Part 22

“Are you all right, Leslie?” He was normal again. “I’m sorry I had to leave you, but this place rather rattles me, and I had to go along and see if I could find an exit.”

“Where are we?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I carried you down that wretched circular arrangement and you were fearfully heavy,” he added, so naïvely that the girl laughed for the first time in that period of horror. “Do you know, Leslie,” he squatted down on the floor by her side--“I have an idea. Do you remember those holes we looked through?”

“Yes, I remember them,” she said, wondering what was coming next.

“Do you know that they are placed in the side of a well of some kind?”

Not a word about Dick. He had forgotten the rope cutting and the horror that followed.

“Has it occurred to you,” he went on, “that the treasure may be at the bottom of that well? It only struck me a few minutes ago. If we could get out and have a talk with Dick, he’s such an ingenious devil that I’m sure he would find the opening of the well, which may be inside the old Abbey itself. Most of these mediæval buildings have a well in the centre and kept their water supply enclosed.”

“You didn’t find an exit?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “I got into a sort of labyrinth and I thought I should never get out again. Good heavens! Look at your feet!”

They were indeed in a sorry plight, swollen and bleeding. In an instant he had pulled off his own shoes.

“Put them on,” he said authoritatively, and when she demurred, he seized her foot and slipped her toes into the shoe. “I was a great runner in my day,” he said, with a hint of pride, “and barefooted running was my specialty--to use a horrible theatrical word.”

The shoes were much too big for her, but the comfort of them after walking barefooted on that rough floor!

“There’s one place I haven’t explored, and that is the little side passage to the left. There has been some sort of a fall there and the rock looks rotten. I don’t like to attempt an exploration. By the way, what made you faint?” he asked suddenly.

“I don’t know--nerves, I suppose,” she said.

It was useless and even dangerous to tell him of what had happened by the wall of the well.

“I thought it might be that,” he said. “If you feel fitter now we’ll go along.”

He walked ahead, switching his lamp on and off at intervals. He wanted to save his batteries, he told her, which had shown signs of running down. All the time he kept up an incessant chatter. He had plans about the future of the Abbey and grew enthusiastic when he expounded his scheme.

“This is not even a Saxon-English burrow, but probably goes back to the days of the original inhabitants of Britain,” he said. “We are walking in paths that were originally cut by cavemen. Doesn’t that thrill you, Leslie?”

“Terribly,” she said, with unconscious irony.

“I’ll have the place wired and lit; it will be necessary to increase the electric supply, but Dick will see to that. I may present it to the nation or to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners--I’m not certain which. There is no doubt from an archæological point of view.…”

So he talked on and she followed him, sometimes listening, sometimes her mind occupied with the agony of thought. Was Dick safe? She was sure that he was not alone; there were men at the top of the well and they would save him. It was not possible that Dick Alford should die in that dark place, that his splendid life should be ended so tragically. The walking was tiring, for they were climbing all the time.

They must have covered about a quarter of a mile when he stopped.

“Here is the side passage,” he said, and warned her: “Don’t go into it; the stones are still falling.”

He put his light into the hole--it was no more--and she saw a great heap of fallen rock in the middle of the path. There was just room between the top of the heap and the roof to crawl through. But what she noticed instantly was the strong current of air that fanned her cheeks when she stopped to look through the aperture.

“This must be the way, Harry,” she said instantly. “Can’t you feel the air?”

“I noticed that,” he agreed, but was reluctant to enter this unpromising byway.

“We must go, Harry. There’s no other way out,” she said. “We are getting farther and farther down, away from the Abbey, and, as you say, beyond here is only a labyrinth that brings you back to the place from where you started.”

“All right,” he agreed, with evident distaste. “I had better go first.”

He crawled gingerly over the pile of stones and slid down on the other side.

She heard his voice.

“It is all right here,” he said, and then the light of his lamp showed and she followed him.

The passage was very high; it was a natural fissure in the rock. Yet the hand of man must have been here, for the floor had been levelled, and there was evidence of animal life. A long black shape scudded across the path and disappeared through a hole. The girl gave a little scream and shrank back.

“It is only a weasel,” said Harry calmly. “Where a weasel can get, we can get.”

The passage had widened and now the work of man became evident. They were in a square chamber with two entrances on either side. The roof was of vaulted stone that seemed to bulge downward as if it supported a weight beyond its capacity, but this was hidden by the long stalactites that flashed in the light of the lantern. And she shivered. It was extraordinarily cold, almost as if they had come into an ice house.

“No door. I wonder what the idea of this place was.”

It was the first man-made chamber they had seen. The walls were running with water; wet and shining; the roof dripped incessantly, but only one small pool of water gathered on the floor; the rest ran off in a central chamber and apparently into the solid rock.

