CHAPTER XXVI

THE PIT OF DEATH

"It is appointed to all men once to die, and after death, the judgement."--Heb. ix, 27

The sun was high in the heavens but the air was hot and sultry. Occasionally there were far distant mutterings of thunder. A storm was brewing. It was nearly noon, the time appointed for the paying of the ransom. At the cross-roads the sound of shooting had died away. The air was still with that ominous, pregnant stillness which precedes a storm. There was no twitter of bird nor hum of insect. A brooding silence seemed to have suddenly descended over all the landscape.

On the river road, near its intersection with the lane leading to the Simpkins' dock and the hill road stood an abandoned automobile. It was the car in which Bailey and Swazey had planned to make their escape and from which Peter Grimes had leaped when it was halted by bullets. Its tires were now riddled, its windshield wrecked and its radiator a-leak. The gasoline that dripped to the ground sullied the fragrance of the air with its heavy fumes.

Just across, and headed directly toward it, from the incline of the hill road stood another car. It was the one in which Harris Wayne and the detectives had sought to reach the Grimes farm in time to apprehend the kidnappers and recover his little girl.

They had failed, but from the crest of the hill they had recognized the men they sought and had speeded to intercept them. The tall, lank, crooked frame of Peter Grimes, clinging, hatless, to the side of the car, his long coattails waving with the speed at which it was going, would have been recognizable at an even greater distance than across the corner of a field.

Wayne had begged the detectives not to shoot. He feared his child might be in the kidnapper's car, but when the tires were riddled and the car halted it was seen that none of the occupants who took to their heels was carrying a baby.

"They haven't got her," shouted the Chief, springing from his own car and running in pursuit. "Shoot to kill if necessary. Don't let one of them escape."

But the men on the lower road had the advantage. Shielded by their car, which blocked the road between them and their pursuers, they were able to disappear into the bushes and seek shelter aboard the boat which they had known was waiting. Grimes, however, not knowing about the boat and thinking only of concealment, had gone in the opposite direction.

As they reached the end of the little dock the detectives saw the launch making for the open water.

"The Mary Ann will over-haul her," said the Chief, chagrined at the turn affairs had taken. "The crooks had their boat all ready. The child must be back at the farm."

They supposed, naturally enough, that Grimes had accompanied the kidnappers in their mad dash for the boat and had sailed away with them. Disappointed, but by no means hopeless, the chief led the way back to where they had left his car. The driver was not there. The car was empty. There was nothing to indicate how, where or when he disappeared.

They waited a few moments for him to reappear and, when he did not, commenced a search of the bushes that lined the fences along the side of the road. Then they saw him coming up the river road from the direction the kidnapper's car had come. He was running and, as he drew near, they observed that he looked somewhat alarmed.

"You-all went down on the dock," he observed. "The geezers didn't all go that way. That tall fellow--the guy that was hanging on the side of the car--made a bee line in that direction."

He pointed off to the side of the road, somewhat in the direction from which he had just come.

"Are you sure!" asked the Chief and Wayne in a breath. "That was Grimes--the one we think had the child. Perhaps he's got her hid out there somewhere." They started quickly forward as if to continue their search but the chauffeur interposed.

"No," he said. "She isn't there. I looked. I started to follow him but it's all swamp after you get in a few rods. That's why I came back by the road. Look at my feet."

It was evident that the man spoke the truth. His feet and legs were covered with thick, black muck.

"But if Grimes went in there, we can go," urged Wayne.

"I don't know about that," returned the chauffeur. "He may not come back. I wouldn't want to try it. Listen!"

The chauffeur's nerves seemed to have been somewhat upset by even the brief investigation he had made of the swamp. He had been alarmed, for a moment or so, he told them, lest he, himself, get mired and be unable to return. "You never would have known what had happened to me," he said.

At his sudden exclamation they all paused to listen. Someone was certainly calling. They could all hear the voice. On the still, heavy air it sounded weird and far away:

"Help! Help!--Who-o-o-p--Who-o-o-p--Hallo-o-o!--Help!"

It was a man's voice. In it there was a wail of despair. Again it sounded. It increased in volume and mounted to a shriek. It was the cry of a soul in torment. Cold chills ran through the veins of the men who listened.

"My God!" exclaimed one of the detectives. "I can't stand that, Chief."

"If he went in there, something's got him," said another. "Maybe it's 'gators. There's a lot of them in there, down the road a little further."

"If 'twas alligators he'd never yell more than once," said the Chief. "It sounds to me as if he might be mired, but I doubt it."

"Perhaps it's a trap," said the man who had suggested alligators.

The cries continued. They varied from shrieks to howls. They became maniacal. And the final appeal was always the same:

"Help--Oh, help!"

The Chief looked quickly about. "Anybody want to come with me," he snapped. "You don't have to, you know."

"Good God!" exclaimed the chauffeur who had just emerged from the edge of the swamp, "You don't mean you're going in there, Chief?"

But the Chief had already started. The others followed. A leaden haze now enveloped the countryside. The air was hot and muggy. The sultry stillness seemed intensified by the low rumble of thunder which continued to mutter in the distance as if the vengeance of heaven were being aroused. Occasionally fierce, flying streaks of lightning zig-zagged across the skyline just where it seemed to meet the trees which dotted the swamps. There was something vibrant and supernatural in the atmosphere. The butterflies, the birds and the insects seemed all to have sought shelter from some demonstration of power against which they were as nothing.

Subconsciously the men now running along the dusty road felt the influence of the strange phenomenon but they did not swerve from their purpose. The cries for help had not ceased. They were growing, if anything, more constant, more tragic. Of a sudden they paused then burst forth again in peal after peal of wild, mocking laughter. The man had gone mad!

Trampled flowers on the crest of a slight rise by the side of the road marked the spot where he had entered the bushes. The Chief, followed closely by Wayne and the detectives, forced his way through. As they did so the shadows lengthened about them and finally closed over their heads. A heavy vapor seemed to rise from the marshy ground under their feet. There was a sulphuric tang to it that added to the silence of all nature.

The mud grew deeper. They picked their steps cautiously, selecting the roots and branches of trees as a footing but halted abruptly as the Chief, who was in the advance, held up his hand. The wild laughter had lessened now and, as they neared the spot from whence it had proceeded, gave place to low, incoherent mumblings. At the Chief's signal those with him peered curiously forward.

There was little to see. Only the head and shoulders of the creature known as Peter Grimes. His naturally distorted features were twisted into a mask of unbelievable malignancy. His gleaming eyes were baleful as a snake's and his chattering tongue was releasing such horrible mouthings as none who heard ever wished afterward to recall. He did not see them. He would not have known them if he had.

And he was still going down--down--into the pit. Suddenly two blood-curdling cries burst from him. They were cries of fright and abject terror. His eyes rolled in their sockets. He looked fearfully upward.

"Babies--babies--git away--quit lookin' at me," he shrieked.

A fiery shaft of lightning penetrated the gloom of that death pit. The thunder crashed directly overhead. The detonation brought a gleam of returning reason to the shattered brain of the creature about to meet judgement. The baleful light went out of his eyes but the fear remained. For the first time in all his twisted, warped life Peter Grimes was rational.

"Oh, God--" he mumbled, as the mud crept up onto his chin, "I war--awful mean--I didn't know--nawthin'." The shaggy head drooped forward.

With one accord, the watchers closed their eyes. When they opened them again the mud was forming little circles where the ogre had disappeared.