Run! (29 page)

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.

Sally thought her own thoughts whilst Jock grabbed at her wrist—too late, and demanded in a furious voice what she thought she was doing. Perhaps that withdrawn look of hers disarmed him. Perhaps it came over him that their time might be too short to quarrel in, for he burst into sudden laughter and let her go.

“Quick work, Sally! I suppose you're out to save Ambrose. I can't think why. He's always bored me stiff, but you had a fancy for him, didn't you?”

“I loved him—long ago,” said Sally in an exhausted voice.

James felt in his pocket and produced the other thing which Hildegarde had taken from behind the panel. He didn't want Sally to think about Ambrose. He wanted her to wake up, to come back, to be the Sally who would be all there if it came to the pinch. He thought the mysterious packet would at least distract her mind from Ambrose Sylvester.

She had drawn back and was leaning against the wall, as far from the well as possible, in a half sitting, half kneeling position. James put the parcel in her lap and sat down beside her. From her other side Jock West leaned forward.

Sally picked up what looked like a roll of brown paper clumsily fastened with string. The string had some old sealing-wax clinging to the knots, but it was so loose that it was quite easy to slip it off. There was tissue paper inside, very much creased and lumped together round something which weighed heavy and loose in her hand.

Jock gave a sudden curious laugh.

“It was in the letter—Aunt Clementa's letter! She put Hildegarde's book behind the panel with one of our bats, in the place with the family secret. And what's the betting this is the family secret? Off with the paper, Sally, and let's see if it's what I think it is!” He held up the candle.

Sally pulled away the paper, and there came out, long and flexible, link falling from link, a necklace. The links were dusty, but the diamonds dazzled in the candle-light. There was a row of them, one to each link, very large and shining, and then a tracery of smaller stones set in festoons, and from the three middle festoons three swinging tassels with a very great diamond at the head of each.

“It's the Queen's necklace!” said Sally in a frightened voice.

Jock laughed.

“So Giles pinched it. I always thought so—the dirty dog! What are you going to do about it Sally—throw it down the well?”

She looked at him with a sort of shocked reproach.

“Of course not! It isn't ours. It belongs to the King.”

Jock burst out laughing.

“Oh, Sally—you treasure! Henrietta Maria started it off to the King getting on for three hundred years ago, and you propose to deliver it just as if nothing had happened in between. Is that the great idea?”

Sally said, “Of course.” She looked at the big diamonds, and thought about Giles Rere who had betrayed his trust, and about Ambrose Sylvester who had betrayed his. She felt James's hand on her shoulder, and knew that he would never betray anyone. They would have their quarrels, and they would have their troubles, but it wasn't in James to betray. The knowledge was warm at her heart, and the necklace cold in her hand. She was glad when James took it away from her and wrapped it up again.

“It's as safe in my pocket as anywhere,” he said, and put it back there.

XXXIX

Some time later.

“We ought to be sitting in the dark, you know,” said James. “That candle won't last for ever, and we may want it badly.”

Jock laughed cheerfully.

“Lots of candles,” he said, patting a pocket. “About half a pound of 'em, I should think. I don't come down into cellars without the wherewithal to see 'em by.”

“How are we going to get out?” said Sally suddenly.

She hadn't thought about it at all until this moment, because first she had been feeling all queer and detached, and then she had had her mind quite taken up with other things—with Giles Rere, and Ambrose, and the Queen's necklace. But now, all at once, she really did wonder how they were going to get out, because she wanted passionately to get out, and go right away from Rere Place and never see it again. So she asked her question.

“We'll have to wait for the fire to burn itself out,” said Jock on one side of her.

And then James on the other:

“Unless there's another way out. Is there another way, Sally?”

Sally said “No” in a hesitating voice.

James's hand pressed her shoulder.

“Think—think hard, Sally.”

She turned her troubled eyes upon him.

“I don't know any.”

He shook her a little.

“Think! How did the coals come in? We had a house with cellars once, and there was a shoot for the coal, and steps that went up to a door at the side of the house. Isn't there anything like that?”

Sally shook her head.

“Not any steps, and Aunt Clementa was always grumbling about the coal. There's a shoot outside in the back court, but it takes two men to move the flagstone, so that's no use.”

James got up.

“I think I'll go and prospect. If you're full of candles, J.J., you can give me one.… No, I don't want you to come—I want you to look after Sally. I shan't be long.”