The Shivering Mountain

by Paul Somers

  Chapter Fifteen

  I was so staggered that for a moment I couldn’t get a word out. Barr was the very last man I’d have expected to meet down there. Particularly with the suitcase! It was, without any doubt, the one Clara and I had brought the money in—and judging by the difficulty he’d had in pushing it along, it was still full. The wildest suspicions began to race through my mind.

  “Who is it?” Barr repeated in a harsher tone.

  I said, “It’s Hugh Curtis—and Mollie Bourne of the Courier.”

  A sigh escaped him—a long sigh of relief. “God, you scared me.… I thought you were one of the kidnappers.”

  I swivelled my lamp so that it shone on the passage wall and not straight at him. “Take your helmet off,” I said, “your light’s blinding me.” He took it off and put it down on the floor so that his lamp also shone on the wall. Now we could both see each other. He was wearing the boiler-suit, and it was thick with cave mud. He looked filthy.

  I said, “What the devil are you doing here?”

  “That’s a long story. Trying to find Arthur Landon, as a matter of fact.… I suppose you followed us in?”

  “Us?”

  “Of course.…” He turned and called back along the passage, “Come on, Clara—your newspaper pals are here.”

  So she was there too! Mollie murmured in my ear, “You see!” I didn’t see at all. The whole situation was completely beyond me. We waited. Presently there was a scrambling sound behind Barr, and Clara appeared. She stared at us, but didn’t speak. Her face was as white as chalk.

  I said, “I still don’t understand.… How did you get on to this place?”

  “We’ll tell you later, Curtis—there’s no time now.”

  “What are you doing with that suitcase?”

  “We found it along the passage.… Look, we’re pretty sure Landon’s here somewhere but we need help—we’re actually on our way now to get the police.… The explanations’ll have to wait.”

  It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him we knew where Landon was—but I didn’t. I didn’t trust him, and I didn’t want to tell him anything—I wanted to listen. I no longer had any feeling of urgency. By my watch the time was twenty minutes to ten, so we’d missed our chance to fetch help. If we tried to leave now we might easily run slap into the kidnappers. If we stayed where we were, and they came, we could retreat into the pothole and probably find some way of coping with them.

  I said, “I think we’d like to hear your story first.”

  At that, Clara found her voice. “Hugh, it’ll take ages.… I’m sure Father must be here, and if he is the main thing’s to get him out.… All we need is a big party to search.…”

  “Look,” I said, “you were supposed to be waiting at the hotel for your father’s return. Instead of that you sneaked up here to the pothole, which you obviously knew about. How did you know about it? Barr was supposed to be in London. Instead of that, he’s here with you. Why? I think I’m entitled to an explanation—and I mean to have one. What’s going on?”

  There was a moment’s silence. Then Clara said, “I suppose you’d better tell them, Ronald—but do hurry.…”

  Barr shrugged. “All right—I’ll keep it short.… You’ll probably be damned annoyed, Curtis, but it’s nothing to do with Clara, it was entirely my doing.… The thing is, I never really reconciled myself to letting you and Clara bring the money to the kidnappers on your own. I was still worried about what might happen to Clara, and I wanted to be around. So when she left home yesterday morning I followed her in my car, and saw you pick her up at Marble Arch—and then I followed you.”

  I stared at him. “You mean—all the way?”

  “All the way.”

  “I didn’t see you.”

  “You weren’t meant to.… Anyway, you were too busy keeping your eye on Miss Bourne’s car to be interested in me. I was behind her.”

  “I didn’t see you, either,” Mollie said.

  “Of course you didn’t—all you were bothering about was Curtis. Anyhow, that’s what happened. I followed you, and I saw you both stop on the road, and I saw you again in that village. I parked behind a lorry there—I wasn’t more than thirty yards away. I could even see you arguing! After that I shadowed you all the way to Mam Tor. When you stopped there and got out I shoved my car behind some rocks and climbed the hillside opposite and watched you inspecting the foot of the precipice through your glasses. I realised you must be reconnoitring the meeting place, but I couldn’t believe the kidnappers really intended meeting you at the foot—the place looked much too enclosed. Then I suddenly had the idea they might try and haul the money up from the top.…”

  “You thought of that!” Mollie said. “You were bright.”

