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.
The work was now heavier. A derrick and windlass had to be rigged to move the heavy loads from the cutting, and that took a considerable time, during which he paid frequent visits to the “wishing well.”
It was after the shingle had been discovered that Harry’s voice answered him.
“Is that you, Dick? What are you fellows doing up there?”
The voice held all the old irritation and fretfulness. Briefly Dick described what was happening.
“Couldn’t you send me something down so that I could work below?” asked Harry. “I’m perfectly sure I could make it much easier for you.”
To humour him, Dick Alford found a light crowbar and with great difficulty lowered it. Because of its shape and size, the operation was a painfully slow one, and Harry fretted and fumed below.
“Hurry, for heaven’s sake!” he shouted. “You don’t suppose I want to stay down here, do you? I’ve a tremendous lot of work to do—you know that, Dick, very well.”
Dick did not answer, but his anxiety increased. He knew Harry and his symptoms all too well to be under any illusion as to what would follow if his irritation grew beyond the power of restraint, and it was with a sigh of thankfulness that he felt the crowbar caught in the eager hands of his brother.
“Be very careful how you use this,” he called. “The men are working from above and you may have a fall unless you take the greatest care.”
But he was talking to the air. Harry had gone and it was Leslie who answered him.
“How long will you be, Dick?” she asked.
“I don’t know, my dear. A few hours, not longer. Are you all right?”
A little hesitation.
“Yes, I’m all right.”
“Is Harry?”
A longer pause.
“I think so. Is it possible to send something down that he could take?”
Earlier in the evening Dick had tried to pass the end of a thin rubber tube to the imprisoned pair, but the attempt had been futile.
“I’ll try,” he said, and went in search of one of the two doctors who had been summoned.
From him he obtained two small brown pellets, and these, wrapped in paper and weighted, were dropped into the wishing well.
“Thank you,” said her low voice. “I don’t know how I can use them, and for the moment he is very busy.”
LXIV
There was no question as to Harry’s activity. He had rolled a heavy boulder from the débris in the passage and, placing it in the centre of the floor, he could reach the stone roof, which was in six petal-shaped sectors. The lens of his lamp had been removed so that the light was diffused, and she had a better view of the room.
There were little holes at intervals that looked as if they had once held hat-pegs, though why anybody should come into these depths to hang up his hat, she could not imagine. And then the real value of this peculiar chamber occurred to her. She found against the wall a long, rusty hook, so thin that she could break it. This had been the meat storeroom of the Abbey, the mediæval equivalent to a refrigerator. The atmosphere was deathly cold. It seemed a very long way from the Abbey, but in reality it was not more than a hundred and fifty yards. The old monks had found this cavern, had dressed and strengthened it, had lined and converted it to their own use. That explained why this chamber, so far distant from the main building, had received the ancient architects’ attention.
Harry was in his shirt sleeves, which were rolled up, revealing his thin but sinewy arms. He had managed to get the claw of the crowbar between two of the stones, and was working at them gradually, talking the while to himself in an undertone. Her anxiety increased. The paroxysm, when it came, would be short, but what would be the end of it? Her mouth went dry and she felt for the knife she had put in her pocket and stealthily opening the blade, thrust it through the lining to keep it in place.
Presently Harry paused, wiped the perspiration from his forehead with his arm, and looked down at her. His horn-rimmed spectacles had slipped down his nose and he stopped to adjust them.
“Dick has no intention whatever of rescuing us. I think that you ought to know that.”
“I’m sure you’re mistaken, Harry,” she said.
But opposition only made him worse and he snapped down at her.
“You’re a fool! All women are fools! I tell you it is a plot. Dick has no more intention of rescuing us…”
He stopped suddenly and passed his hand across his eyes.
“I wish I had brought the picture,” he muttered, and glared at her. “But for you I should have taken it with me, and now I’ve left it behind for that swine to jeer at!”
She looked up at the roof.
“You’re doing splendidly, Harry,” and, his attention distracted, he attacked the roof again.
“You can trust me, Leslie,” he said. “I am the only person in the world you can trust. You have no enemies. The Black Abbot is dead! I killed him, and I am very proud of the fact. Every Chelford should kill at least one Black Abbot, and I have had the approval of my illustrious ancestor.”
