CHAPTER XVII
It seemed an eternity before the tide turned and began slowly to make its noisy way up the beach. Most of the time she was alone in the little recess, for Brill made periodical reconnaissances into the mouth of the cave. She would have accompanied him, but he explained the difficulties she would find.
“It is quite dark until the tide comes in, and then we get the reflected light from the water and you can see your way about quite easily.”
“Is there anybody there?”
He nodded.
“Two chaps who are tinkering about with a boat. She’s high and dry at present on the bed of the channel, but she floats out quite easily.”
The first whirl of water was around them when he came out from the cave and beckoned her.
“Keep close to the wall,” he whispered, “and hold fast to my sleeve.”
She obeyed and followed him and they slipped round to the left, following a fairly level path. Before they had come into the cave, he had warned her that under no circumstances must she speak, not even whisper, except through hollowed hands placed against his ear. The properties of the cave were such that the slightest sound was magnified.
They went a long way to the left, and she thought that they were following a passage; it was not until later that she discovered the huge dimensions of this water-hollowed cavern. After a while he reached back and touched her right hand, as a signal that he was turning to the right.
Whilst they were waiting on the beach he had drawn a rough plan in the sand, and assured her that the ledge on which they now walked offered no obstacle. He pressed her hand to warn her he was stopping, and, bending down, he groped at the rocky wall where he had left his shoes. Up and up they went; she began to see dimly now, though the cave remained in darkness and she was unable with any accuracy to pick out distant objects. His arm came back and she found herself guided into a deep niche, and he patted her shoulder to tell her she could sit down.
They had to wait another hour before a thin sheet of water showed at the mouth of the cave, and then, as if by magic, the interior was illuminated by a ghostly green light. The greatest height of the cave it was impossible to tell from where she sat, because just above them was a low and jagged roof. The farther side of the cave was distant some fifty yards, and here the rocky wall seemed to run straight down from the roof to the sandy bottom. It was under this that she saw the motor boat, a long grey craft, entirely devoid of any superstructure. It lay heeled over on its side, and she saw a figure walk along the canted deck and disappear down a hatchway. The farther the water came into the cave, the brighter grew the light. He circled his two hands about her ear and whispered:
“Shall we stay here or try to find a way out?” and she replied in like fashion:
“Let us try.”
He nodded, and silently led the way. It was no longer necessary for her to hold on to him. The path they were following had undoubtedly been shaped by human hands. Every dozen yards was a rough-hewn block of stone put across the path step fashion. They were ascending, and now had the advantage of being screened by the cave from people on the boat, for on their right rose a jagged screen of rock.
They had not progressed a hundred yards before screen and wall joined, and beyond this point progress seemed impossible. The passage was in darkness. Apparently Brill had explored the way, for, taking the girl by the arm, he moved to the right, feeling along the uneven wall. The path beneath was more difficult, and the rocky floor made walking a pain. She was near to exhaustion when she saw, ahead of her, an irregular patch of grey light. Apparently this curious gallery led back to the far end of the cave, but before they reached the opening Brill signalled her to halt.
“You’d better sit down,” he whispered. “We can put on our shoes.”
The stockings that she had knotted about her waist were still wet, and her shoes two soggy masses, but she was glad to have some protection for her feet. Whilst she was putting them on, Brill crept forward to the opening and took observation.
The water which had now flooded the cave was some fifty feet below him, and a few paces would bring them to a broad ledge of rock which formed a natural landing for a flight of steps leading down from the misty darkness of the roof to water-level. The steps were cut in the side of the bare rock; they were about two feet in breadth and were unprotected even by a makeshift handrail. It would be, he saw, a nerve-racking business for the girl to attempt the climb, and he was not even sure that it would be worth the attempt. That they led to one of the many exits from the cave, he knew, because he had seen people climbing up and down those steps and disappearing in the darkness at the top. Possibly the stairs broadened nearer the roof, but even so it was a very severe test for a half-starved girl, who he guessed was on the verge of hysteria; he was not quite certain that he himself would not be attacked by vertigo if he made the attempt.
There was a space behind the steps that brought him to the edge of the rock, part of the floor of the cave, and it was this way that he intended to guide Margaret. There was no sound; far away to his right the men on the launch were apparently absorbed in their work, and, returning, he told the girl his plan, and she accompanied him to the foot of the steps. At the sight of that terrifying stairway she shuddered.
“I couldn’t possibly climb those,” she whispered as he pointed upwards into the gloom.
“I have an idea there is a sort of balcony running the width of the cave, and it was from there I was thrown,” he said. “I have reason to know that there is a fairly deep pool at the foot of it. When the tide is up, the water reaches the back wall—that is where I found myself when I came to my senses.”
“Is there any other way from the cave?” she asked.
He shook his head.
“I’m blest if I know. I’ve only had a very hasty look round, but there seems to be a sort of tunnel at the far end. It’s worth while exploring—nobody is about, and we are too far from the boat for them to see us.”
They waited for a while, listening, and then, Brill walking ahead, they passed the foot of the stairs and followed a stony path which, to the girl’s relief, broadened as they progressed.
Margaret Belman never forgot that nightmare walk, with the towering rock face on her left, the straight drop to the floor of the cave on her right hand.
They had now reached the limit of the rocky chamber, and found themselves confronted by the choice of four openings. There was one immediately facing them, another—and this was also accessible—about forty feet to the right, and two others which apparently could not be reached. Leaving Margaret, Brill groped his way into the nearest. He was gone half an hour before he returned with a story of failure.
“The whole cliff is absolutely bored with rock passages,” he said. “I gave it up because it is impossible to go far without a light.”
The second opening promised better. The floor was even, and it had this advantage that it ran straight in line with the mouth of the cave, and there was light for a considerable distance. She followed him along this passage.
“It is worth trying,” he said, and she nodded her agreement.
They had not gone far before he discovered something which he had overlooked on his first trip. At regular intervals there were niches in the wall. He had noticed these, but had failed to observe their extraordinary regularity. The majority were blocked with loose stone, but he found one that had not been so guarded, and felt his way round the wall. It was a square, cell-like chamber, so exactly proportioned that it must have been created by the hand of man. He came back to announce his intention of exploring the next of the closed cells.
“These walls haven’t been built up for nothing,” he told her, and there was a note of suppressed excitement in his voice.
