Baron took his pipe from his mouth and blew a little cloud of smoke upwards. “Bad show, Charles,” he whispered at last.
Pagan nodded and gloomily regarded the glowing bowl of his pipe. “About as bad as it could be,” he agreed. Silence settled down again, and then he nodded towards the other end of the dug-out. “She asleep, do you think?”
Baron listened for a moment to the soft regular breathing. “Sounds like it,” he answered.
Pagan heaved a weary sigh. “Thank God she’s got guts,” he murmured.
Baron stared with knit brows at the bent sheet of corrugated iron that so effectively sealed the narrow entrance. He looked away and glanced up at the crack in the roof. “I suppose one ought to be thankful for small mercies,” he murmured. “There is air at any rate.”
Pagan puffed jerkily at his pipe and stared before him with knit brows. “We got her into this mess, Baron, and it is up to us to leave no stone unturned to get her out of it,” he said at last.
Baron nodded with a wry smile. “I’m sufficiently interested personally not to leave even a grain of sand unturned,” he answered drily.
Pagan scrambled noiselessly to his feet and prowled silently about the dug-out. He paused at the foot of the bunk and looked down at Clare who lay curled up with closed eyes, her head pillowed on one hand. He peeled off his mackintosh and laid it gently over her feet. Baron started to take off his coat also, but Pagan stopped him. “No good both being cold,” he whispered. “But if you like we will take it in turns to wear it.”
They wandered back to the other end of the dug-out and examined the narrow doorway. By silent agreement, they placed their shoulders against the sheet of iron and heaved, but without result. They grimaced at one another and tried again. Pagan shook his head, and they gave it up.
Baron sat down again in the old place on the floor, but Pagan continued to prowl. He halted by the half choked sump-pit, and gazed at it thoughtfully. It was about eighteen inches in diameter, and the tiny stream of water from the crack in the roof found its way across the floor and disappeared over the rim among the debris as a narrow dark stain.
Pagan stared at it and rubbed the back of his neck. Then he went down on one knee and pulled out a mouldy bit of sacking, some pieces of rotten wood and a handful or two of earth. The circular concrete rim of the floor was revealed and below it a few inches of the damp earth wall of the pit. Below that the pit was choked with more rubbish.
Baron stole up beside Pagan. “What is the idea, Charles?”
“I don’t believe this is an ordinary sump-pit,” said Pagan. “That trickle of water isn’t much to write home about, I know, but it must have been going on for some time, and if the pit had no outlet I believe the rubbish and muck would be a good deal damper than it is. You see, the dug-out is cut into a steepish slope and they would only have to put a bit of a turn on this pit to give it an outlet lower down the bank. Anyway, it’s worth finding out.”
“I don’t see why,” answered Baron. “We are not rats—worse luck!”
Pagan was too busy scooping rubbish out of the pit to reply. Colourless fragments of mouldering clothing, one or two rusty tins, a mildewed leather pouch, a rusted rifle bolt and several handfuls of earth came out and were piled on the floor of the dug-out. At a depth of some two and a half feet the pit took a sudden turn and sloped towards the outer wall of the dug-out. Pagan lay on his stomach with his arms in the pit, and he twisted his head and looked triumphantly at Baron.
Baron nodded. “Yes, it’s got an outlet all right,” he murmured. “But what is the good of that to us? It’s choked up with earth and stuff, and we are not ferrets anyway.”
“I can get my shoulders in; it’s worth trying,” retorted Pagan.
“But my dear old idiot,” protested Baron aghast, “this drain may be twenty yards long, and even if it were clear of rubbish the whole damn thing would probably come in on top of you.”
“That’s my funeral,” retorted Pagan stubbornly.
“That’s exactly what it would be,” agreed Baron drily.
“Well, what else do you suggest?” demanded Pagan.
Baron shrugged his shoulders and glanced helplessly around the dug-out.
“You know as well as I do,” went on Pagan testily, “that as far as shouting is concerned we shall still be doing it this time next week.”
