‘I’m awake,’ she said, making some attempt to shake her hair straight, ‘but I don’t know so much about the all right. Have they brought us any water yet? Gosh, but I know now what it feels like to be marooned in the Great Desert.’
‘Not yet,’ he replied, trying to make his voice sound cheerful without being too sanguine. ‘It must still be pretty early.’
‘It may be early for today but it’s jolly late for yesterday and they didn’t bring us any all day. Nor the night before—or the year before it may have been: I’m losing count of time here. Any food?’
His arm tightened on her shoulder in compassionate pressure. There was no need to say it.
‘Oh well, I don’t suppose that I could eat any now if there had been. My throat must be like a roll of emery paper.’ Suddenly she discovered by the feel that she had been covered with two rugs as she slept and she turned on him with a show of affectionate indignation. ‘Look here, Uncle Max, cheating again! It isn’t fair spreading your rug over me when I’m asleep and I won’t have it. You know you promised.’
‘I found that I didn’t need one,’ protested Carrados. ‘I only had to think of that infernal Chink putting it across me and I went beautifully warm all over.’
‘You poor old dear! It does annoy you to be had, doesn’t it?’
‘It does indeed. And when it involves me in letting someone else be had as well, it’s positively vexing.’
‘Don’t worry, darling. It isn’t you who’ve let me in, but me you. If I hadn’t been so large-headed with that fantastic slavey idea of mine you wouldn’t have been here.’
‘I don’t know, Nora,’ he speculated. ‘I should probably have got myself in somehow simply for the fun of seeing if I couldn’t get out again.’
‘Oh … the fun, is it?’ she queried. ‘Had you been having many quiet chuckles to yourself before I woke up then? I could do with an occasional laugh myself to keep my throat from congealing.’
‘So far, I must admit, the humours of the situation haven’t been conspicuous. For all practical purposes we are exactly where we were when we found ourselves here on Wednesday night. Except—’
‘Except for being “a day’s march nearer home”, I suppose you mean? A day? Wednesday night? It seems years. What exact day is it as a matter of fact, if you happen to have been counting?’
‘Saturday—Saturday morning early. About six o’clock I should reckon. It’s easy enough to keep count of the time but I’d give something considerable to know just where we are in the matter of location. You’re sure you don’t recognise anything about this place? Long narrow cell—that thundering door—the grid over it?’
‘They never let me explore, don’t you fear. I hadn’t an earthly. But why shouldn’t it be just a cellar under Joolby’s house? I should think that the most likely.’
‘It may be—very probably it is. It conforms to the period and the general feel of the place but so might thousands of others. You see, we were both unconscious for quite a time and we may have been carted anywhere. A cellar under the house is the most reasonable assumption but there’s just the element of doubt. That’s the rub: we can’t be certain.’
‘Does it matter where we are? We’re here right enough.’
‘It only matters if we can get a message out. Then, under some circumstances, depending on what form our medium took, it might be vital.’
‘Get a message out?’ She fastened hopefully on the faint omen of the phrase. ‘Any chance of it?’
‘Well, frankly, I don’t see a glimmer. However much we may dislike this cellar one has to admit that with all its faults it certainly is not jerry-built. It doesn’t seem to have the semblance of a weak spot throughout and they haven’t left us the faintest substitute for a tool in any shape or form.’
‘Did they take even your penknife?’
‘Even my penknife! Good heavens, child, they took my braces and sock suspenders. What a pity young ladies don’t wear corsets nowadays; I’m sure Mr Larch would have been too delicate to remove them. I suppose you don’t happen to have metal parts about any of your fittings, Nora?’
‘Nothing at all but artificial silk and elastic, I’m afraid. Not even a hairpin … Uncle Max, don’t mind telling me now … does that mean … it’s pretty hopeless?’
‘Oh, lord bless you, no,’ he replied, with a jerk into cheerfulness that was rather too debonair to be convincing. ‘It’s never hopeless in this life so long as—’
‘So long as you keep on hoping?’ suggested Nora tartly. ‘That’s a very bright thought for the day, old dear, but somehow it would appeal to one more from the Wayside Pulpit than dwelt on in this putrid hole. And, oh my God, I am vilely thirsty! I know now what it feels like to be shipwrecked on a raft—two days after the last drop of water has been served out.’