By this time the claw of the crowbar had been worked deep into the crevice he had made, and he began to lever slowly. As she watched him she saw the stone move. It dropped suddenly an eighth of an inch, and he raised an excited shout.
“You see, you see!” he said, in his shrill voice. “Dick never dreamt I would be able to do that, or he would not have allowed me to use this crowbar.”
He got down from the stone, scooped up two handfuls of water from the worn channel, and drank, dashing the remainder of the water into his face before he leapt again on the stone and went to work with renewed vigour. Backward and forward he levered the jemmy, and again the stone dropped, until it was perceptibly out of place.
“You must be careful, Harry,” she warned him. “That may come down with a rush and hurt you.”
He was sensible enough to see this, changed the position of the stone, and worked from the other angle. And then, without warning, all that she had predicted happened. He leapt aside into the open doorway as with a crash the sector fell and broke into fragments on the stone pavement.
“You see, you see!” he screamed. “I’ve done it!”
A steady shower of shingle was falling. He struck upward with the point of his crowbar and the shower increased until it made a heap on the ground.
And then he saw the edge of a box.
“Look, look, look!”
His trembling hands could scarcely hold the tool. With the energy of dementia he dug away at the shingle beneath it, and presently, gripping it by the edge, he pulled it clear. It was a tiny chest, a miniature of those she had seen at Fossaway Manor, six inches in length, four inches broad and as deep. With his crowbar he pried open the lid and the rusted iron hasp parted with a snap. Inside was what appeared to be a bundle of discoloured cloth. He lifted it out.
“There’s something heavy here,” he said hoarsely, and his hands shook so, that in pity she came forward and helped unwrap the thing that the box held. Presently it came to light: a long flask containing a colourless fluid. The bottle was heavily sealed at the top.
He snatched it from her hand; a frenzied gleam in the staring eyes.
“The elixir!” he croaked. “The Life Water! Oh, God be thanked!”
She tried to take it from him, but he snarled round on her like an angry dog.
“You devil!” he screamed. “You’re in league with Dick! You’re trying to rob me of life! But you sha’n’t, you sha’n’t!”
The flask was corked with a piece of wood that had swollen. He dragged at it with his teeth and presently extracted the stopper.
“I shall live eternally! But you shall die! He shall find you here dead, and realize…”
He put the flask to his lips and drank. She covered her eyes with her hands, then, as he moved, gripped the knife.
And then she heard something drop with a heavy crash to the floor and looked. The shingle was still sliding down like sand in an hourglass, but now something big and heavy thudded to the ground. It looked ludicrously like a yellow candle, but its weight was such that the first bar struck the pavement and the impact bent it hook-shape. Another followed. She watched, fascinated, as they came, first slowly, then in a stream, from the triangular space in the roof—scores, hundreds of yellow candles thundering down in twos and threes amidst the flow of shingle.
“The gold, the gold!” screamed Harry. “But he shall never have it!”
He lifted the lamp, but as his arm rose she stooped swiftly. The crash of the lamp as it struck the wall came to her and she crouched back toward the wishing well. She heard a loud crash in the chamber; a sector of the roof had given under the strain, and now, with a hiss and a rush, shingle and ingot were falling until they almost filled the room. They flowed about her feet like a heavy stream. She struggled to get it underfoot and became more and more engulfed.
“Dick, Dick!” she screamed, but he did not hear her.
He had reached the broken roof of the Cold Room and was slipping and sliding down the heap of shingle under which lay a man who was dead before the torrent of stone was loosened. Later they found him, gripping a crystal flask in his hand. What it had contained, no man ever knew.
LXV
When Leslie Gwyn woke, the sunlight was peeping round the edges of the drawn blinds. She sat up suddenly and her head went round and round. And then she remembered and her eyes closed, as if to shut out some horrible sight.
“Oh, you are awake?” said Mary Wenner, bustling in. “Dick sent me up to see how you were. Everybody’s most fearfully anxious about you—even Fabe, though I’m not of a jealous disposition, as everybody knows.”
“What is the time?”
Then, with a shiver, she remembered that somebody else had asked her that. How long ago? An eternity!
“Twelve thirty-five,” said Miss Wenner, consulting her watch. “I’ve been out looking at the workmen. Really, my dear, it’s more like a Desirable Residential Estate than the grounds of Fossaway Manor. Wheelbarrows and navvies and goodness knows what! They say it’s cost his lordship twenty thousand pounds.”
