Cellar door

“ She did not know that I had a key.
The next day I pleaded indisposition and spent most of the hours idling and drowsing in my chamber. Not till nearly midnight did I venture down. The servants were certainly asleep that time. A dose of chloral in their wine had attended to the certainty of their slumbers. Fully dressed, with an automatic in my pocket, I reached the cellar and opened the door. It swung noiselessly on its well-greased hinges. The darkness on the other side was the blackness of hell. ”

“ I took the liberty of pointing out to my gentleman that the whole business looked apocryphal, and that a man does not, in real life, walk into a cellar door at four in the morning and come out with another man's cheque for close upon a hundred pounds. ”

“ A few moments after, a small, low door, used for the cellars and situated under the lodge, was opened, evidently by her. Almost at the same time a man entered the square, came along the wall, and slipped in through the cellar door. ”

“ These we placed in the cellar during the day, screening the windows with paper and planning to return in the evening for our first vigil. We had locked the door from the cellar to the ground floor; and having a key to the outside cellar door, were prepared to leave our expensive and delicate apparatus—which we had obtained secretly and at great cost—as many days as our vigils might be protracted. It was our design to sit up together till very late, and then watch singly till dawn in two-hour stretches, myself first and then my companion; the inactive member resting on the cot. ”

“ He unlocked a small, hidden door before us, and we stood on the threshold of a large, dimly-lit cellar.
One swift glance around showed me the truth of my vague suspicions, and warned me, too, of my peril. It was a weird sight. At the far end of the place a small furnace was burning, casting a vivid glow upon the white, startled faces of the men who were grouped around it. ”

“ The air in a good-sized cellar will last a considerable time, and I could easily poke out anything that my friend might stuff into the keyhole. Then, when the men arrived in the morning, I could kick on the cellar door, and they would come and let me out. ”

“ Half panicky, I dashed across the street and into the cellar, where I hid amongst the junk at the end farthest from the door. In a half hour the town was on fire with excitement. The store was opened and I heard loud voices and the tramp of many feet above me. There was a clattering of horses’ hoofs in the street, and I knew the hue and cry was on. I burrowed deeper into boxes and bales, prepared for a long wait.
When daylight came I saw a pair of stairs leading up to a trapdoor in the store floor. There was much coming and going all day, and the steady hum of voices. ”

“ I remained silent, pretending I had seen nothing, and, closing the door, made a movement back up the cellar stairs. There I waited for about five minutes. The ruse worked. The door of the chamber opened, and a man, dressed in a dark cloak and a mask, partly emerged, and, I thought, started for the other stairs at the west end of the cellar. ”

“ The one was from the cellars by a trap-door opening in the passage. The other through a skylight from the lumber-room, overlooking that very chamber to which the intruder had penetrated. As neither the cellar nor the lumber-room could be entered unless the thief was already within the locked doors, the matter was not of any practical importance, and the dust of cellar and attic assured us that no one had used either one or the other. Finally, we ended as we began, without the slightest clue as to how, why, or by whom the setting of these four jewels had been tampered with. ”

“ XII I found the door, and D'ri flung our "duds" into the darkness that lay beyond it. Then he made down the ladder, and I after him. It was pitch-dark in the cellar—a deep, dank place with a rank odor of rotting potatoes. We groped our way to a corner, and stood listening. We heard the tramp of horses in the dooryard and the clinic of spurs on the stone step. ”

“ Presently she returned, flying. "I know! Let's have it in the cellar! In the cellar! Oh, it'll be lovely!"
The outer door of the cellar was open, and they proceeded down some steps with their treasure. There was plenty of light; the cellar was high-walled, warm, and dry. They named it an ideal place. Two huge cylindrical furnaces were humming away, one at either end. Overhead the beams detonated with the different emotions which agitated the tea party. ”

“ The night the bones came up the cellar-stairs Toffile had gone to bed alone and left me, But left an open door to cool the room off So as to sort of turn me out of it. I was just coming to myself enough To wonder where the cold was coming from, When I heard Toffile upstairs in the bedroom And thought I heard him downstairs in the cellar. The board we had laid down to walk dry-shod on When there was water in the cellar in spring Struck the hard cellar bottom. And then some one Began the stairs, two footsteps for each step, The way a man with one leg and a crutch, Or little child, comes up. ”

“ But these are inverted garrets, rather than cellars. They are refrigerators for pure air; and they keep a mellow light of their own. When you go into one of them it seems as if the house were standing on its head to express its joy and comfort.
But the Susan House cellar was one of dread, aside from the noise proceeding out of it. Bobaday knew this before they opened a door upon a narrow-throated descent.
One of Zene's stories became vivid. It was a story of a house where nobody could stay, though the landlord offered it rent-free. ”

“ I was taken into the kitchen cellar, and down a flight of stairs to another room directly under it. From thence, a door opened into another subterranean apartment which they called the torture room. These doors were so constructed, that a casual observer would not be likely to notice them. I had been in that cellar many times, but never saw that door until I was taken through it. A person might live in the nunnery a life-time, and never see or hear anything of such a place. ”

“ It must be an amusing thing to the burglar, after noting the precautions taken to prevent his entrance by the street door, when he has walked through the skylight on the roof without the slightest resistance, or dropped through the coal-hole leading to the cellar from the sidewalk, to find that no doors bar his passage from there to the rooms above. ”

“ The cellar Crows, when they had released each other's bonds, and groped around the jagged walls, and stumbled foolishly over each other and all the other tripping things in their dungeons, had succeeded in forcing apart the wooden doors between their three cells and joining forces—or joining weaknesses, rather, because, when they finally found the cellar stairs, they also found that, for all the strength they could throw into their backs and shoulders, they could not lift the door, with all the heavy weights put on it by the Dozen. ”