‘Have you tried gnawing a bone button? I don’t find it much good myself but I have known people who think there’s something in it.’
‘I did that yesterday. I was wildly hungry then but there isn’t much solid nourishment to be found in a bone button, Uncle. Nor illusion of a bubbling fountain. No, paradoxically enough, the button stunt is a wash-out. But I’m ready to sell my immortal soul for two gallons of ditch water at this moment.’
‘Child, child—’
‘It’s only my idea of fun, Uncle. I must do something to keep my spirits up—even to talk about a long drink may be slightly refreshing. It should at least make one’s mouth water only I suppose the apparatus is out of order … If ever I get out of here I shall go to see the Niagara Falls. They ought to be well worth watching.’
‘This won’t do,’ thought Max Carrados; ‘she will wear her resistance out. All this “Water, water, everywhere” business is the very worst—’
It was not easy to find a subject strong enough to distract her from the other and he had to come down to one that was equally painful if less dangerous.
‘What you told me about Geoffrey is very puzzling—’
‘Puzzling!’ The feeling in her tone left no doubt that he had found the subject.
‘Appalling as well, of course, but I was only referring to one side of the queer proceedings. If you remember, I said that Geoffrey would no doubt be closely kept but hardly ill-used. There seems no point in systematic terrorism—apart from sheer cruelty, which isn’t common, and certainly wouldn’t be business.’
‘It was pretty effective in getting me to do all they wanted. I can’t imagine acting like that if it hadn’t been for poor Geoffrey’s pitiable begging.’
‘It was effective in getting you to do what they wanted,’ he considered; ‘yes, Nora. But they must have been at Geoffrey for days to reduce him to a state like that and they could scarcely have foreseen what was going to develop until the Wednesday—’
‘That knocking—you said you thought it might be him. Have you heard it again lately?’
‘No, not since Thursday. It was two or three walls away … They may have moved him.’
‘Uncle Max … you don’t think … they’ve killed Geoffrey?’
‘I certainly do not, my dear. These people talk blood and thunder if it suits their book but they have no earthly object in killing anyone—intentionally.’
‘Intentionally. Intentionally? But—what is it, Uncle Max? You are keeping something back. You know more than you have told me.’
For a few moments Mr Carrados did not reply. Then he ceased the rather aimless pacing of their prison that he had taken up again and sat down on the bench beside her.
‘Listen quietly, my dear,’ he said, taking her hand, ‘and be the brave girl that I’ve always known you.’
‘I don’t feel awfully heroic at the moment,’ she confessed. ‘But I am Captain of the Tapsfield Guides, aren’t I? I must live up to that. What is it?’
‘I said nothing about it yesterday, Nora, because it might have been premature, but I think the time has come … Since Thursday afternoon this place has been deserted. We are alone here.’
&
nbsp; ‘Alone?’
‘Except for Tilehurst possibly, though even he has given no sign. But the others who were in the place—wherever it is—and were moving freely about up to Thursday afternoon, have gone. There isn’t a step, there isn’t a movement, above us.’
‘But why should they—what are you driving at?’
‘Who can say why? Anything may have happened. With the exception of Joolby himself—and he’s playing a desperate game—they are all birds of passage and must be prepared to fly at a moment’s notice. Some of them may even have been arrested. But gone they have.’
‘He said they must have three days’ grace. Today—Saturday—is the third. Can they have—?’
‘Secured the stuff and cleared? That is quite possible.’
‘Then they would have no further interest in keeping us shut up here?’
‘No further interest … but …’
‘But? But what?’
‘There may have been some misunderstanding among them. We—safely out of the way—are the least pressing factors in their plans. Someone who was to have released us when the rest were clear may have—oh, well, anything. But the fact remains. For more than a day and two nights no one has come near. We are abandoned; perhaps, among a wild scramble to get away, forgotten.’