Baron had no reply to make, and Pagan turned again to his laborious task of removing handfuls of earth and rubbish from the drain. His right arm was now hidden to the elbow in the sloping part, and his head and trunk hung almost from the hips in the narrow pit. He laboriously brought up another handful and deposited it upon the floor. Then he took off his coat and waist-coat and lay down again. “Hang on to my feet, will you, as I work in,” he said.
“Of course if you like committing suicide!” protested Baron.
“Like it!” retorted Pagan irritably. “I dislike the whole job intensely. But what else can we do: tell me that!” He took up the torch and put his arms into the hole. “Lay hold. The muck seems looser now and I am going to try to push it out in front of me.”
“If you do, you will push the roof in on top of you,” warned Baron. “And once you are in that sloping part I shall never be able to pull you out, even though I have got hold of your legs.”
“I sincerely hope you won’t have to try,” retorted Pagan grimly. “Lay hold.”
His head and shoulders disappeared again into the pit. His body hung vertically downwards from the hips. Inch by inch it went further in, till Baron had to kneel on the edge with a leg under either arm. Slowly the legs went down till only the shoes protruded above the level of the floor. Inch by inch they too went down. Baron had to lie upon his chest with his arms in the pit and his hands grasping the ankles.
“For God’s sake chuck it, Charles,” he whispered loudly. “You will get stuck in there.”
There was no reply, but the feet sank an inch or two lower from time to time.
At last only a pair of shoes and ankles were visible at the bottom of the straight part of the pit. Baron crouched upon the brink and cursed softly beneath his breath.
Inch by inch the ankles disappeared from view, and then the shoes.
Baron strained his ears to catch the slight sounds of movement which came from the drain. He could hear the watch ticking upon his wrist and the faint breathing of Clare on the bunk at the other end of the dug-out. The seconds dragged by slowly like hours. The dug-out was damp and chilly, but perspiration dripped from his forehead. He was not a religious man, but he prayed.
Pagan lay full length in the drain. There was barely an inch to spare on either side of his body, and progress was possible only by digging his fingers into the ground and dragging his body forward till the slight bending of his elbows caused them to touch the sides of the drain and make it necessary to repeat the process.
He was not a little relieved therefore, when his right hand, with which he was pushing before him the rubbish and loose earth which obstructed the drain, encountered grass and weeds; but another five minutes elapsed before his head emerged from the hole and the chill night breeze blew upon his grimy, dripping forehead. A foot or two below him, beyond the weeds that fringed the hole, lay that narrow road up which they had come. In the darkness beyond it swam the moonlit hill-top across the valley.
For the moment he was content to lie there with the cool breeze fanning his grimy perspiring face. The strain of the last few minutes had taken its toll: he felt weak and shaky.
Footsteps sounded suddenly close at hand, and he turned his head to see a dark figure approaching down the road. Instinctively he lay still. It crossed his mind that it would indeed be ironical if the “thing” had chosen this moment to make its appearance. But as the figure passed within a few feet of him, he recognised the squat form of the innkeeper.
His first impulse was to call to Kleber and enlist his help in digging out the dug-out entrance; but the seconds passed, the footsteps rang out more faintl
y, and Pagan made no sound.
When the scrape of footsteps had died away completely, he dragged his body out into the night. He rose to his knees and called softly up the drain. An anxious voice answered distantly, “Hullo Charles; are you all right?”
“Yes, I’m out,” he answered. “You stay there with Clare and I will soon dig you out, too.”
He switched on the torch and climbed the short track that led to the dug-out. The weed-grown entrance with its sagging timbers seemed unchanged, but a foot or so within the passage the beam of light revealed a mound of earth reaching from floor to ceiling. He climbed further up the bank and searched among the debris for something with which he might dig. The chill night breeze dried the sweat upon his face and neck and the damp patches on his earth-stained shirt. He shivered as he poked about with the torch among the weeds, but he found something more suited to his purpose than he had dared to hope—a rusty pick head, one end pointed, the other flattened.
