Terror keep
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!”