The farther they progressed, the poorer and more inadequate was the light. They had to feel their way along the wall until the next recess was reached. Flat slabs of rock, laid one on the other, had been piled up in the entrance, and the work of removing the top layers was a painful one. Margaret could not help him. She sat with her back to the wall and fell into the uneasy sleep of exhaustion. She had almost ceased to be hungry, though her throat was parched with a maddening thirst. She woke heavily and found Brill shaking her shoulder.
“I’ve been inside”—his voice was quavering with excitement. “Hold out your hands, both together!”
She obeyed mechanically, and felt something cold drip into her palms, and, drooping her head, drank. The sting of the wine took her breath away.
“Champagne,” he whispered. “Don’t drink too much or you’ll get tight!”
She sipped again. Never had wine tasted so delicious.
“It’s a storehouse; boxes of food, I think, and hundreds of bottles of wine. Hold your hands.”
He poured more wine into her palms; most of it escaped through her fingers, but she drank eagerly the few drops that remained.
“Wait here.”
She was very much awake now; peered into the darkness towards the place where he had disappeared. Ten minutes, a quarter of an hour passed, and then to her joy there appeared from behind the stony barrier, revealing in silhouette the hole through which Brill had crawled, a white and steady light. She heard the crack and crash of a box being opened, saw the bulk of the detective as he appeared in the hole, and in a second he was by her side.
“Biscuits,” he said. “Luckily the box was labelled.”
“What was the light?” she asked, as she seized the crackers eagerly.
“A small battery lantern; I knocked it over as I was groping. The place is simply stocked with grub! Here’s a drink for you.”
He handed her a flat, round tin, guided her finger to the hole he had punched.
“Preserved milk—German and good stuff,” he said.
She drank thirstily, not taking her lips from the tin until it was empty.
“This seems to be the ship’s store,” he said, “but the great blessing is the lamp. I’m going in to see if I can find a box of refills; there isn’t a great deal of juice left in the battery.”
His search occupied a considerable time, and then she saw the light go out and her heart sank, until the light flashed up again, this time more brilliant than ever. He scrambled out and dropped down the rugged wall and pushed something heavy into her hand.
“A spare lamp,” he said. “There are half a dozen there, and enough refills to last us a month.”
He struck the stone wall with something that clanged.
“A case-opener,” he explained, “and a useful weapon. I wonder which of these storehouses holds the guns?”
The exploration of the passage could now be made in comparative comfort. There was need of the lamps, for a few yards further on the tunnel turned abruptly to the right, and the floor became more irregular. Brill turned on his light and showed the way. Now the passage turned to the left, and he pointed out how smooth were the walls.
“Water action,” he said. “There must have been a subterranean river here at some time.”
Twisting and turning, the gallery led now up, now down, now taking almost a hairpin turn, now sweeping round in an almost perfect curve, but leading apparently nowhere.
Brill was walking ahead, the beam of his lamp sweeping along the ground, when she saw him stop suddenly, and, stooping, he picked something from the ground.
“How the dickens did this get here?”
On the palm of his hand lay a bright silver florin, a little battered at the edge, but unmistakably a two-shilling piece.
“Somebody has been here——” he began, and then she uttered a cry.
“Oh!” gasped Margaret. “That was Mr. Reeder’s!”
She told him of the incident at the well; how J. G. Reeder had dropped the coin to test the distance. Brill put the light of his lamp on the ceiling; it was solid rock. And then he sent the rays moving along, and presently the lamp focussed on a large round opening.
“Here is the well that never was a well,” he said grimly; and flashing the light upward, looked open-mouthed at the steel rungs fitted every few inches in the side of the well.
“A ladder,” he said slowly. “What do you know about that?”
He reached up, standing on tiptoe, but the nearest rung was at least a yard beyond his hand, and he looked round for some loose stones which he could pile and from the top of which he could reach the lowest bar of the ladder. But none was in sight, except a few splinters of stone which were valueless for his purpose. And then he remembered the case-opener; it had a hook at the end, and, holding this above his head, he leapt. The first time he missed; the second time the hook caught the steel rung and the handle slipped from his grip, leaving the case-opener dangling. He rubbed his hands on the dusty floor and sprang again. This time he caught and held, and with a superhuman effort pulled himself up until his hand gripped the lower rung. Another struggle, and he had drawn himself up hand over hand till his feet rested on the bar.
“Do you think if I pulled you up you have strength to climb?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“I’m afraid not. Go up alone; I will wait here.”
“Keep clear of the bottom,” he warned her. “I may not fall, but as likely as not I shall dislodge a few chunks of rock in my progress.”
The warning was well justified, she found. There was a continuous shower of stone and earth as he progressed. From time to time he stopped to rest. Once he shouted down something which she could not distinguish. It was probably a warning, for a few seconds later a mass of rock as large as a man’s head crashed down and smashed on the floor, sending fragments flying in all directions.
Peeping up from time to time, she could see the glimmer of his lamp growing fainter; and now, left alone, she began to grow nervous, and for company switched on her light. She had hardly done so when she heard a sound which brought her heart to her mouth. It was the sound of footsteps; somebody was walking along the passage towards her.
She turned the switch of the lamp and listened. The old man’s voice! Only his, and none other. He was talking to himself, a babble of growling sound that was becoming more and more distinct. And then, far away, she saw the glow of a reflected light, for the passage swept round at this point and he would not be visible until he was upon her.
Slipping off her shoes, she sped along in the darkness, tumbling and sliding on the uneven pathway. After a while panic left her and she stopped and looked back. The light was no longer visible; there was neither sound nor sign of him; and, plucking up courage, after a few minutes she retraced her steps. She dared not put on the light, and must guess where the well opening was. In the darkness she passed it, and she was soon a considerable distance beyond the place where Brill had left her.
Where had Flack gone? There were no side passages. She was standing by one of the recesses, her hand resting on the improvised stone screen, when to her horror she felt it moving away from her, and had just time to shrink back when she saw a crack of light appear on the opposite wall and broaden until there was outlined the shape of a doorway.
“… To-night, my dear, to-night.… I’m going up to see Daver. Daver is worrying me… you are sure nothing has happened that might shake my confidence in him?”
“Nothing, father. What could have happened?”
It was Olga Crewe’s voice. She said something else which Margaret could not hear, and then she heard the chuckling laugh of the old man.
“Reeder? He’s busy in London! But he’ll be back to-night…”
Again a question which Margaret could not catch.
