Terror Keep/Chapter 19

an instant the air was filled with choking dust. Roar followed roar as the rocks continued to fall.

"The mouth of the cave has collapsed!" roared Reeder in the other's ear. "And the subsidence hasn't finished."

His first instinct was to fly along the passage to safety, but somewhere in that awful void were two women.He switched on his light and crept gingerly back to the bench whence he had seen the catastrophe. But the rays of the lamp could not penetrate into the fog of dust for more than a few yards.

Crawling forward to the edge of the platform, he strove to pierce the darkness. All about him, above, below, on either side, a terrible cracking and groaning was going on, as though the earth itself was in mortal pain. Rocks, large and small, were falling from the roof; he heard the splash of them as they struck the water—one fell on the edge of the platform with a terrific din and bounced into the pit below.

"For God's sake, don't stay here, Mr. Reeder. You will be killed."

It was Gray shouting at him, but J. G. Reeder was already feeling his way toward the steps which led down to where the boat had been moored, and to which he guessed it would drift. He had to hold the lamp almost at his feet. Breathing had become a pain. His face was covered with powder; his eyes smarted excruciatingly; dust was in his mouth, his nose; but still he went on, and was rewarded.

Out of the dust mist came groping the ghostly figure of a woman. It was Olga Crewe.

He gripped her by the arm as she swayed, and pushed her against the rocky wall.

"Where is your mother?" he shouted.

She shook her head and said something; he lowered his ear to her mouth.

"... boat ... great rock ... killed."

"Your mother?"

She nodded. Gripping her by the arm, he half led, half dragged her up the stairs. He found Gray waiting at the top. As easily as though she were a child, Mr. Reeder caught her up in his arms and staggered the distance that separated them from the mouth of the passage.

The pandemonium of splintering rock and crashing boulder was continuous. The air was thicker than ever. Gray's lamp went out, and Mr. Reeder's was almost useless. It seemed a thousand years before they pushed into the mouth of the tunnel. The air was filled with dust even here, but as they progressed it grew clearer, more breathable.

"Let me down: I can walk," said the husky voice of Olga Crewe, and Reeder lowered her gently to her feet.

She was very weak, but she could walk with the assistance that the two men afforded. They stopped at the entrance of the living-room. Mr. Reeder wanted the lamp—wanted more the water which she suggested would be found in that apartment.

A cold draught of spring water worked wonders on the girl too.

"I don't know what happened," she said, "but when the cave opening fell in, I think we drifted toward the stage ... we always called that place the stage. I was so frightened that I jumped immediately to safety, and I'd hardly reached the rock when I heard a most awful crash. I think a portion of the wall must have fallen on to the boat. I screamed, but hardly heard myself in the noise ... this is punishment—this is punishment! I knew it would come! I knew it, I knew it!"

She covered her grimy face with her hands, and her shoulders shook in the excess of her sorrow and grief.

"There's no sense in crying." Mr. Reeder's voice was sharp and stern. "Where is Miss Belman?"

She shook her head.

"Where did she go?"

"Up the stairway ... father said she escaped. Haven't you seen her?" she asked, raising her tearful face as she began slowly to realise the drift of his question.

He shook his head, his narrowed eyes surveying her steadily.

"Tell me the truth, Olga Flack. Did Margaret Belman escape, or did your father?"

She was shaking her head before he had completed his sentence, and then, with a little moan, she drooped and would have fallen had not Gray supported her.

"We had better leave the questioning till later."

Mr. Reeder seized the lamp from the table and went out into the tunnel. He had hardly passed the door before there was a crash, and the infernal noises which had come from the cave were suddenly muffled. He looked backward, but could see nothing. He guessed what had happened.

"There is a general subsidence going on in this mass of earth," he said. "We shall be lucky if we get away."

He ran ahead to the opening of the well, and a glad sight met his eyes. On the floor lay a coil of new rope, to which was attached a body belt. He did not see the thin wire which came down from the mouth of the well, but presently he detected a tiny telephone receiver that the engineers had lowered. This he picked up, and his hail was immediately answered.

