"Ah! In the basements!" exclaimed he. "Maybe I can locate an
engine-room, a store-room, or something of that sort. There's sure to
be tools in a place like that." And, laying off the bear-skin, he
prepared to explore the regions under the ground-level.

He used more than half an hour, through devious ways and hard labor,
to make his way to the desired spot. The ancient stair-way, leading
down, he could not find.

But by clambering down one of the elevator-shafts, digging toes and
fingers into the crevices in the metal framework and the cracks in the
concrete, he managed at last to reach a vaulted sub-cellar, festooned
with webs, damp, noisome and obscure.

Considerable light glimmered in from a broken sidewalk-grating above,
and through a gaping, jagged hole near one end of the cellar, beneath
which lay a badly-broken stone.

The engineer figured that this block had fallen from the tower and
come to rest only here; and this awoke him to a new sense of
ever-present peril. At any moment of the night or day, he realized,
some such mishap was imminent.

"Eternal vigilance!" he whispered to himself. Then, dismissing useless
fears, he set about the task in hand.

By the dim illumination from above, he was able to take cognizance of
the musty-smelling place, which, on the whole, was in a better state
of repair than the arcade. The first cellar yielded nothing of value