“The body hasn’t been found. I didn’t want to hurt the girl, but she was useful… my best card.… I could have caught Reeder with her—had it all arranged.”
Another question.
“I suppose so. The tide is very high. Anyway, I saw her fall…”
Margaret knew they were talking about her, but this interested her less than the possibility of discovery. She walked backward, step by step, hoping and praying that she would find a niche into which she could shrink. Presently she found what she wanted.
Flack had come out into the passage and was standing talking back into the room.
“All right, I’ll leave the door open… imagination. There’s plenty of air. The well supplies that. I’ll be back this evening.”
She dared not look, but after a while his footsteps became fainter. The door was still open, and she saw a shadow growing larger on the opposite wall, as Olga approached the entrance. Presently she heard a sigh; the shadow became small again, and finally disappeared. Margaret crept forward, hardly daring to breathe, until she came behind the open door.
It was, she guessed, made of stout oak, and the surface had been so cunningly camouflaged with splinters of rock that it differed in no respect from the walled recess into which Brill had broken.
Curiosity is dominant in the most rational of individuals, and, despite her terrible danger, Margaret was curious to see the inside of that rocky home of the Flacks. With the utmost caution she peeped round. She was surprised at the size of the room and a little disappointed in its furnishing. She had pictured rich rugs and gorgeous furniture, the walls perhaps covered with silken hangings. Instead, she saw a plain deal table on which stood a lamp, a strip of threadbare carpet, two basket chairs, and a camp bed. Olga was standing by the table, looking down at a newspaper; her back was towards the girl, and Margaret had time to make a more prolonged scrutiny.
Near the table were three or four suit-cases, packed and strapped as though in preparation for a journey. A fur coat lay across the bed, and that was the only evidence of luxury in this grim apartment. There was a second person in the room. Margaret distinguished in the shadow the drooping figure of a woman—Mrs. Burton.
She took a step forward to see better; her feet slipped upon the smooth surface of the rock, and she fell forward against the door, half closing it.
“Who is there? Is that you, father?”
Margaret’s heart nearly stopped beating, and for a moment she stood paralysed, incapable of movement. Then, as Olga’s footsteps sounded, she turned and fled along the passage, gripping tight her lantern. Olga’s voice challenged her, but on and on she ran. The corridor was growing lighter, and with a gasp of horror she realised that in the confusion of the moment she had taken the wrong direction and she was running towards the great cave, possibly into the old madman’s hands.
She heard the quick patter of footsteps behind her, and flew on. And now she was in the almost bright light of the huge cavern. There was nobody in sight, and she followed the twisting ledge that ran under the wall of rock until she came to the foot of the long stairs. And then she heard a shout. Somebody on the boat had seen her. As she stood motionless with fear, mad John Flack appeared. He was coming towards her through the passage by which she and Brill had reached the interior of the cave. For a second he stared at her as though she were some ghastly apparition of his mad dreams, and then with a roar he leapt towards her.
She hesitated no longer. In a second she was flying up that awful staircase, death on her right hand, but a more hideous fate behind. Higher and higher up those unrailed stairs… she dared not look, she dared not think, she could only keep her eyes steadfastly upwards into the misty gloom where this interminable Jacob’s-ladder ended on some solid floor. Not for a fortune would she have looked behind, or vertigo would have seized her. Her breath was coming in long sobs; her heart beat as though it would burst. She dared pause for an infinitesimal time to recover breath before she continued her flight. He was an old man; she could outdistance him. But he was a madman, a thing of terrible and abnormal energy. Panic was leaving her; it exhausted too much of her strength. Upward and upward she climbed, until she was in gloom, and then, when it seemed that she could get no farther, she reached the head of the stairs. A broad, flat space, with a rocky roof which, for some reason, had been strengthened with concrete pillars. There were dozens of these pillars… once she had taken a fortnight’s holiday in Spain; there was a cathedral in Cordova, of which this broad vault reminded her… all sense of direction was lost now. She came with terrifying suddenness to a blank wall; ran along it until she came to a narrow opening where there were five steps, and here she stopped to turn on her light. Facing her was a steel door with a great iron handle, and the steel door was ajar.
She pulled it towards her, ran through, pulled the door behind her; it fastened with a click. It had something attached to its inner side, a steel projection… as she shut the door a box fell with a crash. There was yet another door before her, and this was immovable. She was in a tiny white box of a room, three feet wide, little more in depth. She had no time to continue her observations. Some one was fumbling with the handle of the door through which she had come. She gripped in desperation at the iron shelf and felt it slide a little to the right. Though she did not know this, the back part of the shelf acted as a bolt. Again she heard the fumbling at the handle and the click of a key turning, but the steel door remained immovable, and Margaret Belman sank in a heap to the ground.
CHAPTER XVIII
J. G. Reeder came downstairs, and those who saw his face realised that it was not the tragedy he had almost witnessed which had made him so white and drawn.
He found Gray in Daver’s office, waiting for his call to London. It came through as Reeder entered the room, and he took the instrument from his subordinate’s hand. He dismissed the death of Daver in a few words, and went on:
“I want all the local policemen we can muster, Simpson, though I think it would be better if we could get soldiers. There’s a garrison town five miles from here; the beaches have to be searched, and I want these caves explored. There is another thing: I think it would be advisable to get a destroyer or something to patrol the water before Siltbury. I’m pretty sure that Flack has a motor boat—there’s a channel deep enough to take it, and apparently there is a cave that stretches right under the cliff.… Miss Belman? I don’t know. That is what I want to find out.”
Simpson told him that the gold-wagon had been seen at Sevenoaks, and it required a real effort on Mr. Reeder’s part to bring his mind to such a triviality.
“I think soldiers will be best. I’d like a strong party posted near the quarry. There’s another cave there where Daver used to keep his wagons. I have an idea you might pick up the money to-night. That,” he added, a little bitterly, “will induce the authorities to use the military!”
After the ambulance had come and the pitiable wreck of Daver had been removed, he returned to the man’s suite with a party of masons he had brought up from Siltbury. Throwing open the lid of the divan, he pointed to the stone floor.
“That flag works on a pivot,” he said, “but I think it is fastened with a bolt or a bar underneath. Break it down.”