“The dripping of water wears away stone,” quoted Harry, and pointed to the floor with its tiny saucer-shaped depression.

There was no sign of door at either entrance and he went ahead of her through the farther entrance, covered a few yards, and stopped, looking upward.

“Daylight!” he said.

The first thing of which she was conscious was that, away from the little room, she was warm again.

The shaft that worked upward was a natural fissure. They could see the rough edges of rock jutting out at intervals. In some places it was wide enough to hold a full-sized man; in other places it was so narrow that only an arm could have reached through. But there it was, the clear, uninterrupted view of the sky, and the girl beheld a phenomenon with which miners are familiar, the view of a white, winking star in broad daylight.

“That is where the air comes from,” said Harry. “Now we’ll try where this passage leads.”

It led to a blank wall of solid rock, he found. They stared at each other in the darkness.

“We must try back,” said Harry.

Hardly were the words out of his mouth than there was a distant rumble and roar, the ground beneath their feet shook, and down the passageway through which they had reached the Cold Room swept a cloud of flying dust.

“Wait,” he said, and flew along the passage.

He was gone a few minutes before he returned. She could not see his face except from the reflected light he threw upon the floor to guide him on his way.

“The roof has fallen in,” he said, and there was a tremor in his voice. “I am afraid, Leslie, we are finished!”

LXI

A hot bath and a meal, though every morsel seemed to choke him, restored Dick Alford to something like himself. There was hope--faint indeed, but still hope. He had despatched his bailiff in search of explosives, but explosives cannot be bought over the counter like cheese and bacon. He had a telephone message from the man to say that he was on his way to London and would return with the necessary apparatus. Dick’s plan was simple; even then a derrick was being rigged over the well; his plan was to dynamite the wall of the well and to get into the gallery.

“For a long time I’ve been suspicious that the rock on which the Abbey was built was honey-combed with passages. My father told me something about it and I’ve seen an old plan that shows an elaborate system of corridors, though the family has always thought this was largely imaginative on the part of the artist.”

“Have you the plan now?” asked Gilder.

Dick shook his head.

“Harry took everything of that nature away with him the night he left the house.”

“It is not amongst the books you found in the underground room?” said Puttler, and a search was made of the library, but without success.

They were on their way to the ruins when Puttler saw the aëroplane in the sky. It circled twice and then began to dip steeply.

“I believe that fellow is coming here,” he said.

And so it proved. The machine roared its progress for a hundred yards or more, and then dropped. Presently they saw a man get down. Though he wore an airman’s helmet, Dick recognized him. It was Arthur Gwyn.

He met Gilder’s scowl with a little laugh.

“I’ve got some money of yours, Gilder,” he said, and dragged with some difficulty a huge packet from the pocket of his leather coat. “That is more or less the amount I owe you, unless the franc has depreciated in value since I left Paris. And now you can do your damnedest!”

Gilder took the packet without a word and Arthur turned to Dick Alford.

“I read about Leslie in the French papers,” he said simply, “and so I came back. Has she been found?”

Dick shook his head.

“Have you any idea where she is?”

Dick told him all that had happened that afternoon and Arthur Gwyn listened in silence. When Dick came to speak of his plan, he shook his head.

“I had my early training as an engineer before I went into the law,” he said surprisingly, “and I tell you, from my elementary knowledge of the science, that you’re likely to blow in the whole well, and if there’s anybody on the other side, God help them!”

He accompanied them to the lower room and was swung down on the derrick to make an inspection. When he returned to the surface his report was not very promising.

“So far as I can see,” he said, “whilst you may enlarge the opening of any of these air holes, you may also bring about a fall of the rock inside. You’re dealing with surfaces which have been exposed to the chemical action of the air.”

He went down and made an inspection of the lower room, which was new to him, and, as they had done, tried to pull the table aside. And then he did what they had not attempted; he pushed at the table at one end and felt it move, at first slowly and then quickly, as though he had set in motion a counterweight. He had just time to swing himself on the table and grip its edge when the aperture appeared under his feet.

Dick saw the broken stair, and, sitting on the edge of the hole, dropped through to the rocky floor just as the table slid into its place. They pushed it back again and propped it, and Arthur and Gilder joined him below carrying lanterns. He saw a piece of something dark on the floor and picked it up. It was a strip of silk.

“This is the way,” he said quietly. “I’ll work to the left; you go to the right, Gilder.”

Arthur made a rapid mental calculation.

“The left passage will lead you to the well, and unless I’m very much mistaken you will find the air holes on your right-hand side. If you don’t mind, I’ll go with you.”

