Down Under (15 page)

Oliver laid his ear to the crack of the door and heard the hearty young man say,

“Well, Mother, your buns just about take the cake, and I can't say fairer than that—can I, Florrie?”

“Please I'd like another,” said Florrie with her mouth full.

Then there was more talk of buns, Ernie counting up how many Florrie had eaten, and Fanny saying it was a shame. And then he heard Mrs Edwards' voice for the first time, and it was a voice which matched with the damp, gloomy house, and not with the cheerful family tea—a dreary voice and hard behind its dreariness. Yet the words were what any mother might have said.

“I wish you didn't have to go back, Ernie.

Ernie went on being hearty.

“Well, I'm not going till I finish my tea anyway.”

Oliver cast about in his mind for a plan. If Ernie and Fanny, who might be Ernest and Fanny Rennard, were going back as soon as they had had their tea, it was imperative that he should know how they went. If it was through the door which had frightened Florrie, and which she described as a black hole, then he must without fail follow them. Because he was more and more sure that Rose Anne had been taken through such a door. From behind it had come her piteous message written between the lines of a dictated letter.

He retreated into the apple-room and waited for what would happen next. With the door a little ajar he could watch the line of light from the kitchen and hear the voices come and go, though he could only catch a word here and there. The black hole wouldn't be in the kitchen, he felt quite sure about that. It was much more likely to be in one of the cellars, and wherever it was, Florrie would be got out of the way before it was used. He had found a flight of steps leading to the cellar floor at the end of the flagged passage. He could do nothing now but listen and wait.

He had to wait for nearly an hour before the kitchen door opened. He was a witness of an affectionate farewell between Ernie and an austere middle-aged woman with iron grey hair and a mouth like a trap. He looked for a scar on the cheek, but the light was behind her and he couldn't be sure. Ernie certainly did not get his looks from her. He was a very large young man with a pleasant freckled face and hair of a particularly cheerful shade of red. Oliver stopped believing in a Mrs Edwards. Ernie's hair finished that. Here was an authentic Rennard, and, if he was any judge, a thoroughly good chap. He and Fanny looked as pleasant a young couple as you could find.

The farewells broke off in a hurry because Florrie began to cry. Fanny gave her a hug and was hurried off.

“You take her back into the kitchen, Mother,” said Ernie. “Florrie, you go and look behind the cushion in my chair and see if you don't find a box of chocolates there. Come on, Fan! Good-bye, Mother.”

And then the kitchen door was banged on Florrie's sobs and the young Rennards went off down the passage to the light of a good strong electric lamp. It dangled from Ernie's left hand and made bright patches and very dark shadows as it swung. Oliver let them get away down the steps before he followed. He had taken his shoes off, and carried them knotted together by the laces, so he was counting on being able to move as quickly as he liked without making any noise. Stone has its advantages. It doesn't creak.

He reached the bottom of the steps, and was in a sort of hall from which a passage ran away to the right. He saw the passage because the light flashed round and showed it, but everywhere else it was dark, and when the flash was gone he lost the passage too. He ought to have followed closer. What if he had missed them—lost his chance of getting through to Rose Anne? He blundered into the mouth of the passage, started to run along it, and discovered by bumping into the wall that there was a sharp-angled turn. He bruised a shoulder, saw the light again, and the shadow of Ernie's hand, huge and black, reaching back towards him on a stretch of lighted wall, and he heard Fanny say,

“Oh, Ernie, I do hate to leave her, poor little thing—she does take on so.”

If they had looked round at that moment, they must have seen him. The light flickered across his eyes and then swung off and left the passage between them dark again. They were about twenty feet away. Difficult to judge distance in a place like this, but he didn't think it was more than that. Whatever it was, he must risk getting nearer. He began to edge forward an inch at a time and kept his eyes on Ernie and the lamp. Wherever the Rennards were going to, they were not in any particular hurry. They talked about Florrie, and about Mother, who was Ernie's mother and a problem, and about Mabel, who thought a lot too much of herself, and presently they kissed each other and said wasn't it nice to get a bit of a time off.

