Down Under (30 page)

Rose Anne pushed him away.

“You're making it up because you want me to go on!”

“I'm not. I swear he said it. Are you going to let a pigeon beat you?”

“A pigeon hasn't wet clothes on,” said Rose Anne, but she got to her feet.

Oliver picked up the lamp.

“They'll dry much sooner if we keep moving,” he said.

It was at about this time that Mr Benbow Collingwood Horatio Smith stood looking down upon the wet street outside his study window. It had been raining all the morning, and judging from the look of the sky, it meant to go on raining all the afternoon. Mr Smith was not, however, thinking about the rain. He was thinking about Oliver Loddon. Behind him, on his perch, Ananias picked delicately at a peanut. He did not really like peanuts, and presently, having sampled the flavour of this one, he spat it out and emitted a rasping Spanish oath. To his disappointment, Mr Smith took no notice. He therefore proceeded still farther in the exercise of a forbidden vocabulary. Mr Smith continued to look down upon the grey and rainy street.

The telephone bell rang, and Ananias stopped swearing in order to imitate it.

With a perfunctory “No, Ananias!” Mr Smith turned from the window and took up the receiver. A voice said, “Who is there?” and he answered in his gentle, cultured tones, whereupon the voice said, “Just a minute if you please,” and was almost immediately replaced by a different voice—a superior voice, a voice of authority.

“Look here, my dear fellow, I've had your note—”

“Er—yes,” said Mr Smith. “Miller delivered it an hour ago.”

The voice took on a shade of apology.

“Yes, yes—I've been busy. But, my dear fellow, I really don't think—”

“But you should,” said Mr Smith. “It is—er—extremely desirable that you should think.”

The voice showed a trace of annoyance.

“I don't think there is anything that I can do in the matter. You say Captain Loddon has disappeared. I really don't think there is sufficient proof of this, and in any case—”

“I know,” said Mr Smith—“I know—it's not your affair—we have an efficient police force. If I am uneasy, I have only to approach the proper department through—er—the proper channel, and when Captain Loddon's body has been recovered, I shall be able to attend the funeral with the—er—consciousness that there has been no departure from the correct official procedure.”

There was a pause. Then the voice said,

“Are you serious?”

“I am always serious,” said Mr Benbow Smith in a tired voice.

There was another pause.

“What do you
want?
” said the voice.

“I want to have the old mine-shaft at Hillick St Anne's opened up and investigated. I want a considerable body of police. I want them to be armed. I want the Angel inn at Hillick St Agnes placed under observation. I want—”

“Look here, Ben, we'll be the laughing-stock of England.”

“I do not—er—think so.”

“Anyhow the police aren't my pigeon.”

“Er—no.”

“You're asking me to butt in.”

Mr Benbow Smith smiled faintly, but did not speak. The voice came louder.

“You want me to butt in and make a show of myself. You either haven't got any evidence, or you're too damned superior to pass it on.”

“My dear James—”

“Well, have you any evidence?”

“Not a great deal that would appeal to the—er—official mind.”

“That means you haven't any. I suppose it's one of your hunches.”

“I should not—er—so describe it myself, but—”

“That's what it amounts to. The bother is, you do have hunches, and they do come off. Truth and honest, Ben, how sure are you?”

Mr Smith's voice took on its suavest note.

“Sufficiently sure to—er—risk your reputation, my dear James.”

The eminent Cabinet Minister at the other end of the line used a highly regrettable expression and capitulated.

“All right. But remember, if it doesn't come off, I'll make it my business to see that you're thrown to the Press—photographs and snappy pars—the whole bag of tricks. Now you'd better tell me all over again just what you want done. What about coming round to see me?”

Mr Smith glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece.

“Er—yes—I shall have time.”

“Time?”

“I am—er—catching the two-fifteen to Malling.”

“Malling?”

“Malling is the station for Hillick St Anne's,” said Mr Benbow Collingwood Horatio Smith.

