whom he did not know, said: "You would have no objection to my making use of what you say?" "In the press?" said Cassidy, colouring with delight and importance. "Yes," said the other. "I am connected with The Evening Record, and if you authorise me to do so, I should be greatly pleased to add just a line to our account of the affair. All I would ask or say: 'We understand that M. Lavirotte, who was found insensible, was some little time ago mixed up with another mysterious affair in Glengowra, in the south of Ireland.'" Cassidy gave a willing consent, and the addition suggested appeared in the special edition of The Evening Record. It was in the special edition of The Evening Record that Dora Harrington saw her grandfather was dead, that Lavirotte was injured, and that he had been mixed up in a mysterious affair in Glengowra.