Margaret assured him that she never paid attention to malicious reports. Mr. Fripp said that it did her credit.
They walked on in single file until they reached the locked door. Peter judged the distance to be about a quarter of a mile, and realised that the passage must run straight beneath the Priory grounds to the Inn.
Mr. Fripp bent down, and turned his torch on to the lock. Then he felt in his pockets for some slim-looking tools, which he laid on the ground. One of these he inserted gently into the lock.
"Can you do it without any damage?" Michael asked.
Mr. Fripp forgot his role of injured innocence. "Lor' yes, sir! If you'd seen some of the locks I've picked you wouldn't ask me whether I could open this one. It ain't worthy of me, this ain't." He worked in silence for a short while, and then, turning the instrument he held, he pushed the door. It opened without a sound, for it had no other fastening than the lock.
Michael flashed his torch into the room. They saw a press in the centre, and some smaller machines round it. The room was a fair size, and contained only the machines, a few wooden stools, and a safe.
"Electric light and all!" said Mr. Fripp admiringly, and switched it on. "Do themselves proud, don't they? There's no denying it don't pay to be honest, no matter what they say."
Peter and Michael were both inspecting the press. Margaret sat down on one of the high stools, and listened to their highly technical comments. Mr. Fripp stood beside her, and seemed to take as little interest in the press as she did. "Wonderful how they can make it out, ain't it, miss?" he said affably.
She agreed. "Is it all printed by that big machine in the middle?" she inquired.
Michael heard her. "No, this is where they roll it off. Come and look."
She went up to him, and he showed her an engraved plate. "See? That's the plate. The paper goes between those rollers and when the current's turned on, that plate slides backwards and forwards, while the rollers press the paper on to it, and shoot it out this end, roughly speaking."
"I see. It's like looking-glass writing, isn't it? What are the other machines?"
"One of them cuts the paper. This one. I don't understand all of them."
"Neat little affair," Peter said. "I suppose this is the engraver's corner. Wonder who does it?"
"Unless I'm much mistaken, Duval was the engraver," Michael answered. He looked round the room. "Only the one door. Better test the walls, though. Where you find one moving stone-block you're likely to find another."
Peter looked up quickly. "Oh, so it was you, then?"
"Yes. Sorry if I gave you all a scare. It wasn't me you saw in the cellars, though. That was Fripp. He was trying to find a way into this place from there."
"Look here!" Peter said. "Have we also to thank you for our skeleton? Because if so…'
"What skeleton?" Michael asked, moving along one wall, testing as he went.
"That one we found in the priest's hole."
"I never knew you did. No, that must have been one of the Monk's attentions."
"But, Michael, you said that day at the Inn that you were responsible for what had happened at the Priory!" Margaret objected.
"I don't think I said that, did I? If I did I thought you were referring to the groaning stone. Anything that side, Jimmy?,
"Not that I can find, sir. Nothing there, Mr. Fortescue?"
"Nothing," Peter said, dusting his hands.
"Well, that's something, anyway," Michael said. "They can't get out of this room by any other way than the door. If I can only find the Monk's own entrance I may get him yet."
Margaret was puzzled. "But doesn't he come in through the Inn? What's that entrance for, then?"
"The rest of his gang. I watched them go down this evening, and I watched them come up. At neither time was the Monk with them, and from what I heard they none of them, with the possible exception of Wilkes, know his way in or who he is."
"By Jove!" Peter said. "Then I'll bet that's what Duval had discovered! You know, he came up to see Charles the very night he was murdered, and he told him that though he hadn't found out who the Monk was — "seen his face," was the way he put it - he had found out something."
"I think there's no doubt he did find the Monk's way, and that's why the Monk murdered him. What's more, I still believe it comes out at the chapel."
Margaret remembered something. "Peter, didn't Charles say Duval talked about finding the Monk if he had to go down amongst the dead to do it?"
"Yes, I believe he did. We thought he was cracked. Have you tried to-find an entrance in the chapel, Strange - I mean Draycott?"
"Till I'm sick of the sight of masonry," Michael replied. "And unless I find it I can't be sure that is his way in, so that I daren't make a raid in case he gets away by some passage we don't know of. The rest of the gang's no use unless I can get the Monk. No, there's no other entrance here. We'd better try and find the secret stairway. If we can't, I'll nip back to the Inn, and go to the Priory, and attack it from that side. Come along, Jimmy, and take care how you lock the door."
They went out again into the passage, switching off the light. While Fripp locked the door, Michael bolted the one into the Fortescues' late prison, and fixed the shutter in position again.
"Now as far as I can make out," he said, "we must be standing at the moment either on the level of the cellars, or below them. Probably below, judging from the depth of that opening into the well. And we mustn't forget that on the library side of the Priory the cellars are on the level of the ground. Moreover, if that machine was only just below the sitting-room you must have heard it. The question is what part of the house are we under? If the Inn is there' - he pointed up the passage - "then the chapel ought to be more or less in that direction. Well, we'll see where the passage leads this way." He led them on, flashing his torch ahead. The passage ended in an archway and through this they went, finding themselves in another of the cell-like apartments. It was bare of furniture, and out of it led yet one more.
"Talk about the 'Astings Caves!" said Mr. Fripp. "They aren't in it with this."
"Try for a moving block," Michael said. "Time's getting on, and I must be back at the Inn before anyone's up. Fortescue, you take that wall, will you? Just run along it: never mind about the upper blocks. Get on with it, Fripp!
Don't stand mooning about!"
They started once more to try and move one of the stone blocks that made up the wall. "The things the perlice get up to!" Mr. Fripp remarked. "Give me an honest job of burglary, that's what I say! Well, it ain't 'ere, sir. If we've got many more of these rooms to go over you'll have to send me to one of them sanatoriums where you lay out on a nice balcony the whole blooming day."
But only one other room led out of the one they were in, and it was comparatively small. They started to test its walls, but before Peter had got more than half-way along his side of the room Michael said: "Got it!"
He set his shoulder to the block, and it swung easily and silently on its hidden pivot.
"Took the trouble to oil this one," commented Mr. Fripp. "Now mind what you're about, sir. Let me 'ave a look!"
"It's all right," Michael said, drawing his head and shoulders back into the room. "Only be careful how you step, Margaret. We're right on the staircase. Can you get through if I go first, and give you a hand?"
"Good Lord, yes!" she said. As soon as he had climbed through the gap, she scrambled after him, and found herself standing on the narrow stone stairway. They seemed to be somewhere in the middle of it, for the stairs went down as well as up.
The other two squeezed through the opening, and Michael pressed the block back into position. The light of his torch showed nothing to distinguish this block from any of the others.
"We shall have to count the stairs," Michael said. "I propose to explore downstairs after I've deposited you two at the Priory. Mind how you step, Margaret: the stairs are very steep and narrow."