CHAPTER XXXVI

A long time had passed. They didn't know how long. Rose Anne's clothes had dried on her again. They had found water once or twice. They had rested a good many times. They had sucked Harold Spenlow's concentrated meat tablets. Sometimes they had dropped asleep quite suddenly whilst they were resting, but always when Oliver said, “We must go on,” Rose Anne got to her feet and went on. There were no more protests. She would go on as long as she could, and when she could go on no longer she would just drop down and die—there wasn't any more to be said about it. Oliver talked sometimes, but for the most part they walked in silence, because Rose Anne had no words left, and it is hard to talk alone.

They took the first of the left-hand turnings and followed it a long way only to find themselves at a dead end. The second left-hand turning ran some way and then forked. They kept to the left, and came back again to where they had last rested. Rose Anne had missed a handkerchief and they found it there.

They tried another passage. They were now completely lost, and must keep on without any sense of direction. They went on, because to stop was to despair, and despair meant death. Fatigue weighted their limbs and deadened feeling. Philip's lamp held out, so they had light to walk by.

Oliver thought, “We must go on—we must—we must. If we go on long enough we shall get somewhere. We must go on.”

Rose Anne thought, “I can go to the next turn,” and when they got there she thought the same again, and so on, and on, and on—endlessly. It was getting more difficult. To the next turn—more difficult still. The next turn—difficult—the next—

Oliver was shaking her by the shoulders.

“Darling, look! Look where we are! That's one of the gates.”

That last turn had brought them out upon an open space which narrowed to an arch—not the low arch which the water had cut and through which they had painfully crawled, but a gateway nine feet high with a steel door closing it like the door of a safe. The door rose solid to somewhere between six and seven feet, and the space between it and the top of the arch was barred with inch-thick bars of steel.

Rose Anne looked at the door with dazed eyes. If it opened, she would have to go on, but if it wouldn't open, she could lie down on the rock and go to sleep. She leaned against the wall and saw Oliver try the door and go on trying it. She let herself down into a sitting position. The wall held her up. She shut her eyes.

Oliver said, “Like a safe, you know. It opens with a word—a six letter word. If we knew what it was, we could open the door and get away.” His voice sounded as if it came from a long way off. She heard her own voice say,

“I know—Philip told me.”

It was funny that Oliver's voice should sound so far away, because he had his arm round her. He shook her a little. His far-away voice said,

“What did he tell you? Darling, wake up! It's terribly important.”

Rose Anne had pictures in her mind, some of them vague and misty, some of them small and bright. In one of the little bright ones Philip was telling her about the door. “It opens to you and me.” That was what he had said. And in one of the large, vague pictures he was boasting about the door, and how clever it was, and how no one could open it if they hadn't the word. She opened her eyes and saw Oliver's face close to her own. She said,

“No one can open it if they haven't got the right word. He said only his father and Mark had the word. He said—” She stopped. Something came to her. She said, “Oliver, he used to talk to me a lot—when he thought—I was drugged. He said—things—”

“About the door? Think, darling,
think!
”

She nodded slowly.

“Yes—about the door—he said it would open for us—he said he had made a new word for it—out of our two names—that's what he said.”

“Six letters.… Phil—let's try that. And your name—he always called you Rose.… Philro—that might be it. It's worth trying.”

He went over to the door. Rose Anne shut her eyes again. He came back. She had to open them.

“That's no good. Darling, think if he said anything else. Think—think!”

Her eyelids fell. She looked at the pictures again—Philip saying, “Rose Anne's
his
name. I'll never call you by it. I'll call you Rose, or I'll call you Anne. I love you Rose—I love you Anne.” And then Philip laughing and repeating over and over, “Love Anne—love Anne—love Anne. That will do to open our door, or to shut it and shut you in with me.”

She said the words stumblingly.

“That's what he said. Oliver—I'm—so tired—”

“Love Anne—lovean—that's six letters, but it hasn't got his name in it.” He gave a sudden shout which sent the echoes shouting back at him. “Philan! Phil means love, and it's his name too! Wait—wait whilst I try it!”

