by Cave, Hugh
There, on his knees, he sought the flexible plastic tube, six feet long, which carried the gas to the fridge from a much longer length of copper tubing that came into the kitchen through a hole in the wall. The plastic fitted over the copper and was secured with a metal clamp held tight by a screw.
The letter from Laura was still in his left hand. He dropped it now and scowled at the screw for a moment, then rose to his feet and strode through the small courtyard off the kitchen to a room on the opposite side. This was a storeroom where paint, pipe fittings, and assorted small tools were kept.
Snatching a screwdriver from a wall rack, he returned to the kitchen with it. There, kneeling again, he loosened the clamp behind the fridge and dropped the screwdriver. With one hand on the copper tube and one on the plastic, he tugged the two apart. As he let them go and groped erect this time, the kitchen filled with a faint hissing sound, as though he had awakened a sleeping snake.
All right. It was done now and he could forget it. Satisfied, he made his way back to his bedroom and shut the door behind him.
Strangely tired—exhausted, in fact—he stumbled to the bed and collapsed on it.
The mist had followed him up from the kitchen, but now was dissolving. Presently it was gone altogether and he could see the stars through the windows. And by the light of the lamp he could again see the familiar, comforting pictures on the walls. His father. His mother. The home he had grown up in.
After a while he fell asleep.
14
THE ALARM CLOCK ON THE TABLE NEXT TO HIS BED read ten past six when he awoke. It was just visible inthe room's grayness. His head throbbed as he sat up and rubbed his eyes.
He had promised to put Gerald Dakin to work today he remembered. After breakfast he must go down to Field One and see if the lad had turned up and whether he was actually in condition to do any work.
Something else had happened last night. What was it? Ah, yes, the mist, the fog, his trip to the kitchen But, of course, none of that had really taken place. He had only dreamed it.
Leaving his room, he went down the hall to his bath room and showered, using cold water in the hope it would dispel the heaviness in his head. It did seem to help a little. Back in his room, he had almost finished dressing when someone knocked on his closed door.
"Yes?"
"Mr. Peter!" The voice belonged to his housekeeper, but was so shrill he scarcely recognized it. "Can you come downstairs? Something is wrong in the kitchen!"
He opened the door and saw that she was indeed upset. The eyes that stared at him were overly large and bright with alarm. "All right," he said quietly. "Just let me get my other shoe on."
As he trailed her downstairs, she wailed back at him that the fridge was not working—that the kitchen smelled of gas. And so it did. On entering it, he at once recognized the sweetish reek of propane.
A glance told him the plastic tube behind the fridge had come loose from the copper one that brought the propane in from the cylinder in the yard. On the floor lay a screwdriver.
He stooped to sniff the end of the copper tube and smelled no gas emerging from it now, nor could he hear any. Striding out to the yard, he rocked the tall, hundred-pound cylinder back and forth and could tell by its lightness it was empty.
"It's finished," he said to Coraline, who had followed him out.
"But it was a new tank only last week, Mr. Peter!"
"The tubes must have come apart during the night and let the gas escape. Probably the clamp let go, and the pressure caused a separation."
His housekeeper had never been one to deal in nonsense. Hands on hips, she said, "Someone did unscrew that clamp, Mr. Peter! The screwdriver they did use is right there on the floor!"
"No, no. I must have left that there when I checked the clamp last."
"Mr. Peter, the kitchen floor was washed the day before yesterday by me. The whole entirely kitchen floor! And no screwdriver was there then!"
Unable to think of a reply that might quiet her, he went back into the kitchen. She followed in silence. Turning to the counter next to the stove, she lifted something white from it and swung around to confront him again.
"And this was under the pipe with the screwdriver," she said, watching his eyes.
He took it from her and glanced at it. Feeling as though his body were encased in ice, he turned slowly to look at the stove.
When he walked over to examine the pilot light, he found it not burning. "What's wrong with the flame here?" he said in a voice that came out like something from a record played too slowly.
