Mlle. Nadiboff smilingly accepted the suggestion, so Hal and Jack also agreed.  The reporter led the way across a field, pausing at last before a fringe of weeds and low bushes.

“Now, just step through this wild hedge,” Hennessy proposed, smilingly, “and you’ll see how little it takes to start a yarn.  Look out, though, that you don’t fall down.”

As they stepped through the fringe cautiously the members of the party found themselves peering down the shaft of what appeared to be a very ordinary well.  It was circular, in shape, and had been laid, on the inside, with a masonry of stones.

“There is water at the bottom, isn’t there?” inquired the woman Spy.

“Yes,” replied Hennessy.  “It was never anything more than a well.  Yet, day before yesterday, one of the local guides brought me here and insisted on telling me all about its having been an outlet of a famous secret passage from the castle.  I had some fishing tackle in my pocket, so I rigged up a line and weight, and let it down.  I satisfied myself that there were about four feet of greenish, slimy water at the bottom of a well.  I wish you could have seen the guide’s face!”

“Here come some visitors, now,” nudged Hal.

Two men and four women, led by a guide, approached the place.

“This shaft looks dark and mysterious enough,” began the guide, reeling off a well learned lesson, “to be as full of historic interest and mystery as it really is.  This shaft is what is left of one of the outlets of the famous secret passage to and from the castle.”

While the new visitors crowded about, asking questions and offering remarks, the party that Hennessy was guiding stepped into the background, secretly enjoying the guide’s buncombe.

“If people would only stop to use their good sense a bit,” whispered Hennessy, “they’d know, at once, that the shaft is only a long disused well.”

“Great Scott!” whispered Jack.  “Here come Mr. Farnum and Eph with a guide.  Let’s see if they will be buncoed.”

Guide number two came up, with the shipbuilder and Somers in tow.  Greetings were exchanged.  Then the last arrived pair stepped forward in the guide’s wake.  Farnum listened with an amused smile.

“Oh, pshaw!” grunted Eph.  “Is this the best you can show us?  This is nothing but an old well, with ten feet of malaria at the bottom.  Show us, for a change, something that we can believe.”

Hal began to laugh quietly.  Then all hands stepped forward for another look down the shaft.  As they stepped outside again Benson happened to turn just in time to see a familiar figure coming along a path near by.

It was Kamanako, better dressed than he had been earlier in the morning, and carrying a bulging dress suitcase.

“Hullo!” muttered Jack Benson, in a tone loud enough to carry to the ears of the newcomer.  “There’s that infernal Jap spy—­that scoundrelly thief of other men’s secrets!”