“You know, Ernie”—Fanny had her head on his shoulder and spoke with a good deal of wistfulness—“you know, Ernie, I do think it would be downright heaven to have a little place of our own—a nice little garridge business. And I could run a tea-room, you know. That would be fun—wouldn't it? And all this—I don't see any end to it, and what's the good of it anyway? I tell you it frightens me.”

Ernie put his arms round her. He didn't seem to have anything to say. The two red heads leaned together, while the light made a pool on the floor and the silence of this underground place came into its own again.

Oliver was just wondering whether he dared go a little nearer, when Ernie's head came up with a jerk.

“Well, we must go,” he said, “or there'll be trouble.”

Oliver heard Fanny sigh.

“Do you think they'll ever let us go—really?”

“I dunno, Fan. Best not think about it. Here, hold the light.” He pushed it into her hand and she held it up. A square yard of wall was brightly lit.

Ernie seemed to be counting. Oliver heard him mutter under his breath, “Three up—two along—one down. Here goes.” And he saw him push with both hands against the squared stones in front of him. There was a click, and a piece of the wall slid out of sight. It looked exactly as if Ernie's big hands had stove it in. And what was left was a black irregular hole—Florrie's black hole. Oliver wasn't surprised that it had frightened her. The thing had a strangeness, because the wall had been so solid, and then all in a moment there was the hole. These things came to him, not as consecutive thoughts, but as part of an impression compounded of hope, shock, excitement.

There was no time to think. Fanny stepped over the edge of the hole and was gone, and the light with her. Ernie followed, his shadow thrown for a moment, monstrously distorted, upon the opposite wall. And then with a click there was darkness again, darkness complete and absolute.

Oliver stood there and waited. They wouldn't come back, but he must let them get well away. It was either that or follow them close and quick, and this he decided was too risky. They might hear him, or he might blunder into them. No, what he had to do was to find the spring or whatever it was that opened the door in the wall—find out what lay beyond it—find out whether Rose Anne was there. Rose Anne—he had hard work to stand there waiting when he thought about Rose Anne.

He gave them five minutes, and never in all his life had five minutes seemed so long. The hands on the luminous dial of his wrist-watch seemed to have stopped, yet where they had pointed to five they now showed five minutes past.

He got out his electric torch and switched it on. Then it came to him that there was nothing to mark the place where Ernie and Fanny had stood. Or was there? He tried to think, and got the picture of the two red heads leaning together and Fanny saying, “Do you think they'll ever let us go—really?” Think—think—think.… Fanny's hair—and the lamp dangling from Ernie's big left hand and making a circle of light on the stone … light on the stone—big blocks like paving stones—old—worn—cracked—that was it—cracked. He hadn't noticed it at the time, but he saw it quite distinctly in the picture now, a crack running across the circle of light—a very old crack, green with slime.

He went forward, casting about with his torch, and found what he had seen in the picture, a flagstone split across the corner and the broken edges of the crack mildew green. Well, this was where they had stood, Ernie here and Fanny just beyond him. Ernie had pushed the wall.

Oliver tried pushing it now. It was like pushing the side of a house. Nothing happened. It seemed quite incredible that this solid wall should have broken under his eye and let the Rennards through, but, incredible or not, he had seen it happen, and where they had gone he could follow.

There was a spring to be found, and Ernie had found it by counting three up—two along—one down. Three up—well, presumably that meant three up from the floor. He harked back to the picture in his mind again. Fanny had the lamp now, and Ernie was counting with his left hand. That meant three up from the broken flagstone. This brought him to a point about six feet up the wall, which was built of big two-foot blocks. Two across—he shifted the torch and reached out with his right hand. One down, and he was pressing on a spot about four feet above floor level. But press as he would, nothing happened. His other hand—Ernie had taken two hands. But then Ernie had had someone to hold the light. Oliver had to put it down on the ground, where it wasn't a great deal of use. He pressed with both hands now, keeping the right on the slab he had reached when he counted one down, and experimenting with the left. Ernie hadn't stooped at all, he was sure of that, so the right place must be somewhere fairly high up.

