The actual owner of
the property, Sir James Crozel, an ex-Lord Mayor, who is also ground
landlord of the big works on the other side of the lane, had no more
idea than the man in the moon that there were any cellars beneath the
place. You see the vaults are below the present level of the Thames at
high tide; that's why nobody ever suspected their existence. Also, an
examination of the bare walls--now stripped--shows that they were pretty
well filled up to the top with ancient debris, to within a few years
ago, at any rate."
"You mean that our Chinese friends excavated them?"
"No doubt about it. They were every bit of twenty feet below the present
street level, and, being right on the bank of the Thames, nobody would
have thought of looking for them unless he knew they were there."
"What do you mean exactly, Sowerby?" said Dunbar, taking out his
fountain-pen and tapping his teeth with it.
"I mean," said Sowerby, "that someone connected with the gang must have
located the site of these vaults from some very old map or book."
"I think you said that the Reverend Somebody-or-Other avers that they
were a crypt?"
"He does; and when he pointed out to me the way the pillars were placed,
as if to support the nave of a church, I felt disposed to agree with
him.
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