Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson - "The Greek View of Life"

Lawrence J. Leslie - "The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island"

Katharine Newlin Burt - "Snow Blind"

William Hazlitt - "Table Talk, Essays on Men and Manners"

The Heart of Rome

F >> Francis Marion Crawford >> The Heart of Rome




"Not at all."

So Malipieri went home to think matters over, and the Baron sat a long
time in his chair, looking much pleased with himself and apparently
admiring a magnificent diamond which he wore on one of his thick
fingers.





CHAPTER X




Malipieri was convinced that Volterra not only knew exactly how far
the work under the palace had proceeded, but was also acquainted with
the general nature of the objects found in the inner chamber, beyond
the well shaft. The apparent impossibility of such a thing was of no
importance. The Baron would never have been so anxious to get rid of
Malipieri unless he had been sure that the difficult part of the work
was finished and that the things discovered were of such dimensions as
to make it impossible to remove them secretly. Malipieri knew the man
and guessed that if he could not pocket the value of everything found
in the excavations by disposing of the discoveries secretly, he would
take the government into his confidence at once, as the surest means
of preventing any one else from getting a share.

What was hard to understand was that Volterra should know how far the
work had gone before Malipieri had told him anything about it. That he
did know, could hardly be doubted. He had practically betrayed the
fact by the mistake he had made in assuring himself that Malipieri was
willing to leave the house, before even questioning him as to the
progress made since they had last met. He had been a little too eager
to get rid of the helper he no longer needed. It did not even occur to
Malipieri that Masin could have betrayed him, yet so far as it was
possible to judge, Masin was the only living man who had looked into
the underground chamber. As he walked home, he recalled the
conversation from beginning to end, and his conviction was confirmed.
Volterra had been in a bad temper, nervous, a little afraid of the
result and therefore inclined to talk in a rough and bullying tone. As
soon as he had ascertained that Malipieri was not going to oppose him,
he had become oily to obsequiousness.

On his part Malipieri had accepted everything Volterra proposed, for
two reasons. In the first place he would not for the world have had
the financier think that he wanted a share of the treasure, or any
remuneration for what he had done. Secondly, he knew that possession
is nine points of the law, and that if anything could ever be obtained
for Sabina it would not be got by making a show of violent opposition
to the Baron's wishes. If Malipieri had refused to leave his lodging
in the palace, Volterra could have answered by filling the house with
people in his own employ, or by calling in government architects,
archaeologists and engineers, and taking the whole matter out of
Malipieri's hands.

The first thing to be ascertained was, who had entered the vaults and
reported the state of the work to Volterra. Malipieri might have
suspected the porter himself, for it was possible that there might be
another key to the outer entrance of the cellar; but there was a
second door further in, to which Masin had put a patent padlock, and
even Masin had not the key to that. The little flat bit of steel, with
its irregular indentations, was always in Malipieri's pocket. As he
walked, he felt for it, and it was in its place, with his silver
pencil-case and the small penknife he always carried for sharpening
pencils.

The porter could not possibly have picked that lock; indeed, scarcely
any one could have done so without injuring it, and Malipieri had
locked it himself at about seven o'clock that evening. Even if the
porter could have got in by any means, Malipieri doubted whether he
could have reached the inner chamber of the vaults. There was some
climbing to be done, and the man was old and stiff in the joints. The
place was not so easy to find as might have been supposed, either,
after the first breach in the Roman wall was past. Malipieri intended
to improve the passage the next morning, in order to make it more
practicable for Sabina.

He racked his brains for an explanation of the mystery, and when he
reached the door of the palace, after eleven o'clock, he had come to
the conclusion that in spite of appearances there must be some
entrance to the vaults of which he knew nothing, and it was all-
important to find it. He regretted the quixotic impulse which had
restrained him from exploring everything at once. It would have been
far better to go to the end of his discovery, and he wondered why he
had not done go. He would not have insulted himself by supposing that
Sabina could believe him capable of taking the gem from the ring of
the statue, in other words, of stealing, since whoever the rightful
owner might be, nothing in the vault could possibly belong to him, and
he regarded it all as her property, though he doubted whether he could
ever obtain for her a tenth part of the value it represented. He had
acted on an impulse, which was strengthened until it looked plausible
by the thought of the intense pleasure he would take in showing her
the wonderful discovery, and in leading her safely through the
mysterious intricacies of the strange place. It had been a very
selfish impulse after all, and if he really let her come the next day,
there might even be a little danger to her.

