The Black Abbot
“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