The men ascended the treacherous slope and came to the first of the air holes, continued up until they reached the straight passage down which Leslie had made her fruitless journey. They, too, were brought to a halt by the wall barrier, and returned the way they had come. There was no sign of Leslie or Harry, but when Dick passed the alcove down which he had dropped from the Abbot’s room he found a burnt match stalk.

He ascended again, a long, steady climb.

“We’re near the surface of the ground,” said Arthur.

Ahead of them the star lamp of Gilder showed. He was coming back to meet them.

“This passage ends in a sort of maze,” he reported. “There is a side passage, but that’s entirely blocked by stone.”

They went back with him to the place and Arthur Gwyn examined the débris.

“The roof has fallen in here,” he said. “How long ago, it is impossible to tell. This stone is old, but I should think that the fall has been going on for years.”

They returned dispirited, and accompanied Gilder on his exploration of the maze. Though they tried passage after passage, they invariably found themselves back at the place where they had started. Dick made another inspection of the fallen roof. It had collapsed a few feet from the entrance; and, though he did not know this, there was twenty yards of crumbled rock between him and the little chamber where Leslie Gwyn was waiting for death.

Dick came out into the light of the setting sun, his haggard face white with dust. Arthur sat on a stone, his head in his hands, the picture of despair. Even Gilder was shaken from his habitual calm, could do no more than stare tragically at the ruin which hid so much. The broken arch of the window, red in the light of the setting sun, was more than ever like a query mark. There was something devilish about it, something which epitomized the spirit that leered and mocked at them.

“Come back to the house,” said Dick steadily, and, to the bailiff who approached him: “No, I sha’n’t want the dynamite--yet.”

They walked dispiritedly along the mound, Arthur Gwyn, the most dejected of all, walking in the rear. Suddenly they heard him shout, and turned. He was pointing across the river.

“What is it?” asked Dick, hurrying back to him.

“The wishing well--have you thought of that?” gasped Arthur.

“The wishing well?”

And then Dick remembered that rendezvous of the country swains, the unfathomable crevice in the earth down which, as a boy, he had dropped stones, listening to hear them strike from rock to rock until they grew fainter.

“That reaches somewhere,” said Arthur excitedly. “We can but try it.”

Dick ran down to the bank, plunged into the water and waded through to the other side. The two men followed him, and something whispered in Dick Alford’s heart that this was his last hope.

LXII

“What time is it?” asked Harry.

He had not spoken for two hours, but had sat, clasping his knees, his head thrust forward, engaged with his wild thoughts.

“Lend me the lantern.”

She passed the lamp back to him.

“A quarter to seven,” she said. “Harry, I feel so hungry.”

“Do you?” he asked in surprise. “I don’t feel hungry, I feel--I don’t know.”

Presently he spoke again.

“How did we get here?” he asked. “I know the roof fell in, but how did we come into this beastly place?”

“You’ve been very ill,” she said gently. “You came here whilst you were sick.”

“Did I really?” He seemed amazed at her reply and did not speak again for fully five minutes. “I seem to remember now that I have been ill. I sleep so badly and have such horrible dreams. Poor old Dick was always ragging me about my patent medicines… queer bird, old Dick, but one of the very best.”

He spoke so heartily, with such enthusiasm, that her heart ached for some unknown reason.

“We shall have to get out of here,” he said.

She did not answer him.

For the tenth time he turned on the light of his lamp and examined the roof.

“It is vaulted,” he muttered. “I hope nothing happens here.”

She felt him shivering.

“Nothing is going to happen, Harry,” she said soothingly. “We’re going to get out and we’re going to have a big dinner to celebrate our rescue.”

He chuckled softly.

“We shall never get out of here,” he said cheerfully. “This is the end of the House of Chelford.” He thought a while. “By Jove, no! Of course, Dick will inherit the estate. Isn’t it queer, Leslie, that he never wanted me to marry? That’s the only thing about Dick I cannot understand, because he’s not a jealous man or an envious man, but a good, big-hearted fellow--and yet he didn’t want me to marry. Doesn’t that seem strange to you?”

“I don’t think you’re right, Harry,” she temporized. “Only he didn’t want you to marry the wrong woman.”

“But he didn’t want me to marry you,” said Harry in a tone of indignation. “And if there’s a better girl in the world than you, I’d like to find her! Of course, I’m a terrible slacker, but…”

“Hullo!”

The booming voice seemed to come from somebody in the chamber. She felt him start, and again his frail body quavered in a fit of trembling.

“What was that?” he asked huskily.

“Hullo!”

The voice came again. She seized the lamp from his hand, ran out of the cavern to the place where she had seen daylight.