He thumped every inch of the wall within his reach, and found it solid as a hillside. An exasperating sense of helplessness came over him. He reached out sideways and slipped. His left foot went from under him, throwing him forward against the wall. His right foot scrabbled and stumbled on the slimy stone. Scrabbling and stumbling, it must have chanced upon the spring. The wall gave, went from him, swung in. There was empty space under the thrust of his hands. He pitched forward and fell sprawling across the threshold of the black hole.

CHAPTER XVIII

Up again, he had a look at the thing. It certainly bore no resemblance to a door. It followed the irregular spacing of the stone flags. The mechanism which moved it was of the simplest, but it required a simultaneous pressure upon floor and wall, and he was lucky to have chanced upon the right combination. Under this pressure a section of the wall pivoted and swung in. He had it at right angles to him now, and his immediate concern was to find out whether he could open it from the inside. If he found Rose Anne, he would have to get her away, and the probabilities were that they would have to make a bolt for it.

He pushed the slabs back into their place and investigated. Thank goodness the thing was quite easy from this side. No need to count stones and feel about for the right one, with a lever ready to one's hand.

He turned from the wall with relief, and found that he was standing above a flight of rough stone steps. They went down almost as steeply as a ladder, and he was glad to see that there was an iron handrail. He switched off his torch and went down backwards—cautiously. He had no intention of stepping off into space.

The steps seemed solid enough. There were a hundred of them. He had to put his torch on again at the bottom, and saw a long passage running away down hill on a fairly steep incline. As there was no choice of ways, he followed it. There was no mistaking where he was now. This was a gallery in a mine. The steps had been cut to connect the house with the gallery, when and by whom he had no knowledge. He had to keep the torch on for fear of blundering into a side passage and losing the way back. He had to chance the light being seen. He had, in fact, to take so many chances that on any reasonable forecast he was bound to come to grief. Only, as it happened, he was in no mood for reason. The long strain, the long agony of the days since Rose Anne's disappearance, had brought him to a point where a sudden hope took him beyond the cool probabilities of the case. He could not think dispassionately of turning back and going to the police or letting Mr Smith know what had happened. He could only go forward. Nothing mattered if he could reach Rose Anne. To know that she was alive seemed enough. When he knew that—if he knew that—then it would be time to think and plan for her escape.

They wouldn't let her go easily.

This was present in his mind, but he withdrew his thoughts from it. Find her—find her—find her—that was what mattered. Everything else could wait.

Within the limits of this frame of mind he was alert and capable. After letting the torch illumine a stretch of passage he would switch it off and cover the distance in the dark. The slope went on and on, and down and down. A tingling impatience made his slow progress irksome. He would have liked to run, and it came to him to wonder whether caution was worth while where danger was at once inevitable and unescapable.

His fingers pressed the switch for perhaps the twentieth time, and he saw the passage divide. Two black galleries fronted him, one inclining to the left and the other to the right, and now of course he had no clue as to which one the Rennards had taken. He turned right because, with nothing to choose between right and left, a right-handed man is slightly biased in that direction. After turning on his torch three times he came to more steps, and descended them as he had done the others, backwards and without a light. The air was clammy now and warm. His temples were damp and the palms of his hands. A kind of horror of the darkness came upon him about half way down. The place was heavy with silence and old gloom. It was difficult to believe that light had ever passed this way. A man might fall here, and die, and his bones whiten and never be found.

He went on climbing down until the steps ended and his feet were upon the level stone. Now he would have to put the torch on again. Quick on that thought came another. Suppose the battery failed, suppose when he touched the switch there was no bright, leaping ray, suppose—He felt for the switch, found it with his thumb, and pushed.