He could hear Henri groaning and cursing below. He really had no time to bother with Hildegarde. He pushed her down hard upon the bottom step, let go, and ran down the rest of the stair. He wanted to get to Sally. He ran past the cursing Henri and through the baize door into the corridor beyond it.
Sally was in the pantry, and he wanted to get to Sally. He felt quite capable of getting to her wherever she was. He felt that he could have gone through a stone wall. He raced into the pantry, and found it empty with the door at the far side standing wide. He did not hear the footsteps which raced behind him or Hildegarde’s angry sobbing breath. He caught the lighted candle from the mantelshelf and went through the door, to see the old cellar door hanging open too, and, in the narrow space, Ambrose Sylvester looking down the dark, uneven steps and muttering to himself. James flung him aside, held him a moment, and said in a murderous voice, “Where’s Sally? What have you done with Sally?” and getting no answer, let go of him and ran on down the steps and into the cellar.
He had the candle still, and at the foot of the steps held it up and looked about him. He saw the rubbish piled high—old tins, old papers, old boxes, and a mass of mouldy straw. A reek of petrol came up from it. He saw the long, dark passage down which Sally had run only a moment ago. He actually saw the movement of her dress as she ran. And he too ran, the candle flickering and guttering in his hand.
And then someone screamed behind him, and he looked back and saw Hildegarde Sylvester standing there at the top of the steps, a shrieking fury, with the Beatrice stove held high between her hands. Even as James looked, she flung it crashing into the pile of rubbish, and screamed again, and stood there screaming to watch the fire break out and go up in a roaring sheet of flame.
XXXVII
James did not wait to see what would happen next. He took to his heels and ran as fast as he had ever run in his life. Sally was in front of him, running away from him. No, not from him, because she didn’t know he was there, but just running away, wild with fright, down a horrible dark passage which might end in a flight of steps, or a well, or any one of half a dozen other dangers. The fire roared and flared behind him and threw his own shadow in fantastic length upon the black, uneven flags, but it didn’t show him Sally. He called her name, and his voice came back echoing from the roof and walls.
His shadow appeared before him, suddenly upright. He had very nearly run full tilt into a wall. It stood across his way, and the passage went off to the right. He swerved just in time, lost the Fiery glow, and was glad that he still held on to the candle. It had gone out, but it did not take him a moment to light it again. The passage stretched before him with doors opening upon it. He called again, “Sally—Sally—Sally!” and a horrid pack of echoes took the name, and mouthed it, and sent it back to him distorted and torn.
He went on, not running now because of the candle—a very good thing for him, because suddenly the flags ended and the steps went steeply down into a blacker dark. He stood still above it, and for the space of nearly half a minute his heart stood still too. Sally so afraid of the dark, Sally who hated cellars, Sally running wild—how easy for Sally to pitch headlong down these steps in the dark and be lost to him without so much as a cry. He made a strong effort, thrust out the thought, and called again. And again there was no answer except from those detestable echoes.
There was no time to be lost, because if the fire took hold, the house would probably fall in upon the cellars and bury them. He thought of this quite dispassionately, his mind being too much taken up with Sally to give it more than a very surface attention. He decided to go down the steps. They were very steep indeed, and some of them seemed to be broken away. About half way down he stopped, unable to believe that Sally had come this way. He remembered her saying that there were cellars under the cellars at Rere Place, and the bare thought of them had set her shuddering in broad daylight. From where he stood the candle-light showed him the bottom of the steps. If Sally had fallen, she would be there and he would see her. But there was no one—most blessedly there was no one there.
He drew a long breath, turned round, and came up again, and as he came up, the air of the passage met him, full of smoke and the smell of burning. He had a momentary sensation of horror—the old fear of the trap, the common fear which man must share with the creatures of the wild. The fear of the trap and the fear of fire are the two oldest fears of all. They came on James for a horrid moment, and then he beat them off. Panic meant death, and it meant death to Sally too. He beat it off.
