matches were no longer required. A good thing, too, for his box was severely depleted. But he had come perhaps, oh, one hundred and fifty yards along this ancient passage from the river, and knew that it would soon open out into a series of high-vaulted cellars. There would be stone steps leading up, and at their top a dark oak door standing open. Beyond that a high-walled, echoing room—five-sided, containing round its walls five wooden benches, and at its centre a pedestal bearing a stone bowl—would wait within a greater hall which, for all that it remained unseen, the fugitive had always known must be vast. And here a second oaken door would be locked, permitting no further exploration. Or at least, the door had always been locked when he was a boy.
As to what the place was: he had never known for sure, but had often guessed. A library, perhaps, long disused; or some forgotten factory once powered by the river? And the tunnel would have served as an exit route for refuse, with the tidal Thames as the agent of dispersal. Whichever, to him it had always been a refuge, a sanctuary. And now it must play that role again, at least until the dawn. His pursuer was least active in daylight, so that with luck he should make a clean getaway for parts further afield. Meanwhile—
He was into the vaults now, where ribbed stone ceilings rose to massy keystone centres; and there, beyond this junction of bare subterrene rooms, he recognized at once the old stone steps rising into gloom. Crossing echoing flags to climb those steps, at last he arrived at the door and shouldered it open on hinges which had not known oil for many a year. And as the squealing reverberations died away, so he gazed again into that dusty, cobwebbed pentagon of carved stonework, whose walls partitioned it off from the unseen but definitely sensed far greater hall of which it must be the merest niche.
The light was better here, still faint and confused by dust and ropes of grey cobwebs, but oh so gradually gathering strength as night crept toward day. And there were the benches where often the fugitive had lain through long, lonely nights; and there, too, central in the room, the pedestal and its bowl, but draped now with a white cloth; and over there, set in the farthest of the five walls, the second oaken door… ajar!
Hands shaking so badly he could scarce control them, the fugitive struck another match and held it high, driving back the shadows. And there on the stone flags of the floor—footprints other than his own! Fresh prints in the dust of—how many years? The clean sheet, too, draped across the stone basin…what did these things mean?
The fugitive crossed to the basin, turned back a corner of the sheet. Fresh water in the bowl, its surface softly gleaming. He scooped up a little in his hand, sniffed at it, finally drank and slaked his burning thirst.
And as he turned from the pedestal, so he almost collided with a slender, polished wooden pole set in a circular base, whose top branched over the basin. Shaped like a narrow gallows, still the thing was in no way sinister; depending from its bar on a chain of bronze, a burnished hook hung overhead.
The fugitive began to understand where he was, and knew now how to prove his location beyond any further doubt. Quickly he went to the door where it stood ajar, eased it open and stepped through. And then he knew that he was right, knew what this place was and wondered if he really had any right being here. Probably not.
But in any case he could not stay; the dawn would soon be breaking, when once more he would be safe; he had far, far to go before night fell again. He re-entered the five-sided room, crossed its floor, paused at the pedestal and bowl to adjust the sheet where he’d disturbed it. And that was when the idea came to him and fixed itself in his mind.
He took out the vial and held it up in the gloom, and feeble though the light was, still the Elixir gathered to itself a faintly roseate