A quarter of an hour was sufficient to shatter the stone flooring, and then, as he had expected, he found a narrow flight of stairs leading to a square stone room which remained very much as it had been for six hundred years. A dusty, bare apartment, which yielded its secret. There was a small open door and a very narrow passage, along which a stout man would walk with some difficulty, and which led to behind the panelling of Daver’s private office. Mr. Reeder realised that anybody concealed here could hear every word that was spoken. And now he understood Daver’s frantic plea that he should lower his voice when he spoke of the marriage. Crazy Jack had learnt the secret of his daughter’s degradation—from that moment Daver’s death was inevitable.
How had the madman escaped? That required very little explanation. At some remote period Larmes Keep had evidently been used as a show place. He found an ancient wooden inscription fixed to the wall, which told the curious that this was the torture-chamber of the old Counts of Larme; it added the useful information that the dungeons were immediately beneath and approached through a stone trap. This the detectives found, and Mr. Reeder had his first view of the vaulted dungeons of Larmes Keep.
It was neither an impressive nor a thrilling exploration. All that was obvious was that there were three routes by which the murderer could escape, and that all three ways led back to the house, one exit being between the kitchen and the vestibule.
“There is another way out,” said Reeder shortly, “and we haven’t found it yet.”
His nerves were on edge. He roamed from room to room, turning out boxes, breaking open cupboards, emptying trunks. One find he made: it was the marriage certificate, and it was concealed in the lining of Olga Crewe’s dressing-bag.
At seven o’clock the first detachment of troops arrived by motor van. The local police had already reported that they had found no trace of Margaret Belman. They pointed out that the tide was falling when the girl left Larmes Keep, and that, unless she was lying on some invisible ledge, she might have reached the beach in safety. There was, however, a very faint hope that she was alive. How faint, J. G. Reeder would not admit.
A local cook had been brought in to prepare dinner for the detective, but Reeder contented himself with a cup of strong coffee—food, he felt, would have choked him.
He had posted a detachment in the quarry, and, returning to the house, was sitting in the big hall pondering the events of the day, when Gray came flying into the room.
“Brill!” he gasped.
J. G. Reeder sprang to his feet with a bound.
“Brill?” he repeated huskily. “Where is Brill?”
There was no need for Gray to point. A dishevelled and grimy figure, supported by a detective, staggered through the doorway.
“Where have you come from?” asked Reeder.
The man could not speak for a second. He pointed to the ground, and then, hoarsely:
“From the bottom of the well… Miss Belman is down there now!”
Brill was in a state of collapse, and not until he had had a stiff dose of brandy was he able to articulate a coherent story. Reeder led a party to the shrubbery, and the windlass was tested.
“It won’t bear even the weight of a woman, and there’s not sufficient rope,” said Gray, who made the test.
One of the officers remembered that, in searching the kitchen, he had found two window-cleaners’ belts, stout straps with a safety-hook attached. He went in search of these, whilst Mr. Reeder stripped his coat and vest.
“There’s a gap of four feet half-way down,” warned Brill. “The stone came away when I put my foot on it, and I nearly fell.”
Reeder, his lamp swung round his neck, peered down into the hole.
“It’s strange I didn’t see this ladder when I saw the well before,” he said, and then remembered that he had only opened one half of the flap.
Gray, who was also equipped with a belt, descended first, as he was the lighter of the two. By this time half a company of soldiers were on the scene, and by the greatest of good fortune the unit that had been turned out to assist the police was a company of the Royal Engineers. Whilst one party went in search of ropes, the other began to extemporise a hauling gear.
The two men worked their way down without a word. The lamps were fairly useless, for they could not show them the next rung, and after a while they began to move more cautiously. Gray found the gap and called a halt whilst he bridged it. The next rung was none too secure, Mr. Reeder thought, as he lowered his weight upon it, but they passed the danger zone with no other mishap than that which was caused by big pebbles dropping on Reeder’s head.
It seemed as though they would never reach the bottom, and the strain was already telling upon the older man, when Gray whispered:
“This is the bottom, I think,” and sent the light of his lamp downwards. Immediately afterwards he dropped to the rocky floor of the passage, Mr. Reeder following.
“Margaret!” he called in a whisper.
There was no reply. He threw the light first one way and then the other, but Margaret was not in sight, and his heart sank.
“You go farther along the passage,” he whispered to Gray. “I’ll take the other direction.”
With the light of his lamp on the ground, he half walked, half ran along the twisting gallery. Ahead of him he heard the sound of a movement not easily identified, and he stopped to extinguish the light. Moving cautiously forward, he turned an angle of the passage and saw at the far end indication of daylight. Sitting down, he looked along, and after a while he thought he saw a figure moving against this artificial skyline. Mr. Reeder crept forward, and this time he was not relying upon a rubber truncheon. He thumbed down the safety-catch of his Browning and drew nearer and nearer to the figure. Most unexpectedly it spoke.
“Olga, where has your father gone?”
It was Mrs. Burton, and Reeder showed his teeth in an unamused grin.
He did not hear the reply: it came from some recessed place, and the sound was muffled.
“Have they found that girl?”
Mr. Reeder listened breathlessly, craning his neck forward. The “No” was very distinct.
Then Olga said something that he could not hear, and Mrs. Burton’s voice took on her old whine of complaint.
“What’s the use of hanging about? That’s the way you’ve always treated me.… Nobody would think I was your mother.… I wonder I’m not dead, the trouble I’ve had.… I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t murder me some day, you mark my words!”
There came an impatient protest from the hidden girl.
“If you’re sick of it, what about me?” said Mrs. Burton shrilly. “Where’s Daver? It’s funny your father hasn’t said anything about Daver. Do you think he’s got into trouble?”
“Oh, damn Daver!”
Olga’s voice was distinct now. The passion and weariness in it would have made Mr. Reeder sorry for her in any other circumstances. He was too busy being sorry for Margaret Belman to worry about this fateful young woman.
She did not know, at any rate, that she was a widow. Mr. Reeder derived a certain amount of gruesome satisfaction from the superiority of his intelligence.
“Where is he now? Your father, I mean?”
A pause, as she listened to a reply which was not intelligible to Mr. Reeder.
“On the boat? He’ll never get across. I hate ships, but a tiny little boat like that…! Why couldn’t he let us go, when we got him out? I begged and prayed him to… we might have been in Venice or somewhere by now, doing the grand.”
The girl interrupted her angrily, and then Mrs. Burton apparently melted into the wall.
