When I opened my eyes Watkins was bending over me.  
"Ah, there, Mister Jack," he said, "'ave a drink of this. Thank you, sir." And as I struggled to a sitting position: "No need of 'aste, sir. All's well. And you 'ad a bit of a knock, if I may say so, sir."
 
"It seems as though you and I were the Jonahs, Watty," I answered. "This is the third time I've passed out cold.
 
"Quite right, sir. The same thought was in me own 'ead. If Mrs. Prouty and 'Awkins—the butler, sir—and the others in the Servants' 'All could 'ave seen me last night, they would 'ave been startled, sir. I do assure you they would. There was that Russian young lady, now. I give you my word, sir, she cursed like a maniac, and 'er brother was no better when 'e came from 'is faint. A fair rowdy lot of people we 'ad on our 'ands—including the young person in whom Mister Nikka happears to be interested, as the saying goes, sir."
 
"You said 'last night,' I believe," I interrupted.
 
"Yes, sir. It's close to noon, Mister Jack. But Lord bless you, sir, there's been no rest. We 'ad a largish hundertaker's job, let alone tidying up and minding the prisoners."
 
"What have we done with the bodies?"
 
"In the garden, sir. The prisoners did the work—except the Russian persons, sir. 'E couldn't, account of 'is leg, and she, being a lady, so to speak, was hexcused."
 
"Well, I'm going to get up," I announced. "My shoulder feels better."
 
"If you wish, sir. Miss Betty thought you would be fit after a nap. She and Mister Nikka's uncle, the tall old gentleman who looks like Pantaloon in the Drury Lane pantos, they looked you over. They said your shoulder bone was bruised and the muscle torn, sir; but they've wrapped you up to the king's taste. My instructions were to get you anything you required, but with submission, sir, might I suggest you sleep a little longer? There's nothing—oh, 'ere's Mister Nikka."
 
Nikka strolled in from the courtyard—I was lying in the apse at the end of the large chamber on the ground floor of the House of the Married—with Kara trailing him.
 
"Hullo, Jack!" he greeted me. "Tough luck you had to stop a bullet. We're all more or less cut up, but you had the worst of it, although my uncle, who is a practical surgeon in a crude way, claims the bullet missed the bone."
 
"So Watkins told me. Any news? The police—"
 
"No, the storm covered the shooting. Hugh has been to Pera with Betty in the Curlew this morning, and they heard no comments. One of Wasso Mikali's men stopped in at the corner coffee-shop, and made sure there was no local gossip. The only danger, I think, is from Mrs. Hilyer. We've got to risk that."
 
"Aren't you all worn out?"
 
"No. Too much excitement, I expect. We're just going to eat. Then Betty insists on going after the treasure again."
 
Kara sidled up to him, with a venomous glance at me, and ejaculated a remark sotto voice. Nikka laughed, and pushed her behind him. She heeded him like a dog that is contented with a rebuke, so long as notice is taken by its master.
 
"She said," Nikka translated, "that I ought not to talk with you any longer. She wants me to pay attention to her."
 
"Humph!" I growled, returning Kara's look with interest. "Help me up, will you? Thanks! What are you going to do with her?"
 
"Tame her, I expect," he answered cheerfully. "I've begun by taking her knife away from her. She wanted to stick Betty because I talked more than five minutes to Bet about you."
 
"A sweet job! She'll end by sticking you."
 
"Perhaps," agreed Nikka equably. "Come and get some breakfast. A cup of coffee will help you to take a more charitable view of a wild little Gypsy girl."
 
Hugh, Betty and Vernon King welcomed us as we entered the atrium, where a low table of packing-boxes had been rigged. Wasso Mikali and his men were either guarding the prisoners or else keeping watch on the street entrance. Kara scowled at all of us, but squatted determinedly behind Nikka. Watkins proceeded to serve, and I was amused to observe that Kara, much against her will, was secretly awed by the matter-of-fact pomp with which Watkins was able to invest a meal under such impromptu conditions.
 
We talked very little. The one idea in the mind of each of us was to get at the red stone, which we could see from where we sat, and we choked down our food as rapidly as possible. I forgot completely my injured shoulder. Watkins actually hurried himself in passing the eggs. Betty and Hugh crumbled a few bits of toast, and strangled over their coffee. Vernon King alone ate placidly, with the zest of a man who feels he has done a good job well. At last, Betty could stand it no longer, and she sprang up with an imitation of Kara's scowl so faithful that everybody, except Kara, laughed.
 
"Daddy, you've had time for two breakfasts," she decreed. "That's enough. Besides, I won't have you getting fat in your old age. Come! Everybody! We've got our chance, our chance that we began to think was gone aglimmering. The treasure of the Bucoleon is at our feet—under our feet, I mean. Up with the red stone!"
 
"Up she goes!" assented Hugh.
 
Crowbars, chisels, mallets, picks and shovels appeared, and Hugh paced the distance from the Fountain of the Lion. His calculations indicated the stone that I had roughly estimated on our first visit to the garden. We all watched him with madly beating hearts. It was really true! We were going to lay bare the secret covered by the red stone, to grasp the prize that the Emperor Andronicus had concealed seven centuries before, the prize that generation after generation of men had striven for in vain.
 
The thought exhilarated us, and when Hugh stepped aside and seized a chisel and mallet we all set to with superhuman energy. I was unable to do much, but I experienced a sharp pleasure in the mere act of holding with my one hand the head of a chisel upon which one of the others rained blows with a mallet. We could not take time for conversation. We worked. Even Vernon King, who had millions at his command, succumbed to the lure of the red stone's secret, and panted as he chipped the rotten mortar from the interstices between the red stone and those surrounding it.
 
