Читать книгу The Ben Hope Collection - Scott Mariani, Scott Mariani - Страница 78

‘So we meet at last,’ Ben murmured. He moved away from the portrait and walked around the edges of the room, looking down at the floor. The stone tiles were partly covered by a dusty old rug. Beyond the edges of the rug he could see the outer parts of a mosaic pattern on the floor. He knelt and set the candlestick down with a metallic clunk. Clouds of dust floated up in the wavering light. He lifted the edge of the rug, and a large spider scuttled out and disappeared into the shadows. He rolled the rug up into a long tube and pushed it against the wall. He blew the dust away, revealing the coloured stone mosaic set into the flagstones. After a minute or two of brushing and blowing he stepped back to look at it.

The pattern was about fifteen feet long and took up the whole width of the study. Here they were again, the twin star-circles. At the exact centre of the design was a circular flagstone with an iron ring inset flush with the floor. He grasped the ring with both hands and pulled hard. There was a rush of escaping cold air from below.

He shone his torch down into the hole. The fading beam lit up a spiral stairway carved into solid rock, descending into blackness.