The Black Abbot
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.