"The pilot? Me did decide long time ago to use matches instead. Gas cost a wicked amount of money these days."
"It was out last night?"
"It been out for two months or more."
He stared at the fridge again. In his mind he saw gas hissing from the copper tubing behind it to fill the kitchen. He saw the swelling cloud reaching the pilot light on the stove and exploding with a cannon blast to tear the kitchen apart. The walls and floor of this basement dungeon were of stone, true, but the many cupboards and the ceiling were of wood, and the ceiling had probably absorbed enough grease through the years to fuel a raging fire.
Above that kitchen ceiling was the floor of his bedroom.
Stunned, he looked again at the sheet of paper Coraline had handed him. It was the letter he had been reading in bed before the start of his nightmare. The one from his sister Laura, with the "Dear Petey" salutation.
AT BREAKFAST PETER said nothing of his nocturnal visit to the kitchen. After reconnecting the tubes and putting a fresh cylinder of gas on the line, he had warned Coraline to be silent, too. "I don't know what's going on here," he told her grimly, "but if it frightens Miss Craig into leaving, you and I may find ourselves out of work."
"What you think going on here?" she had demanded, facing him with a look of fear on her face. "Me would truly like to know, suh!"
"I haven't a clue. So keep your eyes and ears open, please. And if you learn anything, come at once and tell me."
Now, finishing breakfast, he asked Edith and her fiancé how they had slept.
"Except for the heat, rather well," the barrister replied.
Edith said, "Yes, so did I."
So much for that, Peter thought.
After breakfast he drove the jeep down to Field One. The weather had changed. The air was crisp and cool this morning. The humidity that seemed to play such havoc with Alton Preble had been put to flight by a sea breeze flowing up the valley. As he left the vehicle and walked into the field, he looked about him with pride, and for a few moments stopped struggling to make sense of what had happened during the night.
This field was the first he had planted. Five years old, the handsome trees had already produced a fine first crop and were now so laden with green cherries that almost every branch drooped to touch the ground. He should take a color photo, he thought, and send a print to Philip Craig in England.
But Philip Craig was dead. His daughter was even now at the Great House deciding whether to keep the property or sell it. And but for a peasant housekeeper's frugality in shutting off a pilot light, there might not even be a Great House this morning. Thinking of that, he could only shake his head in frustration.
What in God's name had made him do it? What had made Edith behave so insanely at the John Crow's Nest? Why was Gerald Dakin babbling about being cold, wet, hungry, and a prisoner in some fanciful "green dark" underground?
Was there a connection? Were the missing scouts somehow involved in what was happening here at Armadale?
The weeding in Field One was nearly finished, he saw. A first-rate job, as always when that marvelous old pig hunter, Manny Williams, was in charge. He had to walk almost to the track that separated One and Two before finding the workers.
They stopped work to greet him, and he saw that young Gerald Dakin was one of them. Good. The lad was not still imprisoned in his imaginary cave, then. "Carry on," he told them, and was content for a while to
stand and watch them work. Especially to watch Manny.
Few men even here in St. Alban's mountains used a machete—or cutlass, as some of them called it—as skillfully as did Manny Williams. Most of them simply chopped the weeds, pausing every few minutes to take a small file from a hip pocket and rub the tool's edge with it. Manny, holding his gleaming blade almost flat, all but shaved the earth with each fluid stroke, and the strokes followed one another as rhythmically as a reggae beat. That broad back and those corded arms were all muscle. Yet this same man could plant a coffee seedling so gently that it grew, Peter was convinced, just to show its gratitude.
When Peter stepped forward to his side, the pig hunter stopped work with obvious reluctance. No man was supposed to interrupt that rhythm.
"Manny, may I have a word with you?"
The old man turned his head to glance at young Gerald Dakin. "Of course, suh."
"Let's have a look at what's to be done in Field Two, shall we?"
"All right, suh."
