The Black Abbot
“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.