He let himself in and locked the postern door behind him. The porter
and his wife were asleep and the glass window of the lodge door was
quite dark. Malipieri lighted a wax taper and went upstairs.

Masin was waiting, and opened when he heard his master's footsteps on
the landing. As a rule, he went to bed, if Malipieri went out in the
evening; both men were usually tired out by their day's work.

"What is the matter?" Malipieri asked.

"There is somebody in the vaults," Masin answered. "I had left my pipe
on a stone close to the padlocked door and when you were gone I took a
lantern and went down to get it. When I came near the door I was sure
I heard some one trying it gently from the other side. I stopped to
listen and I distinctly heard footsteps going away. I ran forward and
tried to find a crack, to see if there were a light, but the door is
swollen with the dampness and fits tightly. Besides, by the time I had
reached it the person inside must have got well away."

"What time was it?" asked Malipieri, slipping off his light overcoat.

"You went out at nine o'clock, sir. It could not have been more than
half an hour later."

"Light both lanterns. We must go down at once. See that there is
plenty of oil in them."

In five minutes both men were ready.

"You had better take your revolver, sir," suggested Masin.

Malipieri laughed.

"I have had that revolver since I was eighteen," he said, "and I have
never needed it yet. Our tools are there, and they are better than
firearms."

They went down the staircase quietly, fearing to wake the porter, and
kept close to the north wall till they reached the further end of the
courtyard. When they had passed the outer door at the head of the
winding staircase, Malipieri told Masin to lock it after them.

"We cannot padlock the other door from the inside," he explained, "for
there are no hasps. If the man managed to pass us he might get out
this way."

He led the way down, making as little noise as possible. Masin held up
his lantern, peering into the gloom over Malipieri's shoulder.

"No one could pass the other door without breaking it down," Malipieri
said.

They reached the floor of the cellars, which extended in both
directions from the foot of the staircase, far to the left by low,
dark vaults like railway tunnels, and a short distance to the right,
where they ended at the north-west corner. The two men turned that
way, but after walking a dozen yards, they turned to the left and
entered a damp passage barely wide enough for them both abreast. It
ended at the padlocked door, and before unlocking the latter Malipieri
laid his ear to the rough panel and listened attentively. Not a sound
broke the stillness. He turned the key, and took off the padlock and
slipped it into his pocket before going on. Without it the door could
not be fastened.

The passage widened suddenly beyond, in another short tunnel ending at
the outer foundation wall of the palace. In this tunnel, on the right-
hand side, was the breach the two men had first made in order to gain
access to the unexplored region. Now that there was an aperture, the
running water on the other side could be heard very distinctly, like a
little brook in a rocky channel, but more steady. Both men examined
the damp floor carefully with their lanterns, in the hope of finding
some trace of footsteps; but the surface was hard and almost black,
and where there had been a little slime their own feet had rubbed it
off, as they came and went during many days. The stones and rubbish
they had taken from the wall had been piled up and hardened to form an
inclined causeway by which to reach the irregular hole. This was now
just big enough to allow a man to walk through it, bending almost
double. Masin lighted one of the lamps, which they generally left at
that place, and set it on a stone.

Malipieri began to go up, his stick in his right hand, the lantern in
his left.

"Let me go first, sir," said Masin, trying to pass him.

"Nonsense!" Malipieri answered sharply, and went on.

Masin kept as close to him as possible. He had picked up the lightest
of the drilling irons for a weapon. It must have weighed at least ten
pounds and it was a yard long. In such a hand as Masin's a blow from
it would have broken a man's bones like pipe stems.

The wall was about eight feet thick, and when Malipieri got to the
other end of the hole he stopped and looked down, holding out his
lantern at arm's length. He could see nothing unusual, and he heard no
sound, except the gurgle of the little black stream that ran ten feet
below him. He began to descend. The masonry was very irregular, and
sloped outwards towards the ground, so that some of the irregularities
made rough steps here and there, which he knew by heart. Below,
several large fragments of Roman brick and cement lay here and there,
where they had fallen in the destruction of the original building. It
was not hard to get down, and the space was not large. It was bounded
by the old wall on one side, and most of the other was taken up by a
part of a rectangular mass of masonry, of rough mediaeval
construction, which projected inward.