There was no sound of a closing door, but Mr. Reeder guessed what had happened. He came forward stealthily till he saw the bar of light on the opposite wall, and, reaching the door, listened. The voices were clear enough now; clearer because Mrs. Burton did most of the talking.
“Do you think your father knows?” She sounded rather anxious. “About Daver, I mean? You can keep that dark, can’t you? He’d kill me if he knew. He’s got such high ideas about you—princes and dukes and such rubbish! If he hadn’t been mad he’d have cleared out of this game years ago, as I told him, but he’d never take much notice of me.”
“Has anybody ever taken any notice of you?” asked the girl wearily. “I wanted the old man to let you go. I knew you would be useless in a crisis.”
Mr. Reeder heard the sound of a sob. Mrs. Burton cried rather easily.
“He’s only stopping to get Reeder,” she whimpered. “What a fool trick! That silly old man! Why, I could have got him myself if I was wicked enough!”
From farther along the corridor came the sound of a quick step.
“There’s your father,” said Mrs. Burton, and Reeder pulled back the jacket of his Browning, sacrificing the cartridge that was already in the chamber, in order that there should be no mistake.
The footsteps stopped abruptly, and at the same time came a booming voice from the far end of the passage. It was asking a question. Evidently Flack turned back: his footsteps died away. Mr. Reeder decided that this was not his lucky day.
Lying full length on the ground, he could see John Flack clearly. A pressure of his finger, and the problem of this evil man would be settled eternally. It was a fond idea. Mr. Reeder’s finger closed around the trigger, but all his instincts were against killing in cold blood.
Somebody was coming from the other direction. Gray, he guessed. He must go back and warn him. Coming to his feet, he went gingerly along the passage. The thing he feared happened. Gray must have seen him, for he called out in stentorian tones:
“There’s nothing at the other end of the passage, Mr. Reeder——”
“Hush, you fool!” snarled Reeder, but he guessed that the mischief was done.
He turned round, stooped again and looked. Old John Flack was standing at the entrance of the tunnel, his head bent. Somebody else had heard the detective’s voice. With a squeak of fear, Mrs. Burton had bolted into the passage, followed by her daughter—an excursion which effectively prevented the use of the pistol, for they completely masked the man whose destruction J. G. Reeder had privately sworn.
By the time he came to the end of the passage overlooking the great cave, the two women and Flack had disappeared.
Mr. Reeder’s eyesight was of the keenest. He immediately located the boat, which was now floating on an even keel, and presently saw the three fugitives. They had descended to the water’s edge by a continuance of the long stairway which led to the roof, and were making for the rocky platform which served as a pier for the craft.…
Something smacked against the rock above his head. There was a shower of stone and dust, and the echoes of the explosion which followed were deafening.
“Firing from the boat,” said Mr. Reeder calmly. “You had better lie down, Gray—I should hate to see so noisy a man as you reduced to compulsory silence.”
“I’m very sorry, Mr. Reeder,” said the penitent detective. “I had no idea——”
“Ideas!” said Mr. Reeder accurately.
Smack… smack!
One bullet struck to the left of him, the other passed exactly between him and Gray. He was lying down now, with a small projection of rock for cover.
Was Margaret on the boat? Even as the thought occurred to him, he remembered “Mrs. Burton’s” inquiry. As he saw another flash from the deck of the launch, he threw forward his hand. There was a double explosion which reverberated back from the arched roof, and although he could not see the effect of his shots, he was satisfied that the bullets fell on the launch.
She was pushing off from the side. The three Flacks were aboard. And now he heard the crackle and crash of her engine as her nose swung round to face the cave opening. And then into his eyes from the darkening sea outside the cave flashed a bright light that illuminated the rocky shelf on which he lay, and threw the motor boat into relief.
The destroyer!
“Thank God for that!” said Mr. Reeder fervently.
Those on the motor launch had seen the vessel and guessed its portent. The launch swung round until her nose pointed to where the two detectives lay, and from her deck came a roar louder than ever. So terrible was the noise in that confined space that for a second Mr. Reeder was too dazed even to realise that he was lying half buried in a heap of debris, until Gray pulled him back to the passage.
“They’re using a gun, a quick-firer!” he gasped.
Mr. Reeder did not reply. He was gazing, fascinated, at something that was happening in the middle of the cave, where the water was leaping at irregular intervals from some mysterious cause. Then he realised what was taking place. Great rocks, disturbed by the concussion, were falling from the roof. He saw the motor boat heel over to the right, swing round again, and head for the open. It was less than a dozen yards from the cave entrance when, with a sound that was indescribable, so terrific, so terrifying, that J. G. Reeder was rooted to the spot, the entrance to the cave disappeared!
CHAPTER XIX
In an instant the air was filled with choking dust. Roar followed roar as the rocks continued to fall.
“The mouth of the cave has collapsed!” roared Reeder in the other’s ear. “And the subsidence hasn’t finished.”
His first instinct was to fly along the passage to safety, but somewhere in that awful void were two women. He switched on his light and crept gingerly back to the bench whence he had seen the catastrophe. But the rays of the lamp could not penetrate into the fog of dust for more than a few yards.
Crawling forward to the edge of the platform, he strove to pierce the darkness. All about him, above, below, on either side, a terrible cracking and groaning was going on, as though the earth itself was in mortal pain. Rocks, big and small, were falling from the roof; he heard the splash of them as they struck the water—one fell on the edge of the platform with a terrific din and bounded into the pit below.
“For God’s sake, don’t stay here, Mr. Reeder. You will be killed.”
It was Gray shouting at him, but J. G. Reeder was already feeling his way towards the steps which led down to where the boat had been moored, and to which he guessed it would drift. He had to hold the lamp almost at his feet. Breathing had become a pain. His face was covered with powder; his eyes smarted excruciatingly; dust was in his mouth, his nose; but still he went on, and was rewarded.
Out of the dust-mist came groping the ghostly figure of a woman. It was Olga Crewe.
He gripped her by the arm as she swayed, and pushed her against the rocky wall.
“Where is your mother?” he shouted.
She shook her head and said something: he lowered his ear to her mouth.
“… boat… great rock… killed.”
“Your mother?”
She nodded. Gripping her by the arm, he half led, half dragged her up the stairs. He found Gray waiting at the top. As easily as though she were a child, Mr. Reeder caught her up in his arms and staggered the distance that separated them from the mouth of the passage.