Leslie looked at her in wonder.
“His lordship?” she said in a hushed voice.
“I mean Dick,” said the calm Miss Wenner. “The King is dead, long live the King! That’s my motto every time.” And then, in a more sober tone; and rather ashamed of herself for her heartlessness: “Poor boy! It was a mercy for him. Fabe’s gone back to London.”
“Who is Fabe? Oh, Mr. Gilder!” said the girl, smiling faintly.
Miss Wenner dropped her eyes modestly.
“We are engaged. It was all his idea, because, as you know, Leslie darling, I’m not the sort of girl to throw herself at any man’s head. But he’s persuaded me.” She sighed heavily. “I suppose I’d better. I’m getting on in years, and a girl can’t always be pretty.”
Leslie brought her feet to the floor and stood up. She was still a little unsteady and the pain in her feet was atrocious, in spite of the dressing that the doctor had applied.
“I must say that Arthur took it very well,” said Miss Wenner as she assisted the girl to dress. “It was naturally a great blow to him.”
“What was?” Leslie was a little dazed.
“My engagement,” said Mary. “You didn’t know——” she sighed. “Arthur was very fond of me, I’ll admit it. But in the circumstances I don’t think it would be nice to marry a gentleman who’s bad friends with my fiancé, do you, Leslie?”
“I had no idea that there was anything between Arthur and you,” said Leslie truthfully.
Again Miss Wenner sighed.
“Very few people knew anything about it. Perhaps it is all for the best. Arthur thinks so. It isn’t as though I’d thrown myself at him, so there’s no harm done one way or the other.”
Leslie was wearing a pair of man’s slippers when she came down the broad stairs. Dick’s study door was open and she saw him sitting in a deep cane chair on the lawn outside, a pipe between his teeth, a heap of documents on his knees which he was examining slowly one by one. He looked round, rising from his chair at the sound of her voice. She saw his face and was shocked.
“Dick, you look a hundred years old!”
“I feel a thousand,” he said, and guided her to the chair. “Sit down. Well, that’s the end, Leslie—and the beginning.”
She nodded.
“I think we’ve managed to keep the ugliest part of it out of the newspapers. Poor old Harry!” There were tears in his eyes which he did not attempt to hide. “Poor old victim!”
“Victim of what?”
“Of his mother,” said Dick. “There never was a time when she was sane. My poor father did not discover this until after the child was born, and her death removed one of the greatest sorrows from his life. The other was—Harry! Well, now you know the secrets of us all, what do you think, Leslie?”
“Who was the Black Abbot?” she asked, and then, to her amazement:
“I was,” he replied quietly, and told her all he had told the high official from Scotland Yard.
“The queer thing was that he must have seen the gold before he died. What fools we were! The Diary told us as plainly as anything could that the old Lord Chelford who hid his treasure chose the bed of the river. It was a year of drought, the river was quite dry, and probably he found a deep hole in its bed, hid the gold and covered it with shingle that would not wash away.”
“You are very rich now, Dick?”
He nodded slowly.
“Yes—I suppose I am. There are a few minor trials and troubles for us, Leslie dear,” he said, “but when those are all over and everything is settled we will go abroad for a year and forget all about these ghastly days and nights.”
She took his hand between her two palms.
FINIS
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
Minor spelling inconsistencies (e.g. frock-coat/frock coat, paving-stone/paving stone, shirt-sleeves/shirt sleeves, etc.) have been preserved.
Alterations to the text:
Abandon the use of drop-caps.
Adjust the chapter numbering (the source text had two chapter XLIs).
Add ToC.
Punctuation: fix some missing periods and quotation mark pairings.
[Chapter I]
Change “such aws the gloom in the library” to was.
[Chapter XIII]
“he said, and his voice was kusky with emotion” to husky.
[Chapter XX]
“then went downstars to his own room” to downstairs.
[Chapter XXI]
“moved stealthily toward the bed, feeeling for the brass rail” to feeling.
[Chapter XXIV]
(“Do you know that Robison Crusoe was a German?”) to Robinson.
[Chapter LVI]
“and occasionlly as prospective buyers of our property” to occasionally.
[Chapter LXIV]
“Her mouth went dray nd she felt for the knife she” to dry and.
[End of text]