"Are you all right? Up here it feels as if there's an earthquake somewhere."

Gray was fastening the belt about the girl's waist, and after it was firmly buckled:

"You mustn't faint—do you understand, Miss Crewe? They will haul you up gently, but you must keep away from the side of the well."

She nodded, and Reeder gave the signal. The rope grew taut, and presently the girl was drawn up out of sight.

"Up you go," said Reeder.

Gray hesitated.

"What about you, sir?"

For answer Mr. Reeder pointed to the lowest rung, and, stooping, gripped the leg of the detective and, displaying an unsuspected strength, lifted him bodily so that he was able to grip the lower rung.

"Fix your belt to the rod, hold fast to the nearest rung, and I will climb up over you," said Mr. Reeder.

Never an acrobat moved with greater nimbleness than this man who so loved to pose as an ancient. There was need for hurry. The very iron to which he was clinging trembled and vibrated in his grasp. The fall of stone down the well was continuous and constituted a very real danger. Some of the rungs, displaced by the earth tremors, came away in their grasp. They were less than half-way up when the air was filled with a sighing and a hissing that brought Reeder's heart to his mouth.

Holding on to a rung of the ladder, he put out his hand. The opposite wall, which should have been well beyond his reach, was at less than arm's-length away!

The well was bulging under unexpected and tremendous stresses.

"Why have you stopped?" asked Gray anxiously.

"To scratch my head," snarled Reeder. "Hurry!"

They climbed another forty or fifty feet, when from below came a rumble and a crash that set the whole well shivering.

They could see starlight now, and distant objects, which might be heads, that overhung the mouth of the well.

"Hurry!" breathed J. G. Reeder, and moved as rapidly as his younger companion.

Boom!

The sound of a great gun, followed by a thunderous rumbling, surged up the well.

J. G. Reeder set his teeth. Please God, Margaret Belman had escaped from that hell—or was mercifully dead!

Nearer and nearer to the mouth they climbed, and every step they took was accompanied by some new and awful noise from behind them. Gray's breath was coming in gasps.

"I can't go any farther!" croaked the detective. "My strength has gone!"

"Go on, you miserable...!" yelled Reeder, and whether it was the shock of hearing such violent language from so mild a man, or the discovery that he was within a few feet of safety, Gray took hold of himself, climbed a few more rungs, and then felt hands grip his arm and drag him to safety.

Mr. Reeder staggered out into the night air and blinked at the ring of men who stood in the light of a naphtha flare.

Was it his imagination, or was the ground swaying beneath his feet?

"Nobody else to come up, Mr. Reeder?"

The officer in charge of the engineers asked the question, and Reeder shook his head.

"Then all you fellows clear!" said the officer sharply. "Move toward the house and take the road to Siltbury—the cliff is collapsing in sections."

The flare was put out, and the soldiers, abandoning their apparatus, broke into a steady run toward Larmes Keep.

"Where is the girl—Miss Crewe?" asked Reeder, suddenly remembering her.

"They've taken her to the house," said Big Bill Gordon, who had made a mysterious appearance from nowhere. "And, Reeder, we have captured the gold-convoy! The two men in charge were a fellow who calls himself Hothling and another named Dean—I think you know their real names.... Caught them just as the lorry was driving into the quarry cave. This means a big thing for you—"

"To hell with you and your big things!" stormed Reeder, in a fury. "What big things do I want, my man, but the big thing I have lost?"

Very wisely, Big Bill Gordon made no attempt to argue the matter.

They found the banqueting-hall crowded with policemen, detectives, and soldiers. The girl had been taken into Daver's office, and here he found her in the hands of the three women servants who had been commandeered to run the establishment while the police were in occupation. The dust had been washed from her face, and she was conscious, but still in the half-bemused condition in which Reeder had found her.

She stared at him for a long time as though she did not recognise him and was striving to recall that portion of her past in which he had figured. When she spoke, it was to ask a question.

