by Cave, Hugh
"Me no Georgie," the boy said. "Me Gerald." Peter turned to stare at him.
"What?"
"Me Gerald, Mr. Peter. Manny Williams have Georgie. We must call them." The boy moved toward the entrance, where he peered into the corridor and called out, "Coo-e-e, Manny!"
Peter groped in the darkness and found himself clasping Mother Jarrett's hands.
"Coo-e-e!" Georgie Dakin's twin called again. "Coo-e-e, Manny!"
"Keep calling, Gerald," Mother Jarrett said. "I've been talking to him. He knows where we are. But unless he has been here before, he may have to follow your voice to find us."
"Coo-e-e, Manny!" Over and over the boy sent out his summons, while Peter stood next to the naked black woman in darkness and waited. If no one came with a light, how would they leave here? The green glow had altogether vanished now, even in the passage.
"Are you all right, Mother?" Peter asked.
"Yes, Mr. Sheldon. Just tired."
"How did you get here?"
"Emmanuel brought us."
"You and Gerald?"
"Yes. After I let myself be caught, I sent them to find Georgie so Gerald could take his brother's place."
"After you let yourself be caught?"
"Yes, Mr. Sheldon. It was the only way, don't you see?"
"But how could you talk to them then?"
A tired smile briefly touched Mother Jarrett's lips. "I was able to, Mr. Sheldon. As I was able just now to reach someone more powerful than Lucifer. There are ways."
In the entrance to the chamber Gerald still called for Manny Williams. Now from far down the passage came a faint reply. "Coo-e-e . . . That is you, Gerald?"
"Yes, Manny! You is coming?"
"Me coming, boy. Just had to find some light, is all. Me soon come now!"
In the passage a glimmer of torchlight became visible and grew brighter. After a time it became a flickering yellow glow. Better, Peter thought, than the hated green haze. So much better.
38
FOLLOWING THE OLD PIG HUNTER INTO THE NOW blind Eye of Lucifer came Edith Craig, and at her side walked the man Peter had last seen on a cross: the Englishman, Alton Preble. Behind those two shuffled the handful of Grant's captives too broken by torture to have been brought to the chamber earlier. All carried pinewood torches that smoked and sputtered but gave welcome light.
When Edith had been stripped in the chamber with the bed, her clothes had been tossed to the floor. She wore them again now, but Preble was still naked, as were those others who had been whipped and tortured.
Holding the torch high, Manny glanced at the bullet-riddled bodies on the floor, then at the trainees huddled against the wall. Scowling at the latter, he said, "What we supposed to do with these, Reverend Mother?"
Mother Jarrett said, "it is not too late for them, I think. For most of those with the guns it probably was, but not for these. I can try with them. Where is Georgie?"
"Me leave him tied up in the room where them sleep. Now we know we can get out of here, we must have to go back there for everybody clothes, anyway." Holding his torch higher, Manny moved toward her and looked closely at her face. "You is all right, Mother?"
"Yes, Emmanuel."
"Me have to say me did worry, even though me do exactly as how you instruct. To put Gerald in Georgie's place, that is, then find these others and wait for you call. You know how long me and these others been waiting?"
"A long time. I know." Mother Jarrett looked at those with him. "We won't be leaving anyone behind, Emmanuel?"
"No, ma'am, we not leaving no one." The pig hunter scowled down at her ankle, still chained to the ring in the floor. "Except you, it seem, if we don't free you foot from that thing."
"I believe the key is in their leader's pocket."
"I'll look, Manny," Peter said. He had been talking to Edith and Alton. Fumbling in pockets sticky with the dead man's blood, he discovered a ring of keys, and then knelt before Mother Jarrett to find one that would fit her leg iron. She stepped free with a murmur of thanks.
Manny Williams said, "You is finished here, Mother?"
"Quite finished, Emmanuel. Thanks to you."
"Not me, ma'am."
"Well, then—not I, either. You and I—and Gerald, of course—were merely instruments."
Manny solemnly nodded. "All right. So now which way we leaving here?"
"How did you get out before?" Peter asked him.
"Isan exit back of the fall of water at the intake pool, squire. It closer to the Great House, too."
