The Castle by the Sea/Chapter 19

ITH the key in my hand the whole of the mystery was easy to unlock. I saw now the course of this deep conspiracy and, behold, it was very simple. Facts and events fell into their place appositely, when once I realized for what these scoundrels had been playing. The discovery of the copper lead in the subterranean passages was the initial event, and it was a short step thence to the plot, which was designed to obtain possession of the mine surreptitiously. For this purpose it was necessary that the owner of the estate under which the treasure lay should be kept in ignorance. An attempt, therefore, had been made by Naylor to purchase the Castle property, but this had been foiled by Norroy's dogged tenacity in the face of adversity. After this failure more diplomatic and less comfortable means were employed. The young baronet had lived beyond his income and was known to be in difficulties; it was easy to buy up debts, of which his genuine creditors must have begun to despair. And so Mr. Horne is in possession of the requisite lever and proceeds to apply it. This covert mean-looking little commission agent was "in the deal" with the aristocratic financier with a shady record. If this pretty pair can force Sir Gilbert Norroy into the bankruptcy court the Castle is theirs for an upshot price—and with the Castle, this precious copper mine. Oh, I saw it all now, and saw it clearly. Naylor and Horne, and their creatures had stacked the cards carefully and patiently and cunningly; but they had not yet played out the game. I reckoned that I held some trumps now in my own hand.

But where did Norroy's disappearance come in? And what part had that factor in the game? I began to see the sort of men we were fighting, and to have a vast respect at once for their intelligence and their audacity. The writ had been successfully served on Norroy, with the prospect of his ultimate bankruptcy. But stay; there was a contingency to be faced. What if he should succeed in meeting his creditors and settling his debts? I could conceive the infinite dismay with which Messrs. Naylor and Horne would contemplate the possibility. And the fact is, as I had already acknowledged to my- self, that that possibility was advancing even into a likelihood. What otherwise was the significance of the growing intimacy of Miss Harvey and Norroy? Rogues who devised so cunning an intrigue, and had so daringly contrived the service of the writ, were not likely to remain in ignorance either of the condition of the Harveys or of the probable course of events. It was not too much to assume that they had taken fright at the chance, and delivered a stroke with their characteristic effrontery. If so, Norroy was a prisoner, and would remain a prisoner, if they could hold him, until his financial affairs had got beyond salvation. I did not doubt in the least that they had captured him; what did give me food for consideration was the wonder if they had chosen these vaults as his cell or had gone somewhere else for their prison.

I made a careful examination of the vault, and found that the walls were rich in copper ore. A certain amount of work had been carried on here, and there were several hundred-weights of stone broken out at different intervals; but I judged that no systematic attempt had yet been made to work the lead. That would wait until the rogues were in possession of the property, all signed and sealed. Then, there was in the background, probably, an eventual flotation and plunder enough to enrich these gutter financiers a dozen times over. It had been a game well worth playing, and I rejoiced that I had come in