On and on and on. It was cold down there, like death, and bitter like death, and dark. Rats scuffled and leaped. Once Henry trod on one of them; it squeaked and fled, leaving him sick and cold. His imagination was held and haunted by the small quiet pastor; he seemed, on the whole, the worst of the four miscreants. A sinister air of deadly badness there had been about him.... Lines ran in and out of Henry's memory like cold mice. Something about “a grim Genevan minister walked by with anxious scowl.” ... Horrid.... It made you sweat to think of him. Then on the passage there opened another passage, running sharply into it from the right. That was odd. Which should be followed?

Henry swung his flashlight up each in turn, and both seemed the same narrow blackness. He advanced a few steps, and on his left yet another turning struck out from the main tunnel.

“My God,” Henry reflected, “the place is a regular catacomb.”

If one should lose oneself therein, one might wander for days, as one did in catacombs.... Having no tallow candle, but only an electric torch, one might eat one's boots ... the very rats....

Not repressing a shudder, Henry stood hesitating at the cross-roads, looking this way and that, his ears strained to listen for sounds.

And presently, turning a corner, he perceived that there were sounds—footsteps and low voices, advancing down the left-hand passage towards him. Quickly shutting his light, he stepped back till he came to the right-hand turning, and went a little way up it, to where it sharply bent. Just round the corner he stopped, and stood hidden. He was gambling on the chance that whoever was coming would advance, back or forward, along the main tunnel when they struck into it. If, on the other hand, they crossed this and turned up his passage, he could hastily recede before them until perhaps another turning came, or possibly some exit, or until they turned on him that horrid moon of light and caught him....

Well, life is a gamble at all times, and more particularly to those who play the spy.

Henry listened. The steps came nearer. They had a queer, hollow sound on the earthy floor. Low voices murmured.

It came to Henry suddenly that these were not the voices of Charles Wilbraham, of Sir John Levis, of M. Kratzky, or, presumably then, of the little pastor. These were voices more human, less deadly.

The footsteps reached the main passage, and then halted.

“Here's a puzzle,” said a voice. “Which way, then? Will we divide, or take the one road?”

And then Henry, though he loved not Ulster, thanked God and came forward.

At the sound of his advance a flashlight was swung upon him, and the Ulster voice said, “Put them up!”

Henry put them up.

“It's all right, man. It's only Beechtree,” said another voice, after a moment's inspection, and Henry, though he loved not the Morning Post, blessed its correspondent.

“Good Lord, you're right.... What are you doing here, Beechtree? Is your paper in this damned Republican plot, as well as Sinn Fein, Bolsheviks, Germans, and the Pope? I wouldn't put it past the British Bolshevist to have a finger in it——”

“Indeed, no,” said Henry. “You are quite mistaken, Macdermott. This plot is being run by armament profiteers, White Russia, and Protestant ministers. They're all down here doing it now. I am tracking them. And His Holiness, you remember, sent an encouraging message to the Assembly——”

“The sort of flummery he would encourage.... I beg your pardon, Beechtree. We will not discuss religion: not to-night. Time is short. How did you get into this rat-trap? And whom, precisely, are you tracking?”

“Through a trappon in an archway off the Passage de Monnetier. And I am tracking Wilbraham, Sir John Levis, M. Kratzky, and a Protestant clergyman, who all preceded me through it. But I don't know in the least where they have got to. There are so many ramifications in this affair. I took it for a single tunnel, but it seems to be a regular system.”

“It is,” said Garth. “It extends on the other side of the water too. We got into it this evening through that house in the Place Cornavin where Macdermott was bilked by a Sinn Feiner.”

“We had our suspicions of that house ever since,” Macdermott went on; “so we went exploring this evening, and by the luck of God they'd gone out and left the door on the latch, so we slipped in and searched around, and found a trap-door in a cupboard—where they'd have shoved me down if they hadn't given up the idea half-way. It lets you down into a passage just like this, that runs down to the water and comes out in the courtyard of one of those tumble-down old pigeon-cotes by the Quai du Seujet. We came out there, and then tried over this side, through a trap by the Molard jetty I'd noticed before, and it led us here. There are dozens of these trappons on both sides. Lots of them are inside houses. I always thought they led only to cellars.... As to your four chaps, wherever they've got to, no doubt they're exploring too. Wilbraham in a plot! Likely.”

“It is,” said Henry. “Very likely indeed. There are plenty of facts about Wilbraham you don't know. I've been finding them out for several years. I shall lay them before Committee 9 to-morrow.”

The other two looked at him with the good-natured pity due to the correspondent of the British Bolshevist.

“Your lunatic paper has turned your brain, my son,” Garth said.

“Well, let's be getting on,” Macdermott impatiently urged. “Which way did your plotters take, Beechtree? We may as well be getting after them, anyhow.”

“I don't know. I've lost them. I didn't follow at once, you see; I waited, thinking they would come out presently. When they didn't, I came down too. But by that time they'd got a long start. And, as there are other exits, they may have got out anywhere.”

“Well, let's come along and look. We'll each take a different passage; we'll explore every avenue, like Cabinet Ministers. I'll go straight ahead; one of you two take that right-hand road, and the other the next turning, whenever it comes. We'll each get out where and how we can. Come on.”

Garth turned up to the right. Henry went on with Macdermott for some way, till another turning branched off, running left.

“Ah, there's yours,” said the Ulster delegate. “I shall keep straight on, whatever alluring avenues open on either side to tempt me. To-morrow (if we get out of this) we'll bring a gang of police down and do the thing thoroughly. Good luck, Beechtree. Don't scrag honest civil servants or good clergymen on sight. And don't let old Kratzky scrag you. Politically he's on the right side (that's why he'd want to scrag you, and quite right, too), but personally he's what you might call a trifle unprincipled, and that's why he'd do it as soon as look at you.”

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