  “I wouldn’t call it particularly bright—it seemed obvious.… Anyhow, at dusk I walked round to the top of the precipice and waited there, flat on my face in a little hollow. And sure enough, at eight o’ clock two men arrived. It was very dark, and though they had a torch they hardly used it, so I couldn’t see much. But I could hear their voices and I could tell by the sounds that they were lowering a rope and then hauling something up. The whole thing only took a few minutes.… Well, having got that far I couldn’t let them just disappear, so I followed them. I followed them right to the entrance to this pothole. I still couldn’t see much, but it was pretty clear they were going down into some sort of hole. I didn’t dare follow them in, and I didn’t want to leave the place in the dark in case I couldn’t find it again. So I stuck around all night, and damned cold it was! I’d taken the precaution of putting some food in my pocket or I’d never have lasted. Anyway, in the morning they both came out. I’d had to take cover rather far away so I couldn’t see them too well, but this time I did manage to get a glimpse of them.…”

  “What were they like?” By now I was fascinated. I wouldn’t have called it a brief narrative, but it was certainly gripping.

  “One was youngish, stocky, with a sort of crew cut. The other was a good deal older—quite grey, in fact. He seemed to be taking the lead. They both had fawn raincoats on. They walked away over the moors, talking hard. The younger one had a very low-pitched voice.… As soon as they were clear away, I went down the hole to have a look round. By now I thought it quite likely Landon was here—it was obviously the kidnappers’ base, and it was a jolly good hiding place. I found this boiler-suit and helmet just inside the entrance, so I borrowed them. Even with the helmet lamp, though, I damn nearly got lost. I tried a passage that forked away to the right but it suddenly ended at a big cave with a vertical drop and that was that. Then I came along this one a little way and almost got stuck in a tunnel that strikes up to the left—you probably saw it. I didn’t like it at all, I can tell you—not on my own. So I went back to the entrance—it was late afternoon by then—and left the suit and helmet there and walked down to the road to telephone Clara and come clean about what I’d been up to and see what she thought about raising a search party.…”

  “You telephoned Clara!” I broke in.

  “I did.”

  “How did you know where she was staying?”

  “I’d heard one of the men on Mam Tor say to the other, ‘They’re going to the George at Castleton.’ Don’t ask me how they knew. Anyway, I found a phone box and rang Clara, and by luck she was in, and I told her everything that had happened and said I thought there was a good chance her father was in the pothole. She was absolutely furious at first. She said her father was going to be released that evening anyway and that by interfering I was probably endangering his life. She said I shouldn’t have come up, shouldn’t have followed the kidnappers, shouldn’t have done anything. She was livid. I thought she was being crazy. I said she’d no guarantee whatever that the kidnappers wouldn’t come back to the pothole and kill Landon and that if he was there we ought to get him out while the going was good. She said perhaps he wasn’t there—perhaps it was just a cache for the money. She was terribly nervous about doing anything
. But in the end she agreed to come up to the moor and discuss things. I told her the way, and she came, and we met.…”

  “That couldn’t have been easy,” Mollie said, “in the dark.”

  “It wasn’t—I wished afterwards I’d arranged to meet her on the road, but I was anxious not to be away from the pothole any longer than I could help in case the kidnappers slipped back in without my knowing.… We more or less stumbled across each other in the end. We’d no idea you two were around, of course. We sat on a rock and had another long talk. Clara was still against the search party idea, because it couldn’t possibly be arranged quietly. I said in that case why didn’t we take another look in the hole ourselves? By now it had started to pour with rain and she had to make a decision one way or the other. Finally she said okay, and we came in and took this passage again because I hadn’t fully explored it. Actually, there are several more forks—it’ll take quite a while to explore them all. We followed this stream for about half a mile but we didn’t see any sign of Landon. What we did find was the suitcase with the money in it—it was on a ledge, at a kind of dead end where the stream ducks under a rock. We had another discussion there. I said that, assuming Landon was in the pothole, it was obvious the kidnappers weren’t going to keep their promise to release him by ten, because time was getting on and they’d have been back by now. I said it was more likely they were going to let him die here, and come back and collect the money later when the heat was off it. That finally persuaded Clara. She said, all right, perhaps we’d better go to the police after all and get a proper search party mobilised.… And that’s exactly what we’re doing.”

