“No jest, thane, but the truth,” I said, taking the tall wax torch which was on the table before them.  “Come.”

Then they leaped up and followed me into the bedchamber, and stood staring as we had stared.  It was plain that they knew as little as ourselves.

“He has passed into the guest hall,” said one of the Mercians, looking round him wildly enough.

But that was not possible, for the door was in the outer room whence we had come, and it was barred on both sides.

“We are disgraced,” said another, groaning.  “Our charge has been made away with, and how we cannot tell.  We shall pay for this with our lives.”

Then Sighard said, “He cannot be far off.  Men—­think!  How can he have gone hence?  Who would make away with him?”

But there was no answer to these questions.  The thing remained a mystery.  If there was any plot, these three honest thanes were not in it.  And then as I walked uneasily from side to side of the room, turning over impossible ways of disappearance in my mind, I came near where the great chair had been.  And under my step the floor creaked.

Now seeing how that house was built, this was a sound one would not expect to hear at all.  It came into my mind that here was one of the few floors which were boarded, the most being of beaten clay, or paved with great stones wonderfully.  So I trod again firmly in that place, and it seemed to me that the floor gave, somewhat.

I reached out for the torch which I had set on the sconce in the wall and looked at the floor, but why it creaked I did not make out.  The boards were of hewn oak, and how thick one could not tell.

“Fetch Offa the king,” said a Mercian; “we had better tell him.  No use in gaping here.  We can swear that Ethelbert has not passed out of these doors.”

“No,” said Selred quickly; “that were to wake the whole palace.  Let us seek further into this.—­Thanes, if aught has been done amiss to our king, we are all in danger.”

The floor creaked under my foot again, and I looked back to it.  What I saw now made me start and call the others to me.

“See here!” I cried.

Round that clear space where the chair had been was a saw cut newly made.  It went through the flooring, so that the square was like a trapdoor.  And it was uneven, as if it had been made in haste.  Then I knew what must have been the meaning of the sounds we heard and thought nothing of—­the creak, and the fall, and the stifled cry.

Sighard looked once, and then threw himself on his knees, drawing his stout seax as he did so.

“Have it up!” he said, with his teeth clenched, “have it up!”

Then a thought came to me, and I beckoned to Erling.  It might be that armed men lurked under that trapdoor, and that our end was coming; but at least we would have fair play.

“Go and bar the door to the great hall,” I told him.  “We will have none else in here if there is a fight.  Then see if you can get the door to the guest hall undone.”