‘Then if there’s no one about they can’t stop us trying to get out?’
‘My child,’ he reminded her pityingly, ‘look at that door—those walls. Do you imagine that I haven’t thought of escape every moment of the day and night almost? But they haven’t left us a scrap of metal—not even a lump of stone. Nothing but our teeth and nails. Not in a year could we break out of here.’
‘Then shout, scream—anything to call attention. People must be passing somewhere near. They’re bound to hear us in time—’
He shook his head sadly. ‘If there had been a footfall within reach of our shouts, Nora, you may be sure that my ears wouldn’t have missed it. But we are muffled in the depths of the earth here; perhaps far from a road; not even on an outside wall. Five minutes of shouting and our poor dry throats would crack and madness begin to stare us in the face. No—’
‘But what is to become of us?’ she entreated wildly. ‘What are we to do?’
‘Wait,’ he replied, trying by his own calmness to stem her rising agitation; ‘wait with all the patience we can muster and reserve every ounce of strength—we may need it. That is why I have told you now—to prepare you for the trial. Sooner or later the search must begin. In our absence suspicion will be raised—’
‘Why should it? I had left a good excuse at home for being away and in that letter you said that you were going.’
‘I know I did. It was the final touch to make Joolby think he was safe, though the countermine misfired. But my secretary will realise that I had made no preparations of the sort—I had appointments fixed for every day—and Parkinson will not be satisfied. They will—’
‘But it may be days—or weeks. Uncle, we can’t stay here—I won’t—we’d starve to death—we’d die of thirst—’
‘Nora, Nora,’ he coaxed.
‘I must have water,’ she insisted, growing more frantic as an understanding of the full horror of their situation sapped away her natural courage, ‘—I can’t die here of thirst—it’s terrible—it’s getting worse and worse—’
‘My dear,’ he pleaded.
‘I don’t care if I do go mad—I mayn’t know what it’s like then—but I’m not going to wait here until I die of thirst—and I can feel that I am doing—my tongue’s all thick and choky—and my throat feels closing up.’ She broke from him and sprang to her feet. ‘If you won’t do anything I will! I’ll make someone hear me.’
Carrados had not the heart to restrain her by force, and no other form of argument would apparently have any chance of success. At all events, when she had worn herself out there might be some hope for the return of reason. Meanwhile she had flung herself against the impregnable door and was beating on it furiously with her bare hands, in turn commanding, threatening, pleading, until her poor frayed voice was past any further effort:
‘Open the door! Open it, do you hear? I won’t be smothered here. I won’t die like a rat. Mrs Larch, Won Chou, Mr Nickle, Joolby—Joolby, you toad, you beast, you swine, come and let us out or you’ll damned well hang for it. I’m going to—yes, I’ve written an account accusing you of murder and I’ve hid it where you can’t find it but someone else will and they’re sure to hang you.’
There was no answer from the echoing space outside. She bent down, tore off a shoe and began to hammer furiously on and about the door with it.
‘Damn and blast you all!—hiding round there and laughing at us, aren’t you? When we do get out you’ll pay for this; we’ll kill the lot of you sooner or later, see if we don’t, you yellow mongrels … No, I don’t really mean that. If only you’ll come now we’ll give you a thousand pounds—two thousand—five thousand pounds—and get you all let off whatever you’ve done. Oh please, please, Mr Joolby—’ The mood ran out, her voice trailed off and she turned away from the door baffled and broken.
‘There, I’ve knocked the heel off my shoe and done no good at all. It’s hopeless—I knew it all along—it was that that strung me out. Just hopeless.’
But Max Carrados had risen from the bench as Nora sank down there in utter despair, and was running his hands up and down the wall against the door post, where some of her wild blows had fallen. He fixed on a spot and tried it several times with bare knuckles.
‘I thought it sounded curiously,’ he speculated. ‘Not so hopeless perhaps, my girl, as it happens. Egad, there may have been a divinity that shaped your ends—your pedal end—when you went off in the tantrums. Anyhow you struck the one inch that may—well, it mayn’t, after all, so don’t think too much about it.’