They walked across the track into the adjoining field, and when there was no longer any danger of their being overheard, Peter halted. "I just want to ask you how Gerald is doing, Manny."
"Seem like him all right now, squire."
"Has he been talking a lot?"
"Well, nobody been doing much talking. We looking to finish the field by midday and get started on this one."
Peter felt a touch of relief. The fields were given out as task work, usually to one man who hired any helpers he needed. In this case the job had been given to Manny, and sending Gerald Dakin here could have incurred his displeasure. "Thanks for letting him work with you, Manny. I had a feeling you'd understand the situation."
"Miz Bronzie a fine woman," Manny Williams said. "But"—frowning now—"what really happen to Gerald, squire?"
"I'm not sure. I believe, though, he's afraid for his brother. You know how close they are, almost like one person."
Manny nodded.
"Let's hope the scouts are soon found. Listen, Manny. If I'm needed for anything and you don't find me at the house, look for me at the river. I'm taking Miss Craig to the intake." Then, satisfied that all was well, Peter returned to the jeep.
At the house Edith had again put on her khaki hiking apparel and was waiting for him. He was surprised to find Preble, too, dressed in clothes suitable for a walk through rough country.
"If you don't mind, I'll come along," the barrister said. "Rivers are a hobby of mine, sort of."
"Alton goes salmon fishing in Scotland," Edith supplied.
Peter's smile of pleasure was genuine. "I'm afraid you won't find any fish in our stream, though. Except crayfish here and there—the people call them 'jangga'—under rocks in some of the pools. When the big rains come in April and September, the river is a killer. No fish could survive in it."
The trail began at the back of the Great House yard and, climbing, curled around the shoulder of a mountain. It was only a footpath, in most places so narrow that the three of them had to proceed in single file. Peter led the way; Preble brought up the rear. Almost before the Great House was out of sight behind them, a sweet scent of wild ground orchids brought an exclamation of delight from Edith. "Where are they?" she demanded.
Peter pointed out clusters of white and purple blooms under the forest trees, and delicate pink ones on slender bare stems higher up on the mountainside.
"Can we take some home?"
"If you like. The scent is pretty strong indoors, though. You may change your mind about wanting them after you've lived with it awhile."
She laughed and clapped her hands, turning to share her enthusiasm with her fiancé. She was like a child, Peter thought. Was it because this Caribbean island was so unlike her England, or was she just fond of the outdoors? Whatever, he hoped it would last. But as their walk to the river continued and the forest stillness deepened about them, his thought fastened again on what had happened at the John Crow's Nest and last night in the Great House, and he began to feel apprehensive.
The forest seemed too quiet. Almost always on this half mile of trail he encountered wild pigeons that burst from cover with a loud flapping of wings, and the big doves called mountain witches that raced clumsily along the path just ahead of him before crashing off into the bush. Gray kingbirds, too—called pecheeries here because of their shrill cry—defended their territory by swooping down like tiny attack planes, sometimes so violently an intended victim had to fling up his arms to protect his face.
But this morning there was nothing. Was it just the change in the weather, the sudden cessation of heat? Or was the sender of that damnable mist planning some new assault on their minds?
"Is that the river I'm hearing?" Preble asked.
"Yes."
"It sounds formidable."
"It does," Peter agreed, puzzled by the loudness of it. This was not the rainy season; the stream's voice should be muted. But the clouds had been threateningly heavy over the upper reaches of the property yesterday. Had there been a rain up there?
"Must we cross it?" Edith asked.
"If you want to see the cascades—"
"Of course!" she said with mock indignation, and then as they rounded the last turn of track, she saw the stream and gasped.
Peter nearly supplied an echo. There had been a heavy rain near the Peak, obviously. As he looked down on the white water swirling through its rocky gorge some twenty feet below them, he thought of Sergeant Wray and the men of the Defence Force, and wondered whether they had encountered it. The stream was a good four feet above normal, creating a rumbling thunder as it hurled small boulders against one another and sent them crashing into the canyon's walls.
