The Savage Gorge (18 page)

The entrance, easily large enough for her to crawl
inside, was not inviting. The interior was clean but it
gradually sloped downwards until, beyond the beam's
reach, it was black as pitch.

'Come on, girl,' she said to herself, hitching the

pack onto her back and dropping to her knees to crawl
inside. Her last hope was that Tweed had found the
message shoved under his door.

When Tweed had ushered private detective Dermot
Falkirk into his suite he immediately noticed a differ
ence from the man he'd rescued from the cell in
London. He was smartly dressed in a suit, his black
hair had been cut, his moustache was shorter, neatly
trimmed. His litheness was apparent in his move
ments but his normally poker face was smiling.

Using a technique rarely employed by other Yard
interrogators, Tweed suggested Falkirk sat in the most
comfortable armchair. At the Yard he would have been escorted to a bare room, seated in an uncom
fortable hard-backed chair.

'How are you, Dermot?' Tweed asked, sitting in the
other armchair.

'Exhausted.' Dermot grinned. 'I have a ton of
information to give you. First, I'm breaking my code
of secrecy. I have been employed by Miss Lisa Clancy,
the only girl who escaped being murdered - her sisters, Nancy and Petra Mandeville, the two missing
daughters of Lord Bullerton.'

'I have wondered recently if that's who they were,'
Tweed said grimly. 'The daughter who employed you
is Lizbeth Mandeville.'

'Yes,' Falkirk agreed, 'she changed her name when
she escaped from Hobart House. She picked me out

of the list of private detectives because she liked "Eyes
Only". Don't ask me why. Mission, to locate the mur
derer of her sisters. Since I've broken the code and
identified her I'll return the five thousand pounds she
paid me.'

'What else did Lizbeth tell you? Incidentally, last
night I called a friend at the Yard and she's under pro
tection, but doesn't know it.'

'What else? She told me about this place, which was
what sent me haring up to Hobartshire. On arrival I
described Lisa to the landlord, pretending she'd flirted
with me at a party down in London. He identified her
as Lizbeth Mandeville.'

'Did Lizbeth tell you the whole story about leaving here?'

'Yes.' Falkirk smiled. 'After a little coaxing. They
left to get away from her father. When they were much
younger he'd bullied them and the late mother had
been a strict disciplinarian. When they told Lord
Bullerton he was appalled, gave each of them the sum
of forty thousand pounds. They decided Lizbeth
should just "disappear". Petra collected her clothes
and arranged them neatly on the river bank. So she
could have gone swimming and then drowned. They
were pretty bitter according to Lizbeth. Well . . .'
Falkirk shook his head. 'Not entirely.'

'Did she say what she did when she discovered the
corpses?'

'Panicked. Rushed back into her house, locked and
bolted the front door, switched off all the lights. That's

when she saw, peering from behind a net curtain, the Rolls-Royce and amiable Mr Neville Guile.'

'That would be his first of two visits. Actually
saw
him?'

'Had his tinted glass window down, was peering
out. She recognized him from a picture in a glossy
magazine.'

'Know much about him?'

'Guile is the cruellest villain in Europe. Most mur
derous. Ruthless, callous and brutal. Adopts any
method to succeed. Once he kidnapped the daughter
of a Belgian banker who refused to sell his oil hold
ings. A message was sent to the banker that if he didn't sell within twenty-four hours the daughter
would be returned. In pieces. The banker sold the oil
holdings through an intermediary. The girl,
unharmed but out of her wits with fear, was thrown from a car at the entrance to the banker's villa.'

'A very nasty piece of work,' Tweed commented.

'Yet he has a most remarkable personality, can
charm the birds out of the trees, especially the female
variety. Operates via third parties, so the police can never link him to his crimes.'

'So at present Lord Bullerton is his front man.'

'That's what I suspect,' Falkirk agreed. 'And
Bullerton may have no idea of what is really going on.'

'May,'
Tweed emphasized.

