“Come along then. I have a taper here which I use for my sealing-wax. I don’t think we need a lantern.” They went slowly down some eighty steps in a spiral that was by no means adequately illuminated by the chaplain’s taper until they reached a door, the rusty bolts of which took some time to pull back. However, at last they pushed it open to enter a vaulted cellar that reverberated with the din of Chester Royde’s shouts.

From this cellar they passed through into another and beheld the captive sitting on a packing-case, throwing back his head from time to time to produce a still louder yell.

“Chester! It’s Carrie,” his wife cried, running across the cobbled floor to embrace him. “Chester, why didn’t you call out before?”

“Why didn’t I call out before?” the captive echoed indignantly. “How the hell …”

“Chester, please. Mr Fletcher’s with us.”

“Oh, I’m not so easily shocked as that, Mrs Royde,” the chaplain put in.

“How could I call out before, Carrie, when I was gagged?”

“Gagged?”

“Sure, I was gagged. I’d be gagged now if a mouse hadn’t run up the inside of my kilt and made me give such a jump that the darned gag bust. I understand now why women can’t stand the idea of mice. I used to laugh at them, but that was before I took to the kilt.”

“Oh, Chester, your hands are tied behind your back.”

“Sure, they’re tied behind my back. You don’t think I wouldn’t have beaten hell out of that door if they hadn’t been. My ankles are tied too.”

The chaplain produced a penknife, and Carrie cut the cords round her husband’s wrists. Then she knelt down and severed those that bound his ankles.

“Gee, that certainly feels good,” he declared.

“And now tell us what happened,” Carrie begged.

“Wouldn’t Mr Royde tell his story more comfortably by a good fire?” the chaplain suggested.

“Why, yes, how wise you are, Mr Fletcher,” Carrie agreed.

At this moment Mrs Parsall had just entered the Yellow Drawing-room to inform Mrs MacDonald that the emotional tension in that part of the Castle she ruled, which had only just been allayed, was now more acute than ever because Flora MacInnes and Maggie Macphee had come running along from their bedroom into the housekeeper’s room, screaming that one of the Castle ghosts had chased them with a horrible roaring noise.