He called her again, and this time amongst the echoes there was another sound, the sound of a key grating hard as it turned in a rusty lock.
And upon that, Jock West’s voice saying, “Who is it?”
James ran towards the voice. He called out “James” as he ran, and kept the light up so that Jock might see him. But it was Sally who came running out of the third door on the left and flung her arms round him, and it was Sally whom he kissed. She put her face up to him and he couldn’t help kissing it, but next moment he was talking over her shoulder to Jock.
“I think the place is on fire. Hildegarde pitched your stove in amongst the rubbish at the foot of the cellar steps, and the whole thing went with a bang.”
Jocko snuffed the smoky air.
Smells like it. But I shouldn’t have thought it would take hold—everything’s so damp. If it’s only that rubbish heap, it’ll burn itself out.”
Sally swung round in the circle of James’s arm.
“They were meaning to burn the house. I’m sure they were. I’m sure that pile of stuff wasn’t just accidental. I’m sure I smelt petrol. I wasn’t quite sure because of the chloroform, but—yes, I smelt it when Jock went down.”
“Yes, I smelt it,” said James.
“And if they left those two doors open, it would draw like a chimney and the wood in the passage would catch. There are shelves, and a cupboard or two—old ramshackly things—and a wooden stair going up to the servants’ quarters. It would burn all right.”
“Well, we’ve got to get out,” said James. “What’s our best way?”
There was a pause. The smoke made Sally cough. It was blowing towards them steadily on a warm draught.
“There is only the one way out,” said Jock in an odd, casual voice.
“Well, what is it?”
“The way we came,” said Sally.
Nobody said anything for about half a minute. If the fire held, the way they had come would be its chimney—a chimney full of smoke and upward rushing flame. There was no way out there. But to stay where they were till the roof fell in—
James said, “Are you sure?”
“I’ve never heard of any other way,” said Jock. “I don’t believe the place will burn—it’s too damp.”
James thought this would depend on how much petrol had been used—he thought a goodish bit. He thought Henri Niemeyer had his head screwed on pretty tight. If he wanted Rere Place to burn, he would take good care not to make a boss shot at it. It wasn’t any good saying these things, so he didn’t say them.
“I expect they were going to have one more shot at finding whatever it was Aunt Clementa hid, and then if they didn’t find it, burn the place about our ears.”
“They found it all right,” said James.
“Where?”
“In Lady Clementa’s bedroom, behind the panel with the bat on it. You were quite right about the letter—you read it aloud in your sleep, and Hildegarde had it pat. The line that ended in ‘bats’ was, ‘the panel with one of our bats on it.’ And there was something about a family secret and not giving it away. The only part she hadn’t got was the bit about the spring. So Henri forced it with a jemmy. I chucked him over the stairs and came down here after you, and Hildegarde lost her temper and pitched the stove after me. Sally, why on earth did you go into the cellars? You said you hated them.”
Sally rubbed her cheek against his shoulder.
“Jocko went down, and I thought I heard yo
u in the passage and I ran back. But it was Henri.” She shuddered violently. “I think I began to faint, and he put a thing soaked with chloroform over my face. I can smell it still. And when I came round I was on the pantry floor and Ambrose telling me the story of his life. James, he’s mad—he really is—quite, quite mad. He said they were going to kill us in a car accident, but he’d see I had some chloroform first, because he didn’t want me to be hurt. And all the time I could hear Jocko kicking at the door of the cellar where Hildegarde had locked him in, so as soon as I got a chance I asked for some water, and whilst his back was turned I made a dash for it and unbolted Jocko’s door. I was telling him what had happened when we heard you calling. At first we thought it was Ambrose, so we didn’t answer. We just locked ourselves in and waited for him to go away. And then it wasn’t Ambrose, it was you. James, what are we going to do?”