The place was familiar, but Malipieri looked about him carefully,
while Masin was climbing down. Along the base of the straight wall
there was a channel about two feet wide, through which the dark water
flowed rapidly. It entered from the right-hand corner, by a low,
arched aperture, through which it seemed out of the question that a
man could crawl, or even an ordinary boy of twelve. When they had
first come to this place Masin had succeeded in poking in a long stick
with a bit of lighted wax taper fastened to it, and both men had seen
that the channel ran on as far as it could be seen, with no widening.
At the other end of the chamber it ran out again by a similar conduit.
What had at first surprised Malipieri had been that the water did not
enter from the side of the foundations near the Vicolo dei Soldati,
but ran out that way. He had also been astonished at the quantity and
speed of the current. A channel a foot deep and two feet wide carries
a large quantity of water if the velocity be great, and Malipieri had
made a calculation which had convinced him that if the outflow were
suddenly closed, the small space in which he now stood would in a few
minutes be full up to within three or four feet of the vault. He would
have given much to know whence the water came and whither it went, and
what devilry had made it rise suddenly and drown a man when the
excavations had been made under Gregory Sixteenth.

From below, the place where an entrance had then been opened was
clearly visible. The vault had been broken into and had afterwards
been rebuilt from above. The bits of timber which had been used for
the frame during the operation were still there, a rotting and mouldy
nest for hideous spiders and noisome creatures that haunt the dark.

The air was very cold, and was laden with the indescribable smell of
dried slime which belongs to deep wells which have long been almost
quite dry. It was clearly a long time since the little stream had
overflowed its channel, but at the first examination he had made
Malipieri had understood that in former times the water had risen to
within three feet of the vault. Up to that height there was a thin
coating of the dry mud, which peeled off in irregular scales if
lightly touched. The large fragments of masonry that half covered the
floor were all coated in the same way with what had once been a film
of slime.

The air, though cold, could be breathed easily, and the lights did not
grow dim in it as they do in subterranean places where the atmosphere
is foul. The stream of water, flowing swiftly in its deep channel from
under the little arch, brought plentiful ventilation into it. Above,
there was no aperture in the vaulting, but there was one in the
mediaeval masonry that projected into the chamber. There, on the side
towards the right, where the water flowed in, Malipieri had found a
narrow slit, barely wide enough to admit a man's open hand and wrist,
but nearly five feet high, evidently a passage intended for letting
the water flow into the interior of the construction when it
overflowed its channel and rose above the floor of the chamber.

At first Malipieri had supposed that this aperture communicated with
some ancient and long-forgotten drain by which the water could escape
to the Tiber; it was not until he had gained an entrance to the hollow
mass of masonry that he understood the hideous use to which it had
been applied.

It had not been hard to enlarge it. Any one who has worked among ruins
in Italy could tell, even blindfold, the difference between the work
done in ancient times and that of the middle ages. Roman brickwork is
quite as compact as solid sandstone, but mediaeval masonry was almost
invariably built in a hurry by bad workmen, of all sorts of fragments
embedded in poorly mingled cement, and it breaks up with tolerable
ease under a heavy pickaxe.

In half a day Malipieri and Masin had widened the slit to a convenient
passage, but as soon as it had been possible to squeeze through, the
architect had gone in. He never forgot what he felt when he first
looked about him. Masin could not follow him until many blows of the
pick had widened the way for his bulkier frame.

Malipieri stopped at the entrance now, holding his lantern close to
the ground, and looking for traces of footsteps. He found none, but as
he was about to move forward he uttered an exclamation of surprise,
and picked up a tiny object which he held close to the light. It was
only a wax match, of which the head had been broken off when it had
been struck, so that it had not been lighted. That was all, but
neither he nor Masin carried wax matches in the vaults, because the
dampness soon made them useless. They took common sulphur matches in
tin match-boxes. Besides, this was an English wax light, as any one
could tell at a glance, for it was thicker, and stiffer, and longer
than the cheaper Italian ones.