He needed now only a handle, and he was not long in finding a small stake that would serve the purpose. His teeth were chattering, and he was glad to get back to the passage and restore his circulation with violent exercise. He put the torch in his trouser pocket and dug in the dark.
He worked hard and he was forced to rest at intervals; and it was during one of these rests, as he stood leaning upon the improvised handle of his pick, that he heard a footstep on the road below. His hand went to his pocket for the torch. Was this Kleber again or the “thing” at last, he asked himself.
The footsteps died upon the road. A dim figure was coming up the short track towards him. He transferred the torch to his left hand and gripped the handle of the pick. Then he switched on the light.
In the blinding beam of light a dishevelled, shirt-sleeved figure flung a hand across his face and halted. Then a voice cried, “Put that damn thing out, Charles.”
Pagan lowered the beam. “Oh, it’s you,” he exclaimed in relief. “What on earth are you doing!”
“Coming up to give you a hand,” answered Baron.
“Idiot!” returned Pagan. “You might have got stuck in that drain.”
“I realized that quite vividly as I was coming through it,” answered Baron drily. “But I told myself that if you could get through when it was partially blocked, I could after you had cleared it out. But I wouldn’t do it again for a fortune.”
“There was no point in it,” persisted Baron.
“Except that the two of us will do the digging in half the time.”
“Yes, and if she wakes up in there and finds us gone, she will be frightened to death,” objected Pagan.
“Not she,” declared Baron easily. “I believe she realized the mess we were in just as well as we did, and she wasn’t frightened.”
“Well I was, anyway,” confessed Pagan. “Scared stiff!”
“So was I,” admitted Baron.
“Well, there you are! And you go and leave her alone.”
“I have left her a note,” retorted Baron, “and if she wakes up she will know what is happening.”
“Good! Well, let’s get down to it.”
Baron found a board that could be made to do duty for a spade, and with it he shovelled away the earth which Pagan dug out with the pick.
“Reminds one of those blasted cable trenches we used to dig at night, Charles,” murmured Baron.
Pagan nodded. “But no gas shells now, thank Gawd!”
They worked hard with few pauses for rest, but even so more than an hour went by before Pagan’s pick rang dully upon the sheet of galvanized iron. A further five minutes sufficed to clear away the earth which still covered it; and then they dropped their implements and, putting their hands under the bottom edge of the sheet, they bent it upwards.
II
The one guttering candle gave the dug-out a depressing air of gloom and space. The little mound of earth behind which the candle stood threw a monstrous shadow upon the opposite wall. Clare was seated bare-headed upon the edge of the bunk. She smiled at the two dirty dishevelled figures that came through the low doorway, but her face was pale.
“Hullo, there you are!” cried Baron cheerfully.
She nodded her small head a little wearily. “And, as Uncle Charles would say, for this relief, much thanks,” she smiled.
“Sorry we made such a row and woke you up,” apologized Pagan.
She stood up. “I was not really asleep,” she confessed. “The horrid thought that I was buried alive kept me awake.”
Baron threw a glance that said, “I told you so,” at Pagan. “Then you did know how serious it was,” he said.
She nodded her head. “It was rather obvious wasn’t it?” she said with a wan little smile. “Although you and Uncle Charles were such conscientious optimists about the shouting.”
Pagan took his handkerchief from his coat pocket and rubbed some of the sweat and dirt from his face. “And yet you lay down when I suggested it, and never made a sound afterwards! Nothing much wrong with your nerves.”
“It seemed the only thing to do, and it would allow you to act as though I were not there. You see,” she added with an elfish smile, “I knew that your Victorian ideas would not allow me to be useful. I dozed off and on, but I knew you were up to something.”
“We were—or at least old Charles was,” agreed Baron heartily. “And thanks to him we are out of a very constricted corner indeed.” He took her by the arm. “Come and have a look at the rabbit hole he went down.”