Working at such a pace and with so many willing hands, it was only a matter of a few minutes before the stone was detached from its neighbors, and Nikka thrust the tip of a crowbar under its edge. Followed then a struggle of some duration, but in the end it sagged up and was overturned. Below it was a second stone of equal dimensions, granite, unmortared, although the dust of ages had sifted into the cracks around it. This yielded to our efforts much sooner than had the cap-stone, and Hugh, kneeling amongst the debris, peered down into a yawning hole in the pavement.
 
"Careful!" warned King. "A compartment which has been sealed for centuries will be full of carbonic-acid gas."
 
Hugh sniffed.
 
"It's as damp as—as—that beastly drain," he said. "But it smells reasonably sweet."
 
We poked our torches into the hole. All they showed was a steep flight of stairs descending straight into blackness.
 
"Most extraordinary!" mumbled Vernon King. "Byzantine masonry, beyond a doubt. Observe the squaring of the blocks, and the composition of the mortar. This is no such slovenly work as Turkish masons do. The master-builders of old laid these stones."
 
"If it's safe, what are we waiting for?" I barked.
 
Our nerves were on edge.
 
"Oh, take your time," said Hugh impatiently, and he lowered himself, feet first.
 
The others followed him, one by one, and I brought up the rear, ashamed of myself for the temper I had exhibited. The pitch of the stairs was so sharp that we had to bend only a little in passing under the rim of the opening. They were barely wide enough for one man, and I counted thirty of them before they terminated in a passage that led off at right angles, with an appreciable downward slope.
 
"Hold up!" Hugh called back to us a moment later. "Here's an opening into another passage. There's a step down. Why, this is the drain again!"
 
We joined him, incredulous, only to be convinced at once that he was right. The passage debouched on the sewer some distance inland from the grating of the dungeon.
 
"My God!" groaned Hugh. "And we've gone through everything for this! Was there ever such a sell!"
 
The vaulted roof echoed his words. The "drip-drip" of slime and fungi was a melancholy punctuation for them. But the reaction loosened our taut nerves. The one thought of all of us was to comfort Hugh.
 
"There may be some explanation," said Nikka.
 
"Perhaps we overlooked something," I volunteered.
 
"It is a most unusual archæological discovery," offered King.
 
"There is an explanation," cried Betty. "We have overlooked something. I know it. There must be."
 
"It's no go," answered Hugh despondently. "I've brought you on a wild-goose chase."
 
We all looked rather white and wan in the cold light of the electric torches.
 
"It's not your fault, old man," I said after a moment's silence, trying dismally to be cheerful. "The lead looked good. We followed it because we hoped it would make you rich. We failed, and that's that."
 
Betty stared wildly from one to the other of us.
 
"You all make me tired," she exclaimed. "Why should we give up hope? How long have we looked, so far? What— Oh, let me by! I must think!"
 
She brushed by me into the fake passage, and the echo of her footfalls reached us as she ascended to the garden.
 
"We might as well follow her," said Hugh. "I'm awfully sorry, you chaps. You risked your lives for this rotten show. My poor deluded ancestor! I expect most of these buried treasure stories are bunk, anyway. In fact, I have a dim recollection of telling poor Uncle James as much. And there's another thing to make the gods laugh! A fine old cock like Uncle James devoting his whole life to following a will-o'-the-wisp—and then losing it for nothing. It—it's—oh, Hell, I suppose it's really funny!"
 
We climbed wearily up the thirty steps to the garden level. As I reached the surface the first object my eyes encountered was Betty, sitting on the red stone and poring over a sheet of paper.
 
"Hullo!" she called, looking up with all her accustomed vivacity. "Do you recognize this paper, Hugh?"
 
She fluttered it at him.
 
"Looks like my handwriting," he admitted.
 
"It's the copy of the Instructions you sent me, which I remailed to myself Poste Restante. I remembered it this morning when we were in Pera and called for it at the Post Office while you were packing the bags at the hotel. I thought we might need it."
 
"What good can it do?" asked Hugh heavily.
 
"There's an important point in it, which nobody has appreciated up to this time. It becomes doubly important in view of what we have just seen."
 
"The elided portion!" exclaimed Nikka.
 
"Exactly! Look!"
 
And she spread the paper before us. Hugh had faithfully copied his uncle's translation of the old Latin, setting down also the several lines of dots by which Lord Chesby had indicated the words which had been smudged out by moisture and handling at some past time. They appeared, you will recall, at the conclusion of the explicit directions:
 
"Underfoot is a red stone an ell square. Raise the—"
 
And then nothing distinguishable until the concluding line of farewell.
 
"Well?" demanded Betty triumphantly as we all studied the cryptic dots.
 
Hugh shook his head.
 
"Betty, you were a brick to remember it," he said, "but honestly, what use is it? Whatever words are missing are unimportant. They must have been or somebody would have rewritten them."
 
"That does not necessarily follow," spoke up Vernon King. "Old documents, especially those inscribed on parchment, are tricky records. It frequently happens that some isolated portion will be spoiled, while the other parts of the same sheet may retain their integrity. Moreover, we should not lose sight of the possibility that the person who last concealed the parchment, the Lady Jane Chesby of whom you have spoken, seems not to have been inclined to attach much importance to it. She would have been the last one to attempt to make good its deficiencies."
 
"But where could the treasure be that we have not looked?" demanded Hugh. "The directions are explicit. We followed them faithfully. So far as they exist we have verified their accuracy. But we have uncovered no place which could have served as a treasure chamber."
 
"Yes, Hugh, the directions are explicit,&............