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In the bathroom a trap-door, covered by a rug, opened on to a secret staircase leading down to the cellar, and a similar staircase connected the cellar with the laboratory. In the cellar was a large grate.
"It may be," he thought, "that some other prisoner has been confined here at some time or other, or possibly this has been done in order that if the trap-door above should be found, and the revenue men come down that way, the smugglers in their flight might lock the door behind them and so have time to get away in a boat or along at the foot of the cliffs before their pursuers could get down to the lower entrance and open fire upon them."
This noise had plainly disconcerted the murderer, for the trap-door was silently lowered to its place, and the steps hurriedly returned, passed once more close below the lads, and died away in the distance. Here was a moment's respite.
Again, in one of the passages of this curious old mansion are further evidences of the hardships to which Romish priests were subjected a trap in the floor, which can only be opened by pulling up what exteriorly appears to be the head of one of the nails of the flooring; by raising this a spring is released and a trap-door opened, revealing a large hole with a narrow ladder leading down into it.
They shouted, however, and were heard, ere long, by those who had escaped and had returned to the mine to search for their less fortunate companions. The trap-door was opened, strong and willing hands were thrust down the dark winze to the rescue, and in a few seconds the three men were saved. The danger was past but several lives had been lost in the terrible catastrophe.
The little party had re-entered the hull by way of the trap-door, and the professor had just made the fastenings once more secure, when, far away aloft from somewhere within the recesses of the ship, they heard the loud, sonorous, sustained note of a gong. "Ah, that is good!" exclaimed Herr von Schalckenberg, rubbing his hands; "that is the dinner gong; and I am hungry.
When Flora was dragged by the nuns to the immediate vicinity of the chair, which her excited imagination instantly converted into an engine of torture, that part of the floor on which the chair stood seemed to tremble and oscillate beneath her feet, as if it were a trap-door. The most dreadful sensations now came over her: she felt as if her brain was reeling as if she must go mad.
The secretaries stacked their papers unconcernedly with the feathers of their pens in their mouths. And then in the solemn silence which ensued the Duke and his judges filed out of the door, while the power of the Church, represented by Bishop Peter and his priests, went forth by another. Before I could realize the situation, Helene had vanished, as it seemed, down a trap-door in the floor.
The trouble with the other man was that he seemed to be so very, very GOOD. "Now, James," said he, "we'll leave the Professor to finish some work here, while you and I go up to the house. ... Wonderful man, the Professor!" he continued, after the latter had vanished down the trap-door, and we had started up the hill, "wonderful man! How future generations will bless his name!
He decided to leap out simultaneously with the withdrawal of the bundle, and, trusting to the confusion his unexpected appearance would create, to escape through the trap-door, and race away for his life.
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