She shook her head and shuddered. “I have seen it. I saw your coats and the rubbish round it and I guessed.” She sat down abruptly on the bunk. Baron was beside her in a moment. She looked up at him with a wan little smile. “I am all right, Dicky; but I very nearly was Victorian then,” she said ruefully.
Pagan picked up his mackintosh from the bunk and took a packet of chocolate from the pocket. “Time for tiffin,” he remarked and handed it round. He put on his coat and they sat on the bunk and munched chocolate. “Feeling better?” he asked.
She nodded with her mouth full.
He surveyed his grimy fingers that held the chocolate by the silver paper. “Pale hands, pink tipped like lotus buds that float.” He turned to Clare. “Now I’m perfectly certain you have never eaten chocolate before sitting between two grimy chimney sweeps.”
She shook her tousled head. “Never,” she said. “And I rather like it.”
“Chocolate or us?” he asked. “But it must be us, and in that case I shall not have to put into execution my bright idea of holding my handkerchief in that trickle of water and rubbing it on my face.”
“But I don’t like it as much as all that,” she cried.
Pagan grimaced. She took a small mirror from her bag and handed it to him with an expressive gesture. He glanced at it and started back in mock alarm. “Oh that this too, too solid flesh would melt,” he groaned. “Is this the face that launched a thousand ships?”
“Beached a thousand ships, Charles—judging by the amount of mud on it,” corrected Baron.
Pagan handed back the glass.
“Well?” she queried.
“Beauty is only skin deep,” he grinned.
“Yours is fathoms deep,” she retorted, “—in dirt. Give me your handkerchief.”
He handed it to her and she moistened it at the trickle of water on the wall. “Come now,” she cried imperiously. “Dicky will hold the torch.”
He rose obediently with comic resignation. “I go and it is done,” he quoted whimsically; “the belle invites me. Hear it not, Baron; for it is a knell that summons me to Heaven.”
She dabbed his face with the damp handkerchief as he stood submissive before her. “Now, Dicky; your turn.”
Pagan unrolled his tobacco pouch and filled his pipe with a leisurely air while Baron’s face was being rubbed. Then he took his wrist watch from his pocket and re-strapped it upon his wrist. “Now that we are all swept and garnished; how about getting back!” he suggested. He turned to Clare. �
�Are you fit?”
“Quite.”
“Good.” He put on his mackintosh. Clare picked up her hat and pulled it on her head. Baron switched on the torch.
“Ready?” asked Pagan. “Right ’o then; walk march. I will lock up.” He extinguished the candle with his foot and followed the other two down the passage.
III
It was dark on the road, and the air was cold with the penetrating chilliness that comes before dawn. They marched along abreast, Clare in the middle, their chins sunk in the upturned collars of their mackintoshes.
“Tired?” asked Baron at last.
Clare nodded her head. “Um—my legs are.” She slipped her hand through Baron’s arm.
Pagan on her left marched along for a pace or two in silence. Then he asked whimsically, “Only the right leg tired?”
She glanced up at him and smiled. And then her left arm came through his.
They tramped on in silence down the road, past the track which led up over the saddle by which they had come. The moon had set and the morning was dark and cold and very still. Above them on the crest the stark trees were no longer distinguishable against the western sky. Eastwards dull grey streaks were beginning to appear above the dark line of hills. They reached the southern end of the ridge and turned off round the grassy shoulder, wading knee deep through the wreathing mist.
Pagan was aware that the hand upon his arm had grown heavier during the last twenty minutes. “Nearly home now,” he cried. “Home with the milk!” He swept a hand towards the brightening streaks of grey in the eastern sky. “See! Night’s candles are burnt out and jocund dawn stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.”
Baron was for marching up to the front door of the inn and knocking up Kleber, but Pagan objected that there was no point in advertising their adventure, or possibly annoying Kleber and giving him the opportunity of saying “I told you so.” “And besides,” he concluded, “I haven’t by any means given up my intention of finding out what that fellow is up to.”
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