Malipieri drew back and showed it to his man, who examined it,
understood, and put it into his pocket without a word. Then they both
went in through the aperture in the wall.

The masonry outside was rectangular, as far as it could be seen.
Inside, it was built like a small circular cistern, smoothly cemented,
and contracting above in a dome, that opened by a square hole to the
well-shaft above. Like the stones in the outer chamber, the cement was
coated with scales of dried mud. The shaft was now certainly closed at
the top, for in the daytime not a ray of light penetrated into its
blackness.

The lanterns illuminated the place completely, and the two men looked
about, searching for some new trace of a living being. The yellow
light fell only on the remains of men dead long ago. Some of the bones
lay as they had lain since then, when the drowned bodies had gently
reached the floor as the "lost water" subsided. Malipieri had not
touched them, nor Masin either. Two skeletons lay at full length, face
downwards, as a drowned body always sinks at last, when decay has done
its loathsome work. A third lay on its side, in a frightfully natural
attitude, the skull a little raised up and resting against the
cemented wall, the arms stretched out together, the hands still
clutching a rusty crowbar. This one was near the entrance, and if, in
breaking their way in, Malipieri and Masin had not necessarily
destroyed the cement on each side of the slit, they would have found
the marks where the dead man's crowbar had worked desperately for a
few minutes before he had been drowned. Malipieri had immediately
reflected that the unfortunate wretch, who was evidently the mason of
whom Sassi had told him, had certainly not entered through the
aperture formerly made from above in the outer chamber, since the
narrow slit afforded no possible passage to the well. That doubtless
belonged to some other attempt to find the treasure, and the fact that
the mason's skeleton lay inside would alone have shown that he had got
in from above, most likely through a low opening just where the dome
began to curve inward. A further search had discovered some bits of
wood, almost rotted to powder, which had apparently once been a
ladder.

A much less practised eye than the architect's would have understood
at a glance that if a living man were let down through the shaft in
the centre of the dome, and left on the floor, he could not possibly
get up even as far as the other hole, since the smooth cement offered
not the slightest hold; and that if the outflow of the stream from the
first chamber were arrested, the water would immediately fill it and
rise simultaneously in the well, to drown the victim, or to strip his
bones by its action, if he had been allowed to die of hunger or
thirst. It was clear, too, that if the latter form of death were
chosen, he must have suffered to the last minute of his life the agony
of hearing the stream flowing outside, not three paces from him,
beyond the slit. Human imagination could hardly invent a more
hideously cruel death-trap, nor one more ingeniously secret from the
world without.

The unhappy mason's ladder had perhaps broken with his weight, or his
light had gone out, and he had then been unable to find the horizontal
aperture, but he had probably entered through the latter, when he had
met his fate. The fact was, as Malipieri afterwards guessed, that the
hole through the vault outside had been made hastily after the
accident, in the hope of recovering the man's body, but that it had
been at once closed again because it appeared to open over a deep pit
full of still water.

A stout rope ladder now dangled from the lateral aperture in the dome,
which Malipieri had immediately understood to have been made to allow
the water to overflow when the well was full. He had also felt
tolerably sure that the well itself had not been originally
constructed for the deadly use to which it had evidently been put in
later times, but for the purpose of confining the water in a reservoir
that could be easily cleaned, since it could be easily emptied, and in
which the supply could be kept at a permanent level, convenient for
drawing it from above. In the days when all the ancient aqueducts of
Rome were broken, a well of the "lost water" was a valuable possession
in houses that were turned into fortresses at a moment's notice and
were sometimes exposed to long and desperate sieges.

In order to reach the horizontal opening, Malipieri had climbed upon
Masin's sturdy shoulders, steadying himself as well as he might till
he had laid his hands on the edge of the orifice. As he hung there,
Masin had held up the handle of a pickaxe as high as he could reach
against the smooth wall, as a crossbar on which Malipieri had
succeeded in getting a slight foothold, enough for a man who was not
heavy and was extraordinarily active. A moment later he had drawn
himself up and inward. At the imminent risk of his life, as he
afterwards found, he had crawled on in total darkness till the way
widened enough for him to turn round and get back. He had then lowered
a string he had with him, and had drawn up a lantern first, then the
end of a coil of rope, then the tools for carrying on the exploration.
The rest had been easy. Masin had climbed up by the rope, after making
knots in it and when Malipieri had called out, from the inner place to
which he had retired with the end, that it was made fast. But the
light showed the architect that in turning round, he had narrowly
escaped falling into an open shaft, of which he could not see the
bottom, but which was evidently meant for the final escape of the
overflowing water.