Peter looked at the men against the wall, the dead on thefloor, the tortured ones waiting patiently behind Edith and Alton. Without Mother Jarrett, the question of how to get out of this incredible underworld would never have arisen, he thought.
"By the way, squire," Manny said, "some soldiers likely to show up here any minute now."
"Soldiers, Manny?"
"In Look Up, when me coming with Mother and Gerald, me hear say them was going up through Whitfield Hail, with Sergeant Wray to guide them. Them should be near here soon. Should me wait outside to show them the cave and tell them what happen, maybe, whilst Mother and Gerald take you to the fall of water?"
Peter looked at Mother Jarrett. "What do you think, Mother?"
"I think he should do that. But we should leave at once so I can try to help these people."
"Then let's find Georgie—and some clothes for these others—and get started."
Manny Williams discovered his first soldier not a quarter mile from the cavern entrance, standing beside the wrecked helicopter. He had apparently just come upon it and discovered the decapitated body of the forestry man, and was frightened almost into shock when Manny suddenly appeared before him.
He led Manny to his commanding officer, one Captain Laidlaw, and the captain, having been told about the cavern, decided his duty required him to remain there with his men and explore it. They did, and brought out the dead. A week later, after a round of discussions with his superiors and certain high government officials—discussions at which Mother Jarred was called upon to tell what she knew—the same Captain Laidlaw was sent back there with a team of demolition experts.
First they set off a shattering charge of explosives in the Eye. Then they demolished both entrances, incidentally damaging the Armadale intake when they destroyed the one at the waterfall. For in St. Alban the word of that tall, mysterious woman known as Mother Jarrett was not taken lightly, especially when she calmly bared her upper body to the members of an investigating commission and showed them a most unusual mark on her left breast.
It was a mark not quite an inch and a half long—they measured and photographed it—of a peculiarly iridescent green, and apparently quite deep, as though burned into her body with a branding iron. In shape it resembled more than anything else a vulture's claw in miniature.
It had not been there, Mother Jarrett assured them, before her session in the underworld's Eye.
39
"HOW DID YOU LEARN TO USE A GUN THAT WELL, Gerald?" Peter asked.
It was seven o'clock in the evening, the sun gone, twilight sliding down the mountain slopes to the Great House where Peter sat with Edith Craig on the veranda. In the morning Edith and her fiancé would be leaving the island on their way back to London. Mother Jarrett had come calling with Gerald and his brother Georgie.
In answer to Peter's question, Gerald said with a shrug, "Manny Williams carry a gun when him escape from there with Cob Dennis, sir. Me and him study it together."
"You did a good job with it. We owe you our lives."
"You must remember that when me ask you a raise in pay, sir," Gerald said with a grin.
Peter looked at Georgie, leaning silently against the veranda railing. Mother Jarrett had come, he realized, mainly to demonstrate that Gerald's twin was well on the way to being himself again, as were most of the others rescued from Grant's hellhole. Georgie did not remember much of what had been done to him. Perhaps, God willing, he never would. But
he would soon be a true son of Bronzie Dakin again—a cheerful lad and a good worker, with a normal life ahead of him. "If you can possibly put him back to work again," Mother had said, "it would hasten his recovery."
Peter had been unable to promise anything. "Miss Craig and Mr. Preble are leaving tomorrow. I haven't been told yet whether I'll still be working here myself."
Mother stood before him now, offering her hand in farewell. "Well, Mr. Sheldon . . .
He rose and clasped both her hands, recalling how she had knelt in the Eye of the Devil's Pit with them pressed together in prayer. "Thank you," he said.
She turned to Edith. Edith stood up and suddenly, impulsively, embraced her.
Mother departed, with Bronzie Dakin's twin sons trailing her down the darkening walk. Standing at the veranda rail, watching them, Peter and Edith were close enough for their shoulders to be touching. Alton Preble had gone to his room, to pack for departure in the morning.
"Will you ever come back here?" Peter wondered aloud.
Edith turned to look at him. "I want to. But I don't know, Peter."
"Because of Alton?"
"I've promised to marry him."
"And he's a good man." Peter recalled the moment in the cave when he had stood before Preble with a whip, and the man on the cross had said, "Get on with it. You're forgiven."
