d a glimmering of the
truth; the "Boss" and his friends had at last found Jeems' private door.

Prudence urged that they return to the house and send Sam Two or some
other messenger down to the cross-roads store to summon the police by
phone. Prudence however had never successfully advised any Ralestone.
They had a decided taste for fighting their own battles. So, torch in
hand, Val dropped into the hole. And a moment later Ricky slid down to
join him.

They stood in a rough passage. Stout timbers banked its sides and
guarded the roof. There was a damp underground smell such as Val had
noted in the cellar of the house, but the air was fresh enough. After
the first hasty survey, the boy held his fingers over the bulb of the
flashlight so that only the faintest glimmer escaped to light their
path.

The passage was short, ending abruptly in a low bricked room. Save for
themselves, a tangle of rotting rope in a far corner, and two lively
black beetles, it was empty.

"Val," Ricky's throaty whisper reached him, "can't you guess what this
is? The first pirate Ralestone's storage-house!"

It was a likely enough explanation--though nothing could have been
stored there very long; the place was too damp. Beads of slimy moisture
from the walls dripped slowly down, shining like silver in the light.

At the other side of the room was a corridor branching away. But this
they barely glanced into, little knowing how that neglect was to prove
disastrous in the end. It was the main door to their right which
interested them most, for that led, so far as Val could determine,
toward the house. And that must have been the one the mysterious
visitors had followed.

Thus they came into the second of their pirate ancestor's store-rooms.
This one was long and narrow. Three wooden casks eaten with decay and
spotted with fungus stood against the wall, testifying to the use to
which this chamber had been put, though the all-pervading damp could not
have been good for the wine.

Again a dark archway tempted them on, and the third room into which they
came had a more grim reminder of the scarlet past of the house. For
Ricky stumbled over something which clinked dully. And when Val used the
flash they looked down upon a telltale length of chain ending in an iron
ring, its other end soldered into the wall.

"Val," Ricky's voice quavered, "did--did they keep people here?"

"Slaves, perhaps," her brother answered soberly and shoved the rustin