She leaned back against the wall. If he had the right word he would leave her alone. That was all it meant to her now.

She wished he wouldn't make so much noise.… She couldn't go to sleep while he made so much noise.… He wasn't leaving her alone.… He was talking—shouting—coming back to her and shouting.…

“It's open! I've got it open! Philan—that was the word! Darling, darling—
darling!
”

She opened her eyes and saw him through a dancing mist. He pulled her up, kissed her, hugged her, and went on saying, “Darling—darling—
darling!
”

The mist cleared a little. She saw the door standing wide, the archway open, the way clear before them. They went through together. The door shut with a clang. She heard Oliver say,

“It opens from either side. It's all quite easy once you know the word.”

And then the mist closed down. She thought, “We're safe.” She felt herself slipping. She felt Oliver's arms. And then she let thought and feeling go.

CHAPTER XXXVII

Rose Anne opened her eyes. The sun was shining into the room. It was her own room. She was in bed in her own room, and the sun was shining in. That meant it was somewhere between ten and eleven in the morning, because the sun was off that window by eleven at this time of the year. She didn't think this in words. She knew it without having to think about it at all, as she had known it for twenty years out of the twenty-two that she had slept and wakened in this room. She stretched herself a little and wondered why she was so stiff, and turned a little in bed and remembered Down Under, and Philip, and the escape, and the black passages, the cave, the lake, the terror of the darkness. She made some sound, some sobbing catch of the breath, and Elfreda was beside her in a moment.

Rose Anne put out her arms, and the two girls clung together, Elfreda blinking away the silly hot tears which would keep running down her cheeks, and Rose Anne not crying but trembling from head to foot. She said,

“Where's Oliver?”

“He's just got in,” said Elfreda gulping. It was really too idiotic to cry when everything had come right and she was going to be bridesmaid after all.

“He's just got in. He had to show them the way. They've been out for hours, and hours, and hours. You know they brought you in in the middle of the night—dozens of policemen. And I thought you were dead, and I believe Oliver did too, only the largest policeman kept on saying you weren't—he was the one that was carrying you—and that's why I'm making such a fool of myself now.”

“Oh!” said Rose Anne rather faintly.

Elfreda got up and made a dart at the bell.

“You were to have hot milk the very instant you woke up,” she explained. “You had some last night, but you never woke up, not even when we gave you a hot bath—darling, you were simply all over green slime, and you'll never be able to wear any of those clothes again.”

“I don't want to,” said Rose Anne with a shudder.

“It was such a pretty jumper suit,” said Elfreda regretfully, “but it's quite, quite ruined.”

“I want to see Oliver,” said Rose Anne. “I want to know what's happened. Fetch Oliver.”

“I think he's having a bath, but I can go and see. Aunt Hortensia said you oughtn't to see anyone for a week.”

A little colour came into Rose Anne's pale cheeks.

“Don't tell her. Fetch Oliver.”

Elfreda ran out of the room.

Rose Anne moved her pillows and sat up a little. She looked at the sunshine, and she thought about Oliver. Everything in her sang a tremulous song of joy. It was all over—the dark, and the cold, and the fear, and the time when she thought she would never see the sun again, and the time when all she wanted was to lie down and die and Oliver wouldn't let her. Now they would be married, and have their little house, and unpack their wedding presents together, and love each other very much. Her heart was quite, quite full of loving Oliver. She hoped he would know how full it was, because she didn't think she would ever be able to tell him.

Elfreda burst in with hot milk in a cup.

“You're to drink this first, and then you can have some tea and a lightly boiled egg and three bits of toast and some butter—and Oliver's just coming, so you'd better hurry up with the milk.”

Rose Anne hurried, and Oliver came—in a dressing-gown. Which would have shocked Aunt Hortensia very much if she had been there to see. He had bathed and shaved, and had so eager a look that it was not until after their long embrace, when he sat back on the edge of the bed and gazed at her, that Rose Anne saw how pale he was and how tired.