The pandemonium of splintering rock and crashing boulder was continuous. The air was thicker than ever. Gray’s lamp went out, and Mr. Reeder’s was almost useless. It seemed a thousand years before they pushed into the mouth of the tunnel. The air was filled with dust even here, but as they progressed it grew clearer, more breathable.
“Let me down: I can walk,” said the husky voice of Olga Crewe, and Reeder lowered her gently to her feet.
She was very weak, but she could walk with the assistance that the two men afforded. They stopped at the entrance of the living-room. Mr. Reeder wanted the lamp—wanted more the water which she suggested would be found in that apartment.
A cold draught of spring water worked wonders on the girl too.
“I don’t know what happened,” she said; “but when the cave opening fell in, I think we drifted towards the stage… we always called that place the stage. I was so frightened that I jumped immediately to safety, and I’d hardly reached the rock when I heard a most awful crash. I think a portion of the wall must have fallen on to the boat. I screamed, but hardly heard myself in the noise… this is punishment—this is punishment! I knew it would come! I knew it, I knew it!”
She covered her grimy face with her hands, and her shoulders shook in the excess of her sorrow and grief.
“There’s no sense in crying.” Mr. Reeder’s voice was sharp and stern. “Where is Miss Belman?”
She shook her head.
“Where did she go?”
“Up the stairway… father said she escaped. Haven’t you seen her?” she asked, raising her tearful face as she began slowly to realise the drift of his question.
He shook his head, his narrowed eyes surveying her steadily.
“Tell me the truth, Olga Flack. Did Margaret Belman escape, or did your father——?”
She was shaking her head before he had completed his sentence, and then, with a little moan, she drooped and would have fallen had not Gray supported her.
“We had better leave the questioning till later.”
Mr. Reeder seized the lamp from the table and went out into the tunnel. He had hardly passed the door before there was a crash, and the infernal noises which had come from the cave were suddenly muffled. He looked backward, but could see nothing. He guessed what had happened.
“There is a general subsidence going on in this mass of earth,” he said. “We shall be lucky if we get away.”
He ran ahead to the opening of the well, and a glad sight met his eyes. On the floor lay a coil of new rope, to which was attached a body belt. He did not see the thin wire which came down from the mouth of the well, but presently he detected a tiny telephone receiver that the engineers had lowered. This he picked up, and his hail was immediately answered.
“Are you all right? Up here it feels as if there’s an earthquake somewhere.”
Gray was fastening the belt about the girl’s waist, and after it was firmly buckled:
“You mustn’t faint—do you understand, Miss Crewe? They will haul you up gently, but you must keep away from the side of the well.”
She nodded, and Reeder gave the signal. The rope grew taut, and presently the girl was drawn up out of sight.
“Up you go,” said Reeder.
Gray hesitated.
“What about you, sir?”
For answer Mr. Reeder pointed to the lowest rung, and, stooping, gripped the leg of the detective and, displaying an unsuspected strength, lifted him bodily so that he was able to grip the lower rung.
“Fix your belt to the rod, hold fast to the nearest rung, and I will climb up over you,” said Mr. Reeder.
Never an acrobat moved with greater nimbleness than this man who so loved to pose as an ancient. There was need for hurry. The very iron to which he was clinging trembled and vibrated in his grasp. The fall of stone down the well was continuous and constituted a very real danger. Some of the rungs, displaced by the earth tremors, came away in their grasp. They were less than half-way up when the air was filled with a sighing and a hissing that brought Reeder’s heart to his mouth.
Holding on to a rung of the ladder, he put out his hand. The opposite wall, which should have been well beyond his reach, was at less than arm’s-length away!
The well was bulging under unexpected and tremendous stresses.
“Why have you stopped?” asked Gray anxiously.
“To scratch my head,” snarled Reeder. “Hurry!”
They climbed another forty or fifty feet, when from below came a rumble and a crash that set the whole well shivering.
They could see starlight now, and distant objects, which might be heads, that overhung the mouth of the well.
“Hurry!” breathed J. G. Reeder, and moved as rapidly as his younger companion.
Boom!
The sound of a great gun, followed by a thunderous rumbling, surged up the well.
J. G. Reeder set his teeth. Please God Margaret Belman had escaped from that hell—or was mercifully dead!
Nearer and nearer to the mouth they climbed, and every step they took was accompanied by some new and awful noise from behind them. Gray’s breath was coming in gasps.
“I can’t go any further!” croaked the detective. “My strength has gone!”
“Go on, you miserable…!” yelled Reeder, and whether it was the shock of hearing such violent language from so mild a man, or the discovery that he was within a few feet of safety, Gray took hold of himself, climbed a few more rungs, and then felt hands grip his arm and drag him to safety.
Mr. Reeder staggered out into the night air and blinked at the ring of men who stood in the light of a naphtha flare.
Was it his imagination, or was the ground swaying beneath his feet?
“Nobody else to come up, Mr. Reeder?”
The officer in charge of the Engineers asked the question, and Reeder shook his head.
“Then all you fellows clear!” said the officer sharply. “Move towards the house and take the road to Siltbury—the cliff is collapsing in sections.”
The flare was put out, and the soldiers, abandoning their apparatus, broke into a steady run towards Larmes Keep.
“Where is the girl—Miss Crewe?” asked Reeder, suddenly remembering her.
“They’ve taken her to the house,” said Big Bill Gordon, who had made a mysterious appearance from nowhere. “And, Reeder, we have captured the gold-convoy! The two men in charge were a fellow who calls himself Hothling and another named Dean—I think you know their real names.… Caught them just as the trolley was driving into the quarry cave. This means a big thing for you——”
“To hell with you and your big things!” stormed Reeder in a fury. “What big things do I want, my man, but the big thing I have lost?”
Very wisely, Big Bill Gordon made no attempt to argue the matter.
They found the banqueting-hall crowded with policemen, detectives, and soldiers. The girl had been taken into Daver’s office, and here he found her in the hands of the three women servants who had been commandeered to run the establishment whilst the police were in occupation. The dust had been washed from her face, and she was conscious, but still in that half-bemused condition in which Reeder had found her.
She stared at him for a long time as though she did not recognise him and was striving to recall that portion of her past in which he had figured. When she spoke, it was to ask a question.
“There is no news of—father?”