Edith and her barrister stood there in silence, obviously apprehensive. "How do we get down there?" Preble said at last.
"Follow me."
There were steps in the cliff wall. Peter and some of his workers had hacked them out of the porous black rock with mattocks, to replace an old wooden ladder that had been the means of descent when Edith's father bought the property. To reduce the risk even further, they had drilled holes and driven in some lengths of one-inch pipe to support a handrail of sturdy rope. Turning at the top now, he went down backward to show his companions how it was done, and then at the bottom looked up to watch them.
Somehow it did not surprise him to see Edith descend almost as boldly as he himself had done. It did when Alton Preble came down just as casually.
He turned to the river. The established way of crossing it was over a felled cedar tree, a giant that extended from one bank to the other some eight feet above the normal level of the water. At times, after the worst downpours of the rainy season, it was actually underwater, and crossing the stream became impossible. Stripped of its bark because old bark could break and cause an accident, the tree had been notched with a machete at intervals to make it less slippery.
He looked at Edith. "Are you sure you want to do this today? It's a bit scary when the water is this high."
"I don't think you should, love," Alton Preble advised.
She hesitated long enough to convince Peter she was about to agree, but then stepped out onto the tree, took a few experimental steps, and said, "I can manage. I'll be all right."
"Better let me go first," Peter said. On the other bank lay some bamboo poles, one of which he could extend for her to grasp if she became nervous when halfway over. They were kept there for that purpose and had been used on more than one occasion.
Starting across, he was fully aware that the rush of the swollen stream against its banks was making the tree bridge tremble like a thing alive. What a place this would be for that hellish mist to reappear, he thought, almost expecting it to come swirling around him. And once more the obvious questions nagged at him. What was the mist? Where did it come from? Who or what was sending it?
Edith cautiously crossed the bridge after him, not needing a bamboo pole after all. Her fiance followed without hesitation.
If this ke
eps up, Peter thought, I'll find myself liking the fellow in spite of myself.
Now the track became a ladder, curving upward at an angle so steep that hands became as useful as feet in climbing it. Off to the right the river crashed down over a series of ledges, with an unbroken roar that made any kind of talk impossible. The Cascades, this stretch was called on the old map at which Sergeant Wray had marveled. Peter simply toiled on upward and let the two from England follow.
Once, though, on looking back, he discovered that Edith Craig had stopped to gaze at the wildly plunging stream as if lost in wonder. Her father had been fond of the Middle Earth fantasy world of J.R.R. Tolkien, he recalled. How that same writer would have loved this untamed fragment of earth called Armadale!
Ten minutes later, completing the climb, he stood at the pool from which the plantation drew its water.
15
LEFT ALONE IN FIELD TWO WHEN PETER RETURNED to the Great House, Manny Williams, deep in thought, walked slowly back to rejoin his workers. The machetes stopped flashing as he-approached. Their owners gazed at Manny in silence, waiting for him to speak.
"Nothing is wrong," he said. "You can go back to work."
Seemingly unconvinced, they sent questioning glances in the direction of Bronzie Dakin's son Gerald. But after a moment, when the old pig hunter said no more, they obeyed him.
Manny walked off a little way, laid his machete carefully on the ground, and sat on a fallen silk-oak tree. With his hands limp between his knees, he thought about what was happening, or what seemed to be happening, on this coffee plantation where he considered himself a kind of assistant to the manager.
Mr. Peter Sheldon appeared to be in some puzzling kind of trouble, no? Some trouble connected with the Devil's Pit.
Of course, there were people who jeered at the idea of a Devil's Pit and called it a peasant superstition. But he, Manny Williams, had been hunting wild pigs in these mountains since he was a boy—and was convinced there was such a place.
How long ago had he gone up there with not-bright Witford Cushie? Not quite two years ago. And look at Witford now. Hardly a soul in Cedar Ridge called him by his right name anymore.