The smell of fire was all about them now. The candlelight showed how the smoke drove, and eddied, and swirled towards them from the corner where the passage turned. A terrible roaring sound came with it. James reckoned that the rubbish must have burned itself out by now or nearly so, unless there was wood in it. Paper and straw burn fiercely and give off a great heat, but they burn quickly and die back upon their own light ash. He let go of Sally, put the candle into Jock’s hand, and ran towards the corner holding his breath and half closing his eyes against the heat. At the turn it met him full. The roar was prodigious. There was a fierce crackling and an orange glow.
He ran back, his chest labouring and his eyes streaming.
“It’s got hold all right. All that old panelling will burn like tinder. Look here—what’s down those steps?”
“More cellars,” said Jock briefly.
“Then we’d better go down there. You say there’s no other way out. How do you know there isn’t?”
“I’ve never heard of one.”
“Well, you go first and take the candle. I’ll bring Sally. Have you ever been down here before?”
“Once. Sally dared me. I didn’t like it very much.”
They went down the damp, uneven steps, and as they went, James said,
“We’ll be away from the worst of the heat. I think we can probably stick it out here.”
XXXVIII
The last few steps were badly broken. James reflected that it was as well that they had the candle. If you were to take a toss here and break your leg, well, here you might lie, with Rere Place a heap of ruins over your head and the world going merrily on without you. Oddly enough, it came to him quite sharp and clear that it was his father who would take the knock if something of the sort really happened. His mother would weep her placid tears, and dry them again, and talk about poor darling James, but it was his father who would go on missing him. It took him just the moment he was lifting Sally down the last two steps to be quite sure of this.
They looked about them by the candle-light. Walls, floor, and roof were all of stone, very solid, very old, the roof vaulted and the stone roughly grooved to simulate pillars on either side of a low arch. Beyond the arch a passage ran away into the dark.
James stood frowning at Jock West.
“What is this place? Why did they have two lots of cellars? These look much older than the others.”
Jock said, “Yes,” and, “I don’t know much about it. They’ve been disused for donkey’s years. I believe they belonged to a much older house. There’s a bit of it built into Rere Place—that stone part where Giles’s room is, and Eleanor Rere’s.”
“Why are they so deep down?”
Jock said, “I don’t know.”
And with that came a shock. It stopped the words upon his tongue. There was a noise and a shaking, the noise not loud but with a horrible effect of impact, and the shaking one which seemed to come from everywhere at once. James thought something had fallen in. “Not the roof—there’s not been time. The pantry floor, and the stair above it, and perhaps the kitchen too. No, not yet—that’ll be for later. We must get out first if we’re ever going to.” He said out loud.
“We’d better try the passage. It’s no good staying here.”
The air blew down the cellar steps behind them. It blew harder than before, it blew hotter, and it reeked of smoke. Whatever the passage held for them, they must chance it, for With one floor gone there was no hope that the fire would burn itself out.
Jock went first. He had to bend his head to pass the arch. No one said anything. They all watched the candle, and it burned bright. There was at least breathable air and enough room to walk two abreast, though the men had to keep their heads down. Floor and walls were dark and clammy with moisture, but the air was dead and dry.
Sally felt as if she were in a dream—the sort you can only just bear because you know you must be going to wake up soon. Her head was still muzzy with the chloroform. It couldn’t really be true that they were deep in a deserted cellar with Rere Place blazing to ruin overhead. The dream sense was heavy upon her, and she was glad not to be alone in a dream like this. She was glad to be with James, and to feel his arm about her shoulders. It didn’t much matter what happened in a dream.
They had gone about eight or nine yards, when Jock stopped.
“There’s a door,” he said, and held the candle for them to look.
It was a very old door, very old and very strong. It had been made to be very strong. There were three great bolts, one at the top, and one at the bottom, and one in the middle.