“None,” said Reeder, almost brutally. “I think it will be better for you, young lady, if he is dead.”
She nodded.
“He is dead,” she said with conviction. And then, rousing herself, she struggled to a sitting position and looked at the servants. Mr. Reeder interpreted that glance and sent the women away.
“I don’t know what you are going to do with me,” she said, “but I suppose I am to be arrested—I should be arrested, for I have known all that was happening, and I tried to lure you to your death.”
“In Bennett Street, of course,” said Mr. Reeder. “I recognised you the moment I saw you here—you were the lady with the rouged face.”
She nodded and continued.
“Before you take me away, I wish you would let me have some papers that are in the safe,” she said. “They have no value to anybody but myself.”
He was curious enough to ask her what they were.
“They are letters… in the big, flat box that is locked.… Even Daver did not dare open that. You see, Mr. Reeder”—her breath came more quickly—“before I met my—husband, I had a little romance—the sort of romance that a young girl has when she is innocent enough to dream and has enough faith in God to hope. Is my husband arrested?” she asked suddenly.
Mr. Reeder was silent for a moment. Sooner or later she must know the truth, and he had an idea that this awful truth would not cause her very much distress.
“Your husband is dead,” he said.
Her eyes opened wider.
“Did my father——”
“Your father killed him—I suppose so. I am afraid I was the cause. Coming back to find Margaret Belman, I told Daver all that I knew about your marriage. Your father must have been hiding behind the panelling and heard.”
“I see,” she said simply. “Of course it was father who killed him—I knew that would happen as soon as he learnt the truth. Would you think I was heartless if I said I am glad? I don’t think I am really glad: I’m just relieved. Will you get the box for me?”
She put her hand down her blouse, and pulled out a gold chain at the end of which were two keys.
“The first of these is the key of the safe. If you want to see the—the letters, I will show them to you, but I would rather not.”
At that moment he heard hurrying footsteps in the passage outside; the door was pulled open, and a young officer of Engineers appeared.
“Excuse me, sir,” he said, “but Captain Merriman thinks we ought to abandon this house. I’ve got out all the servants and we’re rushing them down to Siltbury.”
Reeder stooped down and drew the girl to her feet.
“Take this lady with you,” he said, and, to Olga: “I will get your box, and I may not—I am not quite sure—ask you to open it for me.”
He waited till the officer had gone, and added:
“Just now I am feeling rather—tender towards young lovers. That is a concession which an old lover may make to youth.”
His voice had grown husky. There was something in his face that brought the tears to her eyes.
“Was it… not Margaret Belman?” she asked in a hushed voice, and she knew before he answered that she had guessed well.
Tragedy dignified this strange-looking man, so far past youth, yet holding the germ of youth in his heart. His hand fell gently on her shoulder.
“Go, my dear,” he said. “I will do what I can for you—perhaps I can save you a great deal of unhappiness.”
He waited until she had gone, then strolled into the deserted lounge. What an eternity had passed since he had sat there, munching his toast and drinking his cup of tea, with an illustrated newspaper on his knees!
The place in the half gloom seemed full of ancient ghosts. The House of Tears! These walls had held sorrows more poignant, more hopeless than his.
He went to the panelled wall and rubbed his finger down the little scar in the wood that a thrown knife had made, and smiled at the triviality of that offence.
He had reason to remember the circumstances, without the dramatic reminder which nature gave. Suddenly the floor beneath him swayed, and the two lights went out. He guessed that the earth tremors were responsible for the snapping of wires, and he hurried into the vestibule, and had passed from the house, when he remembered Olga Crewe’s request.
The lantern was still hanging about his neck. He switched it on and went back to the safe and inserted the key. As he did so, the house swayed backwards and forwards like a drunken man. The clatter of glass, the crackle of overturned wardrobes, startled him, so that he almost fled with his mission unperformed. He even hesitated; but a promise was a promise to J. G. Reeder. He put the key in again, turned the lock and pulled open one of the great doors—and Margaret Belman fell into his arms!
CHAPTER XX
He stood, holding the half-swooning girl, peering into the face he could only see by the reflected light of his lantern, and then suddenly the safe fell back from him without warning, leaving a gaping cavern.
He lifted her in his arms, ran across the vestibule into the open air. Somebody shouted his name in the distance, and he ran blindly towards the voice. Once he stumbled over a great crack that had appeared in the earth, but managed to recover himself, though he was forced to release his grip of the girl.
She was alive… breathing… her breath fanned his cheek and gave him new strength.…
The sound of falling walls behind him; immense, hideous roarings and groanings; thunder of sliding chalk and rock and earth—he heard only the breathing of his burden, felt only the faint beating of her heart against his breast.
“Here you are!”
Somebody lifted Margaret Belman from his arms. A big soldier pushed him into a wagon, where he sprawled at full length, breathless, more dead than alive, by the side of the woman he loved; and then, with a whirr of wheels, the ambulance sped down the hillside towards safety. Behind him, in the darkness, the House of Tears shivered and crackled, and the work of ancient masons vanished piecemeal, tumbling over new cliffs, to be everlastingly engulfed and hidden from the sight of man.
Dawn came and showed to an interested party that had travelled by road and train to the scene of the great landslide, one grey wall, standing starkly on the edge of a precipice. A portion of the wrecked floor still adhered to the ruins, and on that floor the blood-stained bed where old man Flack had laid his murdered servant.…
The story which Olga Flack told the police, which appears in the official records of the place, was not exactly the same as the story she told to Mr. Reeder that afternoon when, at his invitation, she came to the flat in Bennett Street. Mr. Reeder, minus his glasses and his general air of respectability, which his vanished side-whiskers had so enhanced, was at some disadvantage.
“Yes, I think Ravini was killed,” she said, “but you are wrong in supposing that I brought him to my room at the request of my father. Ravini was a very quick-witted man, and recognised me. He came to Larmes Keep because he”—she hesitated—“well, he was rather fond of Miss Belman. He told me this, and I was rather amused. At that time I did not know his name, although my husband did, and I certainly did not connect him with my father’s arrest. He revealed his identity, and I suppose there was something in my attitude, or something I said, which recalled the schoolgirl he had met years before. The moment he recognised me as John Flack’s daughter, he also recognised Larmes Keep as my father’s headquarters.
“He began to ask me questions: whether I knew where the Flack million, as he called it, was hidden. And of course I was horrified, for I knew why Daver had allowed him to come.
