Chapter X: Part 10

The plan she had made she now proceeded to put into execution. Standing under the shaft, she fired a round into the air. The third shot struck the iron grille and ricochetted with an angry buzz that sounded like the drone of a bee. No sound came from the room above. If she could only attract Dick to the ruins, she could indicate her position. But Harry had a rifle! She went cold at the thought. She may have lured him to his death.

For one mad moment she thought of opening the trap and forcing her way out at the point of the rifle. But it was too late now. And then she heard his voice, sounding hollowly and faintly.

“Leslie!”

She went up one of the steps so that she could hear him better.

“They’re coming, Leslie. You will tell them I haven’t hurt you, won’t you?”

“Yes, yes,” she replied eagerly.

He said nothing after that, until there came a shuffling and stamping of feet above her head, and then she heard him say:

“Hullo, Dick, old man! I hope I haven’t given you any trouble.”

From below she heard a deep rumble of sound which might have been a voice, but in her eagerness she was tugging at the oaken support, and in another second the stone fell behind her and she scrambled up through the trap. She could see nothing; the place was in darkness.

“Dick!” she called.

And then a hand gripped her, and she realized with horror that all the shufflings of feet and the conversation had been so much acting on his part.

She was still holding the rifle, but before she could raise it he had gripped the stock and wrenched it from her hand. She heard it fall with a clatter on the stone floor below.

Half swooning in her fear and terror, her struggles grew weaker. He was holding her in his arms and his strength was surprising.

“We are going below, my sweet,” he whispered in her ear. “At last I know the truth! So it was Dick you wanted! Dear Dick!”

He was chuckling softly to himself as he carried her to the top of the steps.

“Will you walk down, or must I throw you?” he asked, in a tone so even and rational that he might have been uttering some commonplace of everyday life.

With trembling knees she walked down the steps into the lighted room, and he followed, pausing to close the trap and secure it firmly.

“Sit down.” He pointed to the settle by the table and immediately she sat down. Her face was ghastly; her last reserves of courage were almost sapped. “You have hurt me beyond forgiveness, Leslie,” he said, his solemn eyes fixed on hers. “Do you realize what you have done? You have treated with contempt Harry Alford, Eighteenth Earl of Chelford, Viscount of Carberry, Baron Alford.…”

With the solemnity of a child reciting a lesson he repeated the titles he held, even to a remote barony of Aquitaine which the Chelfords had held in the dim past. She had a queer feeling that she was standing before a judge, listening to an indictment of some hideous crime she had committed.

“You have attempted to endanger my life; you have conspired with those who hate me; you have treacherously held communication with and given comfort to my enemies.…”

There were other charges, that would have sounded ludicrous at other times, would have aroused her to fury, but she listened now, husbanding all her strength for the coming struggle.

His rifle leant against the steps, but he barred her way effectively. Looking round for some weapon, she saw nothing but the lamp and that was too heavy for use.

“For you,” he said, in tones of deepest gravity, “there can be only one punishment--death!”

His voice trembled. She felt that, in his queer, crazy way, he was sorry for her, and regretted the necessity. She tried to rise, but her limbs refused her office. She put out an appealing hand, and then, with a sudden leap, he was on her. His hand closed about her throat strangling the scream. And then, up above, there was the unmistakable sound of footsteps and a deep voice. It was Dick. She tried to call out, but he held her tight. With one hand he reached over and extinguished the lamp; and now, in a final desperation of fear, she threw him backward and for a second he released his hold.

But before her tortured throat could utter a sound he was at her again; pressing her back against the edge of the table. She tore at his hand, but it was immovable.… This was death! A loud ringing in her ears, a fiery light before her eyes; she was losing consciousness… and then she felt the table move, at first slowly and then so rapidly that she lost her balance. The big refectory table was sliding lengthways toward the end wall. His grip relaxed and in that instant he dropped away from her, and, reaching out her hand, she could feel nothing. She heard a thud and a groan and stepped forward--into space. She did not see the yawning cavern before her. One desperate effort she made to recover her balance, caught at the hard edge of the floor as she fell, and went slipping and sliding down stairs that cracked and broke beneath her, until her feet struck something soft and yielding. Overhead there was a deep rumbling sound, a soft thud, and silence.

LIX

Harry was unconscious. She felt his face and her fingers touched something warm and wet.