“Is that you, Dick?” she called at the top of her voice, and heard a husky “Thank God!”

And then from the Cold Room came a burst of demoniacal laughter. There was yet the gravest danger of all to overcome. She was alone with a madman!

LXIII

She could see no daylight, and thought that night must have fallen, until a patch of golden red appeared high above her.

“Is Harry with you?”

“Yes,” she replied. “One moment.”

She went back to find him cowering against the wall, and gripped him by the shoulders.

“Harry,” she said pleadingly, “they have found us!”

He scowled up at her.

“Who have found us?”

“Dick--everybody. We sha’n’t have long to wait now.”

He licked his lips.

“Dick and everybody,” he said dully. “That is strange… found us!”

She flew back to the little shaft.

“Are you hungry?” boomed the voice.

“Very,” she answered. “But that doesn’t matter--I can live without food for another twelve hours. We’re in a sort of underground room. The roof of the passage has fallen in.”

“How long is the passage?” asked Dick quickly.

She thought a moment.

“About forty yards, I think. It cannot be much less.”

“How far from your end is it blocked?” and when she told him, she heard him groan.

“Leslie.”

“Yes?”

“I’m sending something down to you at the end of a string. It is a pocket compass. Will you tell me exactly the bearings?”

It reached her at last, battered, its glass broken. She put the little instrument on the floor.

“Put it where I can see it,” he said. “Have you a light?”

She flashed the lamp upon it.

“Where is the north? Just touch the place with your finger. Wait, I will send for field glasses.”

Ten minutes passed, and then he said again:

“Now show me.” And when she had indicated the north, he asked her where the cavern was.

“Exactly west,” she said with tremulous triumph. “Will it be a long time before you reach us?”

He made no answer to this.

“Tell me how many paces you are from the compass,” and when she had paced it off and had told him, he groaned.

By this time the consulting engineer to whom he had telephoned in the afternoon was on the spot.

“The cavern is exactly under the bed of the river,” said that official.

“Could we enlarge this hole?” asked Dick.

The surveyor shook his head.

“Impossible. It would take you the best part of a month to blast a way down. There’s a long fault in the rock here which accounts for the river’s course,” he added. “Both banks are solid; I can assure you on that point, because my predecessor bored for water for your respected father.”

Dick groaned. He could keep the girl alive for a month, but the strain of it would kill her. Then there flashed simultaneously to two minds a solution.

“Why not break the dam of the Ravensrill?” he said, and Puttler, who had the words on his lips, nodded.

“That’s the idea,” he said. “Undo the work of your ancestor! Turn the course of the river to the Long Meadow--there’s a natural bed for it!”

Ten minutes later the telephone at Fossaway Manor was busy, and here Mary Wenner was a heaven-sent helper. Every great contractor within twenty miles had his instructions, and within an hour charabancs, motor-cars, omnibuses, crowded with horny-handed workmen, were lumbering up the drive. Car succeeded car, and disgorged the fustian-clad navvies. They had been taken from alehouses, from their homes, from workmen’s clubs, drawn even from the cinemas of distant Brighton, and every hour the number swelled, until there were a thousand men working by the light of naphtha flames on the great dump behind Fossaway Manor.

At ten o’clock the omnibuses and lorries were still rolling up the drive; trolleys laden with wheelbarrows and tools were being rapidly unloaded at the side of the dump. All southern Sussex worked to cut the dam of the Ravensrill, and the big dump grew smaller and smaller. Presently, as the water rose, it spilled into the bed that it had left for hundreds of years and flowed its irregular course, sweeping aside barns that had been hastily evacuated, lapping the walls of one cottage, the inhabitants of which had been removed in time. Little by little the water in the old bed sank and sank until it was a dark mass of weeds and silvery shapes that leapt up and down _in extremis_. Water voles, trout, pike were shovelled to the bank, and the bed of the river attacked by men who worked at fever pace, being relieved every half hour.

“If there is rock there,” said the surveyor, “we are dished. My own belief is that there’s nothing but sand.”

“And shingle?” suggested Puttler.

“No, sir, there’s no shingle. It is a curious fact that we’ve never found shingle in the Ravensrill. They’ve struck the sand now,” he said, looking down into the hole, which the men were shoring with logs of timber. “And I’m glad there is no shingle--sand is much easier to work.”

He had hardly spoken the words before the foreman shouted:

“We’ve struck shingle here, governor!”

“Shingle?” The surveyor went down the ladder into the hole.

“It is only a layer,” he said when he came back, “but even that is rather surprising. It opens up all sorts of possibilities.”

Dick did not listen. The value of shingle to a county surveyor was of no more interest to him than the value of sand to a grocer.