“My father had recently escaped from Broadmoor, and I was worried sick for fear he knew the trick that Daver had played. I wasn’t normal, I suppose, and I came near to betraying my father, for I told Ravini of his escape. Ravini did not take this as I had expected—he rather overrated his own power, and was very confident. Of course, he did not know that father was practically in the house, that he came up from the cave every night——”
“The real entrance to the cave was through the safe in the vestibule?” said Mr. Reeder. “That was an ingenious idea. I must confess that the safe was the last place in the world I should have considered.”
“My father had it put there twenty years ago,” she said. “There always was an entrance from the centre of the Keep to the caves below, many of which were used as prisons or as burying-places by the ancient owners of Larmes.”
“Why did Ravini go to your room?” asked Mr. Reeder. “You will excuse the—um—indelicacy of the question, but I want——”
She nodded.
“It was a last desperate effort on my part to scare Ravini from the house—I took it on my way back that night. You mustn’t forget that I was watched all the time; Daver or my mother were never far from me, and I dared not let them know, and through them my father, that Ravini was being warned. Naturally, Ravini, being what he was, saw another reason for the invitation. He had decided to stay on until I made my request for an interview, and told him that I wanted him to leave by the first train in the morning after he learnt what I had to tell him.”
“And what had you to tell him?” asked Mr. Reeder.
She did not answer immediately, and he repeated the question.
“That my father had decided to kill him——”
Mr. Reeder’s eyes almost closed.
“Are you telling me the truth, Olga?” he asked gently, and she went red and white.
“I am not a good liar, am I?” Her tone was almost defiant. “Now, I’ll tell you. I met Ravini when I was little more than a child. He meant… a tremendous lot to me, and I don’t think I meant very much to him. He used to come down to see me in the country where I was at school…”
“He’s dead?”
She could only nod her head. Her lips were quivering.
“That is the truth,” she said at last. “The horror of it was that he did not recognise me when he came to Larmes Keep. I had passed completely from his mind, until I revealed myself in the garden that night.”
“Is he dead?” asked Mr. Reeder for the second time.
“Yes,” she said. “They struck him down outside my room.… I don’t know what they did with him. They put him through the safe, I think.” She shuddered.
J. G. Reeder patted her hand.
“You have your memories, my child,” he said to the weeping girl, “and your letters.”
It occurred to him after Olga had gone that Ravini must have written rather interesting letters.
CHAPTER XXI
Miss Margaret Belman decided to take a holiday in the only pleasure resort that seemed worth while or endurable. She conveyed this intention to Mr. Reeder by letter.
“There are only two places in the world where I can feel happy and safe,” she said. “One place is London and the other New York, where a policeman is to be found at every corner, and all the amusements of a country life are to be had in an intensified form. So, if you please, can you spare the time to come with me to the theatres I have written down on the back of this sheet, to the National Gallery, the British Museum, the Tower of London (no, on consideration I do not think I should like to include the Tower of London: it is too mediaeval and ghostly), to Kensington Gardens and similar centres of hectic gaiety. Seriously, dear J. G. (the familiarity will make you wince, but I have cast all shame outside), I want to be one of a large, sane mass—I am tired of being an isolated, hysterical woman.”
There was much more in the same strain. Mr. Reeder took his engagement book and ran a blue pencil through all his appointments before he wrote, with some labour, a letter which, because of its caution and its somewhat pompous terminology, sent Margaret Belman into fits of silent laughter.
She had not mentioned Richmond Park, and with good reason, one might suppose, for Richmond Park in the late autumn, when chilly winds abound, and the deer have gone into winter quarters—if deer ever go into winter quarters—is picturesque without being comfortable, and only a pleasure to the aesthetic eyes of those whose bodies are suitably clothed in woollen underwear.
Yet, one drab, grey afternoon, Mr. Reeder chartered a taxicab, sat solemnly by the side of Miss Margaret Belman as the cab bumped and jerked down Clarence Lane, possibly the worst road in England, before it turned through the iron gates of the park.
They came at last to a stretch of grass land and bush, a place in early summer of flowering rhododendrons, and here Mr. Reeder stopped the cab and they both descended and walked aimlessly through a little wood. The ground sloped down to a little carpeted hollow. Mr. Reeder, with a glance of suspicion and some reference to rheumatism, seated himself by Miss Belman’s side.
“But why Richmond Park?” asked Margaret.
Mr. Reeder coughed.
“I have—um—a romantic interest in Richmond Park,” he said. “I remember the first arrest I ever made——”
“Don’t be gruesome,” she warned him. “There’s nothing romantic about an arrest. Talk of something pretty.”
“Let us then talk of you,” said Mr. Reeder daringly; “and it is exactly because I want to talk of you, my dear Miss—um—Margaret… Margaret, that I have asked you to come here.”
He took her hand with great gentleness as though he were handling a rare objet d’art, and played with her fingers awkwardly.
“The truth is, my dear——”
“Don’t say ‘Miss,’ ” she begged.
“My dear Margaret”—this with an effort—“I have decided that life is too—um—short to delay any longer a step which I have very carefully considered—in fact”—here he floundered hopelessly into a succession of “ums” which were only relieved by occasional “ers.”
He tried again.
“A man of my age and peculiar temperament should perhaps be considering matters more serious—in fact, you may consider it very absurd of me, but the truth is——”
Whatever the truth was could not be easily translated into words.
“The truth is,” she said quietly, “that you think you’re in love with somebody?”
First Mr. Reeder nodded, then he shook his head with equal vigour.
“I don’t think—it has gone beyond the stage of hypothesis. I am no longer young—I am in fact a confirmed—no, not a confirmed, but—er——”
“You’re a confirmed bachelor,” she helped him out.
“Not confirmed,” he insisted firmly.
She half turned and faced him, her hands on his shoulders, looking into his eyes.
“My dear,” she said, “you think of being married, and you want somebody to marry you. But you feel that you are too old to blight her young life.”
He nodded dumbly.
“Is it my young life, my dear? Because, if it is——”
“It is.” J. G. Reeder’s voice was very husky.
“Please blight,” said Margaret Belman.
And for the first time in his life Mr. J. G. Reeder, who had had so many experiences, mainly unpleasant, felt the soft lips of a woman against his.
“Dear me!” said Mr. Reeder breathlessly, a few seconds later. “That was rather nice.”
THE END