CHAPTER VIII

THE CATACOMBS OF PARIS

Here was a way of escape, but escape to where? He did not consider the latter question for an instant. Replacing the lamp on the table, he glanced round to make sure that everything was in exact order, counted all the articles in his possession, the _crochet_, the two extra candles which he carried, etc., just as a surgeon counts the sponges which he has used during an operation, and having satisfied himself that he had disturbed nothing and left nothing behind, he extinguished the lamp, found the trap-door opening in the darkness and came down the ladder. It had fifteen rungs. When he felt the solid ground under his feet, he lit one of his candles and looked about him.

He was standing in a passage that led to a flight of steps descending into darkness, above was the square opening of the trap-door, and shining in the wall on his right, a brass handle. He guessed its use and pulling on it, the flap of the door above rose steadily and slowly and closed with a faint sucking sound like that of a piston driven home in a perfectly fitting cylinder.

It seemed to Lavenne that everything was favouring him, for had he been forced to leave the door open, his plan might have been ruined, as Camus would undoubtedly have suspected a spy on his movements.

With the lighted candle in his hand, he came towards the flight of steps. At the top of this stone stairway, he paused for a moment almost daunted. It seemed to have no end. The light of the candle became swallowed up in the darkness before revealing the last step. There were over a hundred of these steps leading to a passage, or rather a tunnel, which ended by opening into a corridor. The tunnel struck the corridor at right angles, and Lavenne, holding his light to the walls, looked in vain for an indication as to whether he should turn to the right or the left. Failing to find any, he turned to the right.

He had gone only a few yards when an opening in the corridor wall gave him a glimpse of something more daunting than the darkness. It was a skull resting on a heap of bones. The skull, from which the lower jaw was missing, was yet not wholly without speech. It told Lavenne at once where he was.

Pursuing his way and casting the light of the candle into several more of these lidless sarcophagi, he reached a large open space, where over the piles of bones heaped against the walls, the candle-light revealed a Latin inscription cut into the stone.

From this open space to the right, to left, in front and behind of the man who had just entered it, the candle-light showed four corridors each leading to darkness.

Lavenne had left the laboratory of Count Camus only to find himself entangled in the Catacombs of Paris.

Camus’ house seemed built in conformity with his mind, secure, secret, containing many things unrevealable to the light of day, and based on a maze of dark passages offering a means of escape to the mind that knew them and bewilderment and despair to the mind that did not.

Lavenne knew something of the catacombs, but not much. They lay outside his province.

The Catacombs of Paris are to-day just as they were in the time of the fifteenth Louis, with this difference: they are more fully occupied, since they contain the bones of many of the victims of the Terror. This vast system of tunnelling which extends from the heart of Paris to the plain of Mont Souris is in reality a city where rock takes the place of houses, galleries the place of streets, dead men the place of citizens, and eternal darkness the place of day and night.

It has been closed now for some years on account of the danger to explorers arising from the huge army of rats that have made it their camping-ground. Some years ago a man was attacked and eaten by rats in one of the galleries.

Few inhabitants of the gay city of Paris ever give a thought to the city of Death that lies beneath their feet, and fewer still to the motto that is written on the walls of this vast tomb—just as it is written everywhere:

“Remember, Man, that thou art Dust, and that unto Dust thou shalt return.”

It was in this terrific place that Lavenne found himself, with the choice of exploring it to find a way out or returning to encounter Camus.