“ Bill turned the handle and it swung inward.
“Guess I won’t need this any more,” he said and braced the door open with the crowbar. “If they’re too many for us, we may have to leave in a hurry. Just as well to keep the way clear.”
By the feeble light of the candle they saw that they stood in a small whitewashed cellar. Leading off this to the left, was an open corridor, and from some distance down this passage came the glow of electric light. A large safe, painted white, was built into a corner of the cellar wall. ”

“ Next day at sunrise the Lead Friend had to go to his furnace, taking Kiss Miklos with him. The young woman remained all alone. She took a lamp and started to search through the lead house. From chamber to chamber she went till she came to the cellar, but that was closed against her with seven iron doors. Now the question was to get into the cellar. Another would not have been able to pass the first door, but every iron door opened of itself before the magic of the Green Daughter of the Green King. She passed through the seven doors and entered the cellar. ”

“ The officers were as noiseless as the night, and as cunning as any of their kind. After everything had been searched and nothing found, they turned toward the cellar. The door was easily opened, and three descended; but the door at the bottom of the stairs, which was the last between them and the cellar, was made of iron and baffled every key. Thrice the officer operating with the keys made some noise ”

“ What man is he that would complain of having to bale out his cellar every week, if, on the other hand, that cellar gains thereby a fertility that keeps its floor sheeny, soft, and green—an interior tennis-court—from spring to spring, causing the gladsome click of the lawn-mower to be heard within its walls all through the still watches of [Pg 85] the winter day? I tell you, sir, it is the life to lead, that of our rural brother. I do not believe that in this whole vast city there is a cellar like that—an in-door garden-patch, as it were."
"No," returned the Doctor ”

“ Then in a flash she remembered that there was a lower cellar, which according to Mrs. Beale was never used and was bricked up. It was approached from the outside, down a circular flight of stairs. There might be a way out from that direction and would there not be some connection between the upper cellar and the lower!
She set to work to make a closer examination of the apartment.
The floor was of concrete, covered with a light rush matting. This she carefully rolled up, starting at the door. One half of the floor was uncovered without revealing the existence of any trap. ”

“ There was another privy, not in the cellar, which was used by the inmates. The window of the cellar was generally opened about seven o'clock. Remembers an old woman coming to the house, at ten o'clock, on the 19th of August. She was a tall person; but witness did not see her face. She had on a dark stuff gown, a light blue shawl, and a black willow bonnet: her feet were through her stockings, and she wore shoes. Witness, on her first examination, described the shawl to be an old dark one; but upon recollection, knows that the colour was light blue. ”

“ It had been decided that fifty men should leave that night, and fifty the next, the prison clerk being deceived at roll-call by an artifice which had been practised more than once before, that of men leaving one end of the line and regaining the other unseen, to answer to the names of others. But the risk of discovery was too great. Every man wanted to be among the first. It proved impossible to restrain the anxious prisoners.
Down into the cellar passed a long line of descending men, dropping to its floor in rapid succession. Around the mouth of the tunnel a dense crowd gathered. ”

“ Our house is in a turmoil from morning till night with women charging in like a mob, or stealing out like conspirators. Their badges, their sandwich boards, their banners lie about in our hall, so much in everybody's way that I sympathized with the infuriated tenant whom I caught one night kicking the whole collection into the cellar. ”

“ It must then be something out of the house. What could it be? I thought of the assistant's fondness for photography, and his trick of vanishing into the cellar. The cellar! There was the end of this tangled clue. Then I made inquiries as to this mysterious assistant, and found that I had to deal with one of the coolest and most daring criminals in London. He was doing something in the cellar—something which took many hours a day for months on end. What could it be, once more? I could think of nothing save that he was running a tunnel to some other building. ”

“ But soon we entered upon a broad expanse of cellar, in which a candle burned, and which was partly furnished. Farther, a smaller cellar was piled with boxes, and still farther, I was ushered into a dismal, badly-lighted apartment, in the corner of which a man lay stretched upon a bed. ”

“ Seated around a rough deal table are about thirty men and women, engaged in smoking and drinking. The room is dimly lighted by a couple of tallow candles, stuck in bottles; the walls are black with dust and smoke, and the aforesaid table and a few benches constitute the entire furniture of the room. The general frequenters of the cellar are not admitted to this place, it being especially reserved for the use of those ladies and gentlemen who gain their living on the principle of an equal division of property—or in other words, thieves. ”

“ The walls bore notices with a black hand pointing downwards to the cellar steps, and the big room echoed eerily to the footsteps of customers, who tramped across the tiled floor and disappeared downstairs to the vaults.
"One shell," the cashier was saying, "fell close outside there," waving a hand up the cellar steps. "Bang! crash! we feel the building shake—so." His hands left their task of counting notes, seized an imaginary person by the lapels of an imaginary coat and shook him violently. ”

“ A heavy plunge and a groan announced the man's descent into the cellar.
"Help!—help!" cried Johnny Darbyshire, rushing wildly into the room above. "The man, like a madman, has walked over the landing into the cellar. If he isn't killed, it's a mercy. ”

“ You creep part way down the cellar stairs with only the light of a single tallow candle, and behold by its dim glimmer an expanse of dark water, boundless as the sea. On its surface, in dire confusion, float barrels and boxes, butter firkins and washtubs, boards, planks, hoops, and staves without number, interspersed with apples, turnips, and cabbages, while half-drowned rats and mice, scrambling up the stairway for dear life, drive you affrighted back to the kitchen....Now consider the case of one of these old farmhouse cellars that has been in use fifty years or more. ”