James began to wonder why. He was very far from being in a dream like Sally. He was conscious of a tension, a speeding up of thought and observation. He was noticing things which he had never noticed before. If what he could see by the light of their one candle was limited, at least each smallest detail of what he saw was imprinted on his mind. The strength of the door, the strength of the bolts—these things impressed themselves deeply. The bolts though rusty could be moved. They must have been moved within some recent time. There were signs of their having been oiled.
The last of them creaked clear, and the door opened. Yes, it was very strong—very thick, and old, and strong. It let them into a small octagonal chamber with a vaulted roof. It was perhaps ten feet across, and in the middle of it, flush with the floor, was the open, black mouth of a well.
Sally’s mouth formed itself into an O. If she hadn’t been in a dream, she might have screamed. If one had come in here walking alone, walking barefoot, walking in the night without a candle, how suddenly that black mouth would have swallowed one up. She shuddered and pressed against James.
“I thought it was a prison,” said Jock—“all those bolts—and then nothing but a well. It seems a crazy sort of thing to me, but we ought to be safe enough here. The door will keep the smoke out.” He spoke in his usual careless tone.
James thought, “He knows as well as I do that we haven’t a dog’s chance of getting out if the house falls in.” He said aloud,
“Where’s the nearest fire-station?”
Jock laughed.
“Warnley! One-man show. Keen parson and half-hearted farmers’ lads. They won’t make much impression on Rere Place, I’m afraid. There’s no water nearer than the Warne, and I don’t suppose there’s much in it. It went dry last year. How about it, Sally?”
“A trickle,” said Sally in an odd detached voice. “James, I don’t like that well. Why did they have it there, right in the middle of the floor?”
“I don’t know,” said James.
He wasn’t really thinking what he said. His mind was registering the well, occupying itself with its own picture of the well. It had two pictures to be busy with now, the picture of the door and the picture of the well. He became completely engrossed with these two pictures. Sally and Jock were talking, but the sense of what they said went by.
And then Jock was shouting at him.
“Oi—you, James! Wake up, can’t you! If we’ve got to do time down here, we might just as well be chatty. Let’s have all about it. You said they found what they were
looking for. You did say so, didn’t you—Hildegarde and Henri?”
“Oh, yes, they found it. Here it is.”
He let go of Sally to get the book out of his trouser pocket. It was a thick cheap account-book with a shabby cover which had once been shiny black. Jock West took it, set his candle on the floor, sat down beside it, and began to turn the leaves with an expression of lively curiosity upon his face. After a minute or two he looked up.
“Read any of this?”
James shook his head.
“No time.”
“You should have made time. It’s a liberal education. Hildegarde’s a sweet creature. It’s all in her writing. I should say she had a really first-class blackmailing connection, all among the nice rich, virtuous middle class who would die—or pay—before they would allow their peccadilloes to come before the public eye. There’s a fair sprinkling of nobs, but the backbone of the business seems to be the great middle class. I always said Hildegarde had her head screwed on pretty tight.… So that’s how Ambrose raised the wind—he took the cash and let the credit go. Well, well!”
“Jocko—don’t!” said Sally.
The dream had broken round her, and she was awake. She put out her hand, moving round the well towards Jock, who appeared to be immense entertained.
“I say—here’s something about Lydia! How amusing!”
“Jocko!”
“All right, see for yourself. But you must let me have it back.”
He put the book into her hand, and with one movement, and before anyone could stop her, Sally had dropped it into the well. There was Jock’s laugh, and the darting movement of her hand, and then nothing for so long that it seemed as if the silence had gone on time out of mind. And then at the end of it an odd, faint sound. With that sound the stagnant water at the bottom of the well had received all those secret sins, and follies, and mistakes. The people who had sinned and been foolish had sinned and been foolish to their own hurt, and they must make their own account, but the record of what they had done lay drowning in the well. Even now the water was blotting it out, name by name, and word by shameful word. Soon there would be no words, no names at all, only a little sodden paper. And after a while not even that.
Run! Page 22