  “With the money!” I said.

  “Well, naturally.… We didn’t want the kidnappers to come back in our absence and clear off with it. My idea about them leaving it for a while was only a guess.”

  I nodded slowly. I didn’t know what to make of him. He was either very genuine, or very glib. His story rang true up to a point—yet there were things about it that somehow didn’t fit.… The whole pattern of behaviour seemed odd.…

  Suddenly I thought of something. “Back at the entrance,” I said, “we saw your footmarks on the wet ground. We didn’t see Clara’s. How was that?”

  “Good God, man,” he broke out, “what are you so suspicious about …? I gave her a hump on my back over the worst bits, that’s all.… Now I suggest we stop wasting time. Some of us can fetch help, and the others can stick around in case the kidnappers come back.… Let’s get out of here.”

  “Yes, please let’s go,” Clara said. “I’m sorry we did it all on our own, Hugh—I suppose I ought to have told you, but everything happened so quickly”

  I said, “Have we had the true story, Clara? You’ve been very quiet.”

  “Of course you have,” she said. “The whole truth and nothing but the truth.… Why ever not?”

  It was then that Mollie suddenly cried, “Hugh!—look at the stream!”

  I looked—and promptly forgot everything else. When we’d stopped, it had been flowing gently between its clay dams, making scarcely a murmur. Now it was a vigorous current, and the tops of the dams were covered. Even as I watched, it lapped right across the passage floor. The level was rising fast.

  It didn’t need a genius to know what was happening. The rain outside had obviously got worse. The storm waters from above were pouring down into the tunnel—and we were in one of the lowest sections of it!

  Chapter Sixteen

  There was a moment or two of confusion. Mollie started to move towards the exit. Barr had clapped his helmet on his head and was pushing the suitcase towards me. But Clara, instead of following him, had turned and begun to go back the way she’d come. Barr stopped and shouted to her, “This way, you idiot!” She shouted something in reply. It sounded like “Father …!” Barr left the case and went after her. I called to Mollie to wait and went after Barr. If Clara was worrying about Landon, the only thing was to tell her we knew where he was and that he’d be safe enough in his vast cavern however much water came in. But I didn’t have to—by the time I reached them Barr had calmed her, and we all scrambled back together. I said, “Okay, Mollie, step on it!” and we set off again towards the exit. Barr was still pushing the suitcase ahead of him.

  We ran into trouble almost at once. The water wasn’t deep yet but the current was strong enough to make every movement an effort. Now that the Moor was completely covered there was no way of avoiding the treacherous clay patches, and our knees slid wildly over them. The ground was uneven, and we kept plunging into invisible holes. Barr soon had to abandon the case. Then Clara was thrown off balance and lost her torch. We waited while she caught up. The water surged round our thighs as we knelt. The current was much fiercer now. We’d begun to climb, and it was rushing down at us with real weight behind it.

  Conditions grew steadily worse. At the very steep bit, the stream was a roaring torrent. The scene under the low roof was indescribably awful. The din was deafening. For a minute or two we battled on, clutching at the rock wall for support—but now I’d begun to doubt if we’d make it. Uphill, we were sliding helplessly on the clay and losing as much ground as we were gaining. The weight of water was too great for us—we were only exhausting ourselves to no purpose. A wave washed over my lamp and it went out. I cried, “Mollie!—we must go back!” I grabbed her arm, and we turned. “Back!” I shouted to Barr, above the roaring water. “We must go with the stream!” He nodded. He was clinging to a lump of stalagmite, and holding Clara. She looked terrified. We went past them, and they turned behind us.