She could see nothing; the darkness was impenetrable. No sound came from the room from which she had fallen. The floor was thick, the heavy oaken base of the refectory table gliding, she guessed on rollers that worked as truly as they had when, hundreds of years before, the Black Abbot found this exit so valuable, had slipped back into its place. If she only had some sort of light! It occurred to her to search the unfortunate Harry. Presently she found a silver box containing matches. She struck one and looked around. They were lying at the foot of what had once been a wooden stair. The treads were broken, the heavily carved handrail had rotted, leaving two wide gaps. Half the treads had vanished, the other half were now broken by her fall.

Harry was lying in a recess carved from the solid rock, and left and right ran a narrow passage streaming with water. She left the alcove and struck another match. The passage curved and twisted so that only a few feet in either direction was visible. Pools of still water filled the hollows of the floor; long bunches of gray fungus, grape-like in its formation, hung from the roof. Yet the air was sweet enough. She felt a gentle draught coming from the left-hand passage, but as yet she could not explore and she returned to Harry.

His eyes were closed, his lips bloodless, and through the grime his face was gray. With a gasp of horror she thought he was dead, but when she put her hand under his waistcoat she could feel the faint flutter of his heart. He had an electric torch somewhere in his pocket, he had told her, and she began to search. It necessitated moving him slightly and as she did so he groaned. The lamp was in the tail pocket of his frock-coat, a square, flat lamp, of a type usually to be found in every room of Fossaway Manor.

She thought at first that the unconscious man carried two, but found that the second package was a spare battery. Switching on the light, she examined the roof above the broken stairs. She saw it was the underside of a slab of wood. From here she could see the rollers on which the table ran; stout things of wood. Near the head of the stairs two large wooden grips projected downward, rather like the butts of huge Browning pistols, and she guessed that by this means the table was drawn back from below.

When she looked at Harry again he was staring upward with wondering eyes.

“What happened?” he asked.

“We must have fallen through a trap,” she said. “Do you think you could reach those handles?” She pointed to them.

He rose unsteadily to his feet, replaced his spectacles which had been knocked off in his fall, and looked at the butts. Only two of the treads remained intact. He tried one, but it broke under his feet and the supporting posts were sagging.

“I can’t reach that,” he said. “It must be twelve feet high.”

Then she noticed his wound and made him sit down while she dressed it with a strip of silk torn from her skirt.

“How on earth did we get into this beastly place?” he asked, wondering. “Where are we?”

“We’re under the Abbey,” she said, and his frown ended in a grimace of pain.

“Where is Dick?” he asked.

“He is up there, I think,” she said.

And yet why should Dick be there? He would not know his way into the lower chamber, she thought, with a sinking heart.

“Do you think you can walk?”

He looked round in dismay.

“I can walk all right, but whither?”

“Let us try the left-hand passage first,” she suggested, and he was agreeable.

The left-hand passage, they found, was a steep ascent which turned continuously to the left. It was like one of those corkscrew tunnels through which she had travelled in Switzerland, where the train burrows its way upward in the heart of the solid rock. Was it above Montreux or on Pilatus? She was too tired to think.

At the first turn she stopped. She had seen a glimmer of light, and, making an inspection, she found a square hole, cut apparently in the rock; the further end was covered with hanging weeds, and through these she saw the light distinctly, a faint yellow glow. They continued their climb, and presently came to another small opening. Here, then, was one of the sources of air supply, though little came this way, for when she lit a match before it the flame scarcely wavered.

“How much farther are we going?” asked Harry faintly. “I’m nearly all in.”

“We must go on,” she said. “This probably brings us to the open air somewhere.”

He put his hand on her shoulder, and, walking slowly, they made another complete turn of the winding passage, and this time they found an air hole that was not weed-covered. The light was stronger now, and, looking through, she thought she saw a swaying cord. And she heard something, too--voices. It was not an illusion; somebody was talking at an immense distance away, it seemed. She looked again. The cord seemed very near, but when she thrust her hand through the opening and tried to grasp it, she knew that she had been the victim of an optical illusion. She called out but there was no answer. She must have imagined the voices.

And then she heard a faint shout and the yellow light which had shone through the entrance went out.

“I can’t go any farther.” Harry collapsed against the wall and slid down into a sitting position, his head on his breast.