At that moment he saw the edge of the envelope Paula had pushed under his door. He opened it, read
what she had written and thought for a moment. After

her traumatic experience at the falls, then seeing the
murdered Hartland Trent, she was probably
exhausted, would sleep the night through.

Paula had dropped to her knees to explore the tunnel.
When she risked shining her more powerful torch into
the darkness the beam faded into blackness a few
yards ahead. The tunnel must be endless. She had just
entered when the metal buckle on her backpack
scraped against the top of the tunnel. She worried about the noise, hauled the pack off her back and
dragged it along by the handle. It was not long before
the pressure of the unknown crept into her mind. She
gritted her teeth, determined to discover the reason
for the tunnel.

The tunnel continued its gradual descent. Soon
she'd be deep under Black Gorse Moor. Not a pleas
ant thought. She was also worried that someone might
find the lid entrance removed. Her back was com
pletely exposed to attack. She paused frequently to
listen.

The absolute silence was worse. It began to get on
her nerves. She pressed on, crawling slowly. The hand
which dragged her pack also held her powerful torch
awkwardly, but she needed at least one hand free in
case of emergency. Now the surface of the tunnel, still
dropping, began to curve to her right so her torch
could not illuminate what might lie ahead. She slowed
her progress. Her outstretched left hand suddenly felt

nothing beneath it. Dante's Inferno was nothing com
pared to this.

Her exploring left hand felt round the rim of noth
ing. She let go momentarily of her pack, aimed the
torch, which had been wobbling all over the place. She
had reached a vertical tunnel descending into the
bowels of the earth. Beyond, her tunnel continued
into darkness.

Easing herself forward inch by inch, she arrived at
the rim of this new tunnel. She shone her torch down, almost dropped it in her shock. About eight feet down
the beam was shining on the dead face of Archie
MacBlade, body jammed into a space where the ver
tical tunnel narrowed. The eyes were closed.

'MacBlade!' she gasped in a whisper.

The eyes opened. One winked at her. That was
when she heard voices, curiously distorted as they
travelled down the extension of the vertical tunnel up to the moor. Instinctively she switched off her torch,
hauled herself back a short distance from the rim.
Despite the distortion, there was one voice she re
cognized immediately.

'You are quite clear what you have to do as soon as
dawn comes?' the cut glass voice of Neville Guile
demanded.

'Oh, I knows me business,' Ned Marsh, a wiry man
with a hooked nose and a harelip, responded in his
coarse voice.

'Then repeat your instructions and take that self-
satisfied look off your ugly face.'

'At dawn I'll 'ave brought the truck of rubble and
mud 'ere. I empty the flamin' lot down this tunnel.
That bastard MacBlade will never be found.'

'Must be dead already/ Guile answered casually,
'after the blow from your cosh on the back of his head.
And bring the truck along the top moor road. Time
we moved off.'

Paula had held herself so still that after waiting to be
sure they had gone she had to stretch. She shone her
torch down inside the tunnel where MacBlade was
trapped by the bulge in the wall. He called up to her in
little more than a whisper.

'If I try to move I'll shift this soil bulge and drop twenty more feet. Bit of a problem, Paula.'

'Don't move an inch,' she whispered back. 'I've got
an idea.'

The ingenious Harry had from time to time given her different equipment she might need. One item,
stowed in her backpack, was a length of rope tightly knotted at three-foot intervals, and with a metal hook at one end covered with thick rubber. He'd told her it
would 'come in handy' for entering the first floor of a
target house. Lowering the rope, hooked end first, she
told MacBlade what to do. As she talked, she wrapped
the other end of the rope round her waist, praying
she'd be strong enough to hold his weight. Twisting

her body round, she pressed both feet against the top
of the tunnel where the metal surface was rougher.
She peered over the edge, told him to come up when
ready. MacBlade had followed her instructions to the
letter. With the rubber-covered hook tucked inside his
thick leather waist belt, he began hauling himself up,
hands gripping a knot, then another. As soon as he
moved, the soil bulge which had held him collapsed.
Without the rope, he would have fallen at least twenty
feet into the depths.