  Now, by comparison, the going was easy. The fast-flowing stream swept us along. In places we were almost floating. Mollie was a little ahead of me. She’d given me her torch and I was trying to hold it above the water. Barr’s head lamp was still working. We passed the submerged suitcase. The roof began to lift a little. We were carried round a bend that was new to me.…

  Quite suddenly, the passage seemed to grow quiet. There was turbulence in the water, but no longer any current. The stream was getting a lot deeper, very quickly. I could see it lapping up the wall inches at a time. I couldn’t understand it.… Then, with a pang of real fear, I knew! Barr had spoken of the stream ducking under a rock. But not all this water—not through a tiny opening. It was flooding back! The whole passage was going to fill up like a bath!

  We struggled on—there was nothing else to do. We were swimming now. The water was bitterly cold, and I knew we couldn’t last long. Suddenly Clara gave a panic-stricken scream. I looked back. Barr was helping her. He’d have to manage—I couldn’t leave Mollie. She was flagging, too. I drew alongside her and urged her on. She was a wonderful swimmer but her clothes were hampering her. She hadn’t had time to get out of her raincoat and no one could have swum far in that. The roof was only a foot above the water now. We were going to be trapped like rats. Suddenly she went down. I put a hand under her and raised her up, gasping and choking. With my other hand I was still holding the torch. I kicked out with my legs as hard as I could. The last effort …! At that moment the torch beam lit up a break in the tunnel wall. There was a fork, and the passage on the right rose steeply, well above water level. I shouted, “Keep going—we’ll make it!” I could sense the light of Barr’s lamp behind me. Clara had stopped screaming. We were going to get through after all. I reached the fork and struggled out on to the clayey bank and heaved Mollie up beside me.

  Barr was about ten yards behind, holding Clara. Suddenly he shouted, “Curtis!—help!” I gave the torch to Mollie and went back in and struck out for the head lamp. There was a choking cry from Clara. She had panicked again, and was struggling. Before I could reach them the head lamp went under, and out. Barr cried in a desperate tone, “Curtis!—I’ve lost her!” I swam towards the voice, but in the darkness I couldn’t find him. He was splashing wildly around, searching for Clara. There was no sound from her. I swam to and fro across the passage, groping about for the touch of a dress. But there was nothing. Pr
esently I swam back to the pinpoint of light that was Mollie’s torch. Barr, exhausted by his frantic efforts, was climbing out. Mollie, her face drawn with horror, was shining the torch down. The dark water was lapping at the tunnel roof. I climbed out, too, and looked down. For a second I thought I saw something disappearing into the tunnel—something white. It could have been a drowned face. In a moment it had gone. There was nothing now but a few bubbles.

  Chapter Seventeen

  For a moment we stood there as though paralysed. It didn’t seem possible that Clara was dead. The fact that the rest of us had barely escaped the same fate didn’t make it any more credible. We had escaped—why couldn’t she have done? The suddenness, the finality, was numbing. The horror of it all was heightened by our ghastly surroundings. Mollie said, “Oh, God!” and leaned back against the wall, her head in her hands. Barr didn’t move—he just gazed unbelievingly down at the water. I felt I had to say something to him, though it was hard to find words. The tragedy must be so appalling for him that anything I said could only sound empty.… Then he turned to look at me. His face registered many emotions—shock, uncertainty, even fear—but no one would have guessed that the girl he loved had just drowned before his eyes. If this was grief, I didn’t recognise it.

  I was right not to. As I started to say something, he snapped, “Spare me your sympathy—she meant nothing to me!”

  I stared at him. “Meant nothing …! But you were going to marry her.”

  “That slut! Never!”

  The callous words, the savage tone, drove all gentler emotions from the tunnel like a wind dispersing fog. Mollie looked up sharply. Barr’s expression was contemptuous. He seemed like a man who’d suddenly decided to throw off a mask he no longer needed. I began to readjust my own ideas. I remembered what Mollie had said about Clara’s “revulsion” when Barr had kissed her. At last I had no difficulty in believing that. Now it appeared that the revulsion had been mutual. That added up to only one thing—the relationship they’d paraded before the world had been merely one of convenience. They’d disliked each other, yet they’d needed each other, right up to those last few moments when Barr had made such desperate efforts to save her. What had been between them?