“Do you mind if I leave you in the dark?” she asked.

He shook his head wearily, and, leaving him, she continued the climb, and presently found herself in a straight, narrow passage. At some period an attempt had been made to dress the sides with stone slabs. The wall was littered with crumbling fragments of stone, and gaps showed where age and the action of the damp had detached the dressing from the walls. As near as she could judge, she was moving away from the Abbey in the direction of Fossaway Manor.

This latter was a guess. It was impossible that it could lead toward the cut road to the north of the estate. Then the explanation came to her: she was passing under the Mound, the high bank that fringed the Ravensrill. What light feet had trodden this way, she wondered? What fears or hopes, desire or despair, had sped along this rough stone floor? Unconsciously she was reconstructing an ancient cause and effect. The effect brought her to a standstill. Right across the passage a wall had been built; a solid barrier of masonry which checked all further movement.

Though she did not know and could not guess, here was the obstacle that the revengeful Lord of Chelford had set up after his assassin had gone forth to slay the man who had dishonoured him. No more would the light steps of frail womanhood trip along this secret passage, and since Yvonne of Chelford had died of a broken heart no woman’s foot had stirred this dust.

Leslie turned back, her courage failing. Approaching the spot where she had left Harry, she heard his soft chuckle and her skin crept.

“Leslie. Leslie!” he whispered eagerly. “You have no idea what a bit of good luck I’ve had!”

And when he came into the light of her lamp, he was his old exalted self.

“What do you think happened?”

She was conscious now of voices. She heard somebody shout and a faint answer, but faint as it was, she recognized the voice. It was Dick’s.

“What has happened?” she asked quickly.

He doubled up with silent laughter and could not speak for a minute, and then he showed her a knife.

“With that,” he said complacently. “I saw him go down… and then the rope came near… I could have touched it. Then I remembered I had my knife and I reached through and before they could pull it away I’d cut it.”

She gazed at him in horror.

“Was somebody on the rope?” she gasped.

He nodded gravely.

“The arch-enemy of the human race,” he said in a sober tone. “Richard Alford.”

Petrified with terror, she put her ear to the hole and heard Dick speaking. Then without a word she fled down the slope. Round and round the circular passage she went until she was almost dizzy. Presently she reached the lower air hole, put through her hand and tore away the veiling weeds.

“Dick, Dick!” she called.

She could see him now, for the air hole was just above water level. His face was gray and drawn.

“Dick!”

She thrust out her hand and presently closed about his ice-cold wrist, and at that moment Harry’s hand fell on her shoulder and she was dragged backward. She felt the wrist slip, she heard the splash of water as Dick Alford fell, and fainted.

LX

She woke and it was so dark she could not believe her eyes were open until she felt the lids. There was no sound. She was lying on the hard, uneven floor where she had fallen, she thought, but when she put out her hand to feel for the air hole, her fingers touched rough rock. Groping round for the flash lamp, she found nothing. Presently, however, she touched a smooth, cold surface. It was Harry’s knife, a long-bladed clasp knife.

And then she remembered clearly. Dick was in the water, drowning. She struggled to her feet, trembling in every limb.

Dead perhaps.… She staggered blindly forward and came in contact with the wall. Gripping her hands till the nails cut the palm, she strove to regain her self-control. He would be rescued; there were men with him, she told herself, and became calmer and again sat down, so her back was to the wall, and waited, the open knife on her lap. Feeling in her pocket for a handkerchief, her hand touched the matchbox, and she took it out with a sense of gratitude.

She was weary to the point of exhaustion. The rough flooring had slashed the soles of her silk stockings to ribbons and her feet were terribly sore. She waited for some time before she struck her first match, for the box was already half empty. She saw that she was in a part of this underground system which was unfamiliar to her. The roof was higher; the walls bulged in like the sides of an hourglass, and the floor had been roughly paved. At intervals there seemed to be niches, alcoves in the wall, and again she thought of the Swiss tunnels with their safety niches. There was no sign of the lamp; evidently Harry had carried that with him when he had gone off. It was not like him to leave her; even in his delirium he would not have done that, she thought.

As the match burnt out she heard halting footsteps re-echoing down the passage, and, closing the knife, she slipped it into her jacket pocket and waited. He must have been a long way from her when she first heard him; the passage acting as a huge speaking-tube.

“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.

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.”