There was small need to tell her that. Huddled up in a corner on the bench Nora was taking no interest at all in what went on. Reaction, after the hysterical burst that had given her energy to lash out, was exacting the usual payment.
‘Oh for a tool—a little bit of a thing of any sort,’ he continued desperately, as he again fell to tapping the spot time after time to confirm the blessed suspicion. And then the thought—the flash of inspiration: ‘Nora! that heel—they never reckoned on that. It should be like a rasp. Come, my dear, buck up and do your bit. What did you do with it?’
‘Somewhere on the floor,’ she replied, just stirred enough by the vigour of his mood to understand but without energy to bear any share in whatever it was that was going. ‘What’s the use of a heel—these walls—’
He found the heel readily enough without her help and, as he had expected, it was bristling with pointed ends of nails—in its way quite a useful file for working on a suitable material. Up the wall, where the door post stood, ran a couple of inches or so of plaster between the brick and wood. It was on this strip that Carrados now worked with patient skill, filing, crumbling, wrenching and tapping it out bit by bit until he had a sufficient space of the fabric underneath exposed to identify it. It was a lath as he had hoped and once he had bared an end it was an easy enough matter to break out a piece and reach what he had been seeking.
‘Wake up, Nora my girl,’ he called across, trying to keep the exultation out of his voice until the thing was sure. ‘I think you’ve done the trick. It was a pipe you struck.’
‘I don’t want a pipe,’ she muttered supinely. ‘I don’t even want a cigarette. I’m just done and finished.’
‘Oh no, you’re not,’ he assured her, going over and pulling her up; ‘not by several long chalks this journey. Come, you have a say in this. It’s a lead pipe and with our little friend here I can be into that pipe within a few jiffies. But—’
‘I thought there was a catch somewhere,’ she mumbled.
‘I don’t,’ he declared, ‘but there is just the possibility that there may be. A lead pipe ought to mean water but in these old places one can never be quite sure. They us
ed all sorts of stuff for anything … So it may be the gas. What do you say?’
‘Say? How?’
‘If there’s water in the pipe we get it. If there’s gas it gets us.’
‘A good job too,’ she replied. ‘One way or the other.’
‘So be it. It’s quite a level chance—in fact it’s good odds in our favour.’ For the next few minutes there was nothing to be heard but the soft, regular abrasion of the metal; then he dropped the heel with an exclamation.
‘Our trick this time, Mr Joolby, I think. Water! Nora, your hanky!’
That brought her up quickly enough and the next moment she was squeezing the saturated cambric into her mouth and fancying that the tepid, insipid stuff (it must have been in the pipe for days and nights) was the most delicious nectar she had ever tasted.
‘More!’
‘Nice stuff, water; eh, Nora?’ he remarked, complying.
‘Why don’t you file it away a lot?’ she demanded, pointing to the slight incision he had made. ‘I want to wallow in it galore.’
‘No need for us to drown ourselves out. This is direct from the main and we might have some trouble in stopping whatever we set going. If we make a big hole and the door fits tight you can calculate how soon in a little place like this—’
‘Go on; what are you waiting for? I want more and more—gallons! buckets!’
He had been soaking his own handkerchief for the second time—alternating his turn with hers—when all at once he broke off and fell into an attitude of poignant attention. A finger of one hand closed the newly made leak, those of the other rested on the pipe lower down, as delicately-perceptive as the antennae of a butterfly—so significant of alertness that one might have said they were listening.
‘Wait; wait,’ he cautioned, without relaxing his poise; ‘there’s something going on here; some movement on the pipe. Somewhere, somebody else is in communication with it. Who? Where?’
‘I know,’ exclaimed Nora with a sudden light. ‘It’s because of the water famine. They did it at Tapsfield; they do it all over the shop. Someone goes round listening at those little trap-door affairs in the road to catch you wasting any.’ Just about a week before she had used the self-same words to warn Miss Tilehurst of the risk and now in all unconsciousness she repeated herself exactly.
The Bravo of London Page 21