"But I'm deeding Armadale to you," Edith said. He looked at her in disbelief.
"You what?"
"My father said in his will that if Ididn't want to be responsible for it, I should deed it to you. He said it was nothing but a dream when he bought it, and without you it would still be only a dream. So"—she reached for Peter's hand—"I want you to have it."
"But he paid good money for it, Edith."
"If you want to pay it back someday, all right. Or I know a home for children in London that could use the money."
Mother Jarrett and the sons of Bronzie Dakin had disappeared down the track to Look Up. There was a sound in the drawing-room doorway. Peter turned and saw his housekeeper, Miss Coraline, coming with a tray on which were three glasses, an ice bucket, and a bottle of Scotch.
"Mr. Preble tell me to bring this." She set the tray down on a veranda table. "Him soon come."
A farewell drink, Peter thought. Tomorrow they would be gone.
The housekeeper departed. In a moment Alton Preble stepped out onto the veranda and approached the table. "Hello, you two. I took the liberty. . . ." He poured three drinks, handing one to Edith and one to Peter as they joined him. The veranda was almost dark. In a few minutes Coraline would press the button to activate the diesel power plant, disturbing the silence for the sake of light.
"I've something to say to you," Preble announced quietly. "Drink, will you? It may take a little time."
Neither Peter nor Edith spoke. Both sipped their Scotch while waiting.
"Edith and I leave tomorrow," Preble said, gazing at them. "I think you ought to come back here, Edith."
"What?" she said.
"You'll need a little time over there to put your affairs in order. I'll help. Then I think you ought to come back here. You're a first-class nurse. You could be useful here."
"I don't understand," Edith said.
"From the moment you two met, there was something between you." Preble's voice was that of a calm, self-possessed lawyer pleading a case in court. "I saw it, in spite of being so damned carsick on that god-awful road from the airport. I thought at first it was just something that happened because you, Edith, are an incurable romantic and this is a romantic island. But I'm not blind. The two of you have something. I envy you. I don't have it. I don't want to deprive you of it. So do something about it, will you, for God's sake?" He looked at his drink. He lifted it to his lips and drank half of it down. Then he looked at Edith and smiled.
"You and I would never have hit it off, you know, love," he said. "It would have been like mating one of these bright little St. Alban hummingbirds to a—what do you call them, Peter, old boy?—a John Crow. Let's get a little drunk, shall we? This isn't my Scotch, Peter, it's yours."
Stepping to the veranda railing, he gazed down over the roofs of Look Up, where lamps were winking on now in the windows of peasant houses. "It's a pretty place, this Armadale," he said. "I wish I knew why I hate it so bloody much."
Miss Coraline had pressed the button. The power plant clicked on. The veranda lights glowed yellow and began to brighten. Edith Craig reached out to touch Peter's hand while the man she had been going to marry scowled down over the darkening island as though angry with himself for not being able to understand it. Or himself.
40
A Front-Page Editorial
From the St. Alban Daily Post:
The Post has learned from an unimpeachable source that a hitherto unknown cave in our Morgan Mountains, when discovered recently by our Defence Force, was occupied by a gang of terrorists who were using it as their headquarters and training center.
After a surprise attack which resulted in a number of the gunmen being slain, the soldiers, instructed by certain high government officials, permanently closed the cave by blowing up its two known entrances.
We deplore this hasty and inappropriate move on the part of our officials. The caves of our island are famous for their beauty and are an important tourist attraction. That this one, said to be one of the longest ever found here, was being employed by criminals in no way justifies its being closed to further exploration and possible exploitation as a lure for our more adventuresome visitors.
Speleologists have come to St. Alban from all over the world to visit such caverns as Glowrie Cave in Dorchester and Riversink Cave in Devon, not to mention others. Several less dangerous underworlds in our tourist areas have been equipped with lights and walkways to attract the ordinary visitor. We believe that this new cave, if as intricate as described to us by our informant, might have become a genuine asset to our island.
Shame on our politicians for closing it so precipitously, without time for a proper investigation!
But who knows? Some other entrance may yet be found by which it can be restored to us as a national treasure. Or in time, with more knowledgeable men in charge of our destiny, those entrances so stupidly destroyed may yet be reopened.
Let us hope.