There was room to pass this danger, however, and they had since laid a
couple of stout boards over it, weighted with stones to keep them in
place. Beyond, the passage rose till it was high enough for a man to
walk upright. Judging from the elevation now reached this passage was
hollowed in the thickness of one of the main walls of the palace, and
it was clear that the water could not reach it. A few yards from the
chasm, it inclined quickly downwards, and at the end there were half a
dozen steps, which evidently descended to a greater depth than the
floor of the first outer chamber.

So far as it had hitherto been possible to judge, there was no way of
getting to these last steps, except that opened by the two men, and
leading through the dry well. In former times, there might have been
an entrance through the wall at the highest level, but if it had ever
existed it had been so carefully closed that no trace of it could now
be found.

This tedious explanation of a rather complicated construction has been
necessary to explain what afterwards happened. Reducing it to its
simplest terms, it becomes clear that if the water rose, a person in
the passage, or anywhere beyond the overflow shaft, could not possibly
get back through the well, though he would apparently be safe from
drowning if he stayed where he was; and to the best of Malipieri's
knowledge there was no other way out. Any one caught there would have
to wait till the water subsided, and if that did not happen he would
starve to death.

The two men stood still and listened. They could still distinguish the
faint gurgling of the water, very far off, but that was all.

"I believe you heard a rat," said Malipieri, discontentedly, after a
long pause.

"Rats do not carry English wax matches," observed Masin.

"They eat them when they can find them," answered Malipieri. "They
carry them off, and hide them, and drop them, too. And a big rat
running away makes a noise very like a man's footsteps."

"That is true," assented Masin. "There were many of them in the
prison, and I sometimes thought they were the keepers when I heard
them at night." "At all events, we will go to the end," said
Malipieri, beginning to walk down the inclined way, and carrying his
lantern low, so as not to be dazzled by the light.

Masin followed closely, grasping his drilling-iron, and still
expecting to use it. The end of the passage had once been walled up,
but they had found the fragments of brick and mortar lying much as
they had fallen when knocked away. It was impossible to tell from
which side the obstacle had been destroyed.

Going further, they stepped upon the curve of a tunnel vault, and were
obliged to stoop low to avoid striking against another overhead. The
two vaults had been carefully constructed, one outside the other,
leaving a space of about five feet between them. The one under their
feet covered the inner chamber in which Malipieri had seen the bronze
statue. He and Masin had made a hole a little on one side of the
middle, in order not to disturb the keystones, working very carefully
lest any heavy fragments should fall through; for they had at once
been sure that if any thing was to be found, it must be concealed in
that place. Before making the opening, they had thoroughly explored
the dark curved space from end to end and from side to side, but could
discover no aperture. The inner vault had never been opened since it
had been built.

Malipieri, reconstructing the circumstances of the accident in the
last century, came to the conclusion that the mason who had been
drowned had been already between the vaults, when some of the men
behind had discovered that the water was rising in the well, and that
they had somehow got out in time, but that their unfortunate companion
had come back too late, or had perished while trying to break his way
out by the slit, through which the water must have been rushing in.
How they had originally entered the place was a mystery. Possibly they
had been lowered from above, down the well-shaft, but it was all very
hard to explain. The only thing that seemed certain was that the
treasure had never been seen by any one since it had been closed in
under the vault, ages ago. Malipieri had not yet found time to make a
careful plan of all the places through which he had passed. There were
so many turns and changes of level, that it would be impossible to get
an accurate drawing without using a theodolite or some similar
instrument of precision. From the measurements he had taken, however,
and the rough sketches he had made, he believed that the double vault
was not under the palace itself, but under the open courtyard, at the
depth of about forty feet, and therefore below the level of the Tiber
at average high water.

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