He rose and paced with rapid strides the place in which he was, and then
suddenly he heard a noise; and, looking up, he saw a trap door in the
roof open, and a sack of flour begin gradually to come down. "Hilloa, hilloa!" he cried, "Mrs. Lovett--Mrs. Lovett!" Down came the flour, and the trap door was closed. "Oh, I can't stand this sort of thing," he exclaimed; "I cannot be made
into a mere machine for the manufacture of pies. I cannot and will not
endure it--it is past all bearing." For the first time almost since his incarceration, for such it really
was, he began to think that he would take an accurate survey of the
place where this tempting manufacture was carried on. The fact was, his
mind had been so intensely occupied during the time he had been there in
providing merely for his physical wants, that he had scarcely had time
to think or reason upon the probabilities of an uncomfortable
termination of his career; but now, when he had really become quite
surfeited with the pies, and tired of the darkness and gloom of the
place, many unknown fears began to creep across him, and he really
trembled, as he asked himself what was to be the end of all. It was with
such a feeling as this that he now set about a careful and accurate
survey of the place; and taking a little lamp in his hand, he resolved
upon peering into every corner of it, with a hope that surely he should
find some means by which he should effect an escape from what otherwise
threatened to be an intolerable imprisonment. The vault in which the
ovens were situated was the largest; and although a number of smaller
ones communicated with it, containing the different mechanical
contrivances for pie-making, he could not from any one of them discover
an outlet. But it was to the vault where the meat was deposited upon
stone shelves that he paid the greatest share of attention, for to that
vault he felt convinced there must be some hidden and secret means of
ingress, and therefore of egress likewise, or else how came the shelves
always so well stocked with meat as they were? This vault was larger
than any of the other subsidiary ones, and the roof was very high, and,
come into it when he would, it always happened that he found meat enough
upon the shelves, cut into large lumps, and sometimes into slices, to
make a batch of pies with. When it got there, was not so much a mystery
to him as how it got there; for, of course, as he must sleep sometimes,
he concluded, naturally enough, that it was brought in by some means
during the period that he devoted to repose. He stood in the centre of
this vault with the lamp in his hand, and he turned slowly round,
surveying the walls and the ceilings with the most critical and marked
attention, but not the smallest appearance of an outlet was observable. In fact, the walls were so entirely filled up with the stone shelves,
that there was no space left for a door; and as for the ceiling, it
seemed perfectly entire. Then the floor was of earth; so that the idea
of a trap door opening in it was out of the question, because there was
no one on his side of it to place the earth again over it, and give it
its compact and usual appearance. "This is most mysterious," he said; "and if ever I could have been
brought to believe that any one had the assistance of the devil himself
in conducting human affairs, I should say that by some means Mrs. Lovett
had made it worth the while of that elderly individual to assist her;
for, unless the meat gets here by some supernatural agency, I really
cannot see how it can get here at all. And yet here it is--so fresh, and
pure, and white-looking, although I never could tell the pork from the
veal myself, for they seemed to me both alike." He now made a still narrower examination of this vault, but he gained
nothing by that. He found that the walls at the back of the shelves were
composed of flat pieces of stone, which, no doubt, were necessary for
the support of the shelves themselves; but beyond that he made no
further discovery, and he was about leaving the place, when he fancied
he saw some writing on the inner side of the door. A closer inspection
convinced him that there were a number of lines written with lead
pencil, and after some difficulty he decyphered them as follows:--

"Whatever unhappy wretch reads these lines may bid adieu to the world
and all hope, for he is a doomed man! He will never emerge from these
vaults with life, for there is a secret connected with them so awful and
so hideous, that to write it makes one's blood curdle, and the flesh to
creep upon my bones. That secret is this--and you may be assured,
whoever is reading these lines, that I write the truth, and that it is
as impossible to make that awful truth worse by any exaggeration, as it
would be by a candle at mid-day to attempt to add any new lustre to the
sunbeams." Here, most unfortunately, the writing broke off, and our friend, who, up
to this point, had perused the lines with the most intense interest,
felt great bitterness of disappointment, from the fact that enough
should have been written to stimulate his curiosity to the highest
possible point, but not enough to gratify it. "This is, indeed, most provoking," he exclaimed. "What can this most
dreadful secret be, which it is impossible to exaggerate? I cannot, for
a moment, divine to what it can allude." In vain he searched over the door for some more writing--there was none
to be found, and from the long straggling pencil-mark, which followed
the last word, it seemed as if he who had been then writing had been
interrupted, and possibly met the fate that he had predicted, and was
about to explain the reason of. "This is worse than no information. I had better have remained in
ignorance than have received so indistinct a warning; but they shall not
find me an easy victim, and, besides, what power on earth can force me
to make pies unless I like, I should wish to know?" As he stepped out of the place in which the meat was kept into the large
vault where the ovens were, he trod upon a piece of paper that was lying
upon the ground, and which he was quite certain he had not observed
before. It was fresh and white, and clean too, so that it could not have
been long there, and he picked it up with some curiosity.