"There is no news of—father?"

"None," said Reeder, almost brutally. "I think it will be better for you, young lady, if he is dead."

She nodded.

"He is dead," she said with conviction. And then, rousing herself, she struggled to a sitting position and looked at the servants. Mr. Reeder interpreted that glance and sent the women away.

"I don't know what you are going to do with me," she said, "but I suppose I am to be arrested.—I should be arrested, for I have known all that was happening, and I tried to lure you to your death."

"In Bennett Street, of course," said Mr. Reeder. "I recognised you the moment I saw you here—you were the lady with the rouged face."

She nodded and continued.

"Before you take me away, I wish you would let me have some papers that are in the safe," she said. "They have no value to anybody but myself."

He was curious enough to ask her what they were.

"They were letters ... in the big, flat box that is locked.... Even Daver did not dare open that. You see, Mr. Reeder"—her breath came more quickly—"before I met my—husband, I had a little romance—the sort of romance that a young girl has when she is innocent enough to dream and has enough faith in God to hope. Is my husband arrested?" she asked suddenly.

Mr. Reeder was silent for a moment. Sooner or later, she must know the truth, and he had an idea that this awful truth would not cause her very much distress.

"Your husband is dead," he said.

Her eyes opened wider.

"Did my father"

"Your father killed him—I suppose so. I am afraid I was the cause. Coming back to find Margaret Belman, I told Daver all that I knew about your marriage. Your father must have been hiding behind the panelling and heard."

"I see," she said simply. "Of course it was father who killed him—I knew that would happen as soon as he learned the truth. Would you think I was heartless if I said I am glad? I don't think I am really glad: I'm just relieved. Will you get the box for me?"

She put her hand down her blouse, and pulled out a gold chain at the end of which were two keys.

"The first of these is the key of the safe. If you want to see the—the letters, I will show them to you, but I would rather not."

At that moment he heard hurrying footsteps in the passage outside; the door was pulled open and a young officer of Engineers appeared.

"Excuse me, sir," he said, "but Captain Merriman thinks we ought to abandon this house. I've got out all the servants, and we're rushing them down to Siltbury."

Reeder stooped down and drew the girl to her feet.

"Take this lady with you," he said, and, to Olga: "I will get your box, and I may not—I am not quite sure—ask you to open it for me."

He waited till the officer had gone, and added:

"Just now I am feeling rather—tender toward young lovers. That is a concession which an old lover may make to youth."

His voice had grown husky. There was something in his face that brought the tears to her eyes.

"Was it ... not Margaret Belman?" she asked in a hushed voice, and she knew before he answered that she had guessed well.

Tragedy dignified this strange-looking man, so far past youth, yet holding the germ of youth in his heart. His hand fell gently on her shoulder.

"Go, my dear," he said. "I will do what I can for you— perhaps I can save you a great deal of unhappiness."

He waited until she had gone, then strolled into the deserted lounge. What an eternity had passed since he had sat there, munching his toast and drinking his cup of tea, with an illustrated newspaper on his knees!

The place in the half gloom seemed full of ancient ghosts. The House of Tears! These walls had held sorrows more poignant, more hopeless than his.

He went to the panelled wall and rubbed his finger down the little scar in the wood that a thrown knife had made, and smiled at the comparative triviality of that offence.

He had reason to remember the circumstances without the dramatic reminder which nature gave. Suddenly the floor beneath him swayed, and the two lights went out. He guessed that the earth tremors were responsible for the snapping of wires, and he hurried into the vestibule and had passed from the house when he remembered Olga Crewe's request.

The lantern was still hanging about his neck. He switched it on and went back to the safe and inserted the key. As he did so, the house swayed backward and forward like a drunken man. The clatter of glass, the crackle of overturned wardrobes, startled him so that he almost fled with his mission unperformed. He even hesitated; but a promise was a promise to J. G. Reeder. He put the key in again, turned the lock, and pulled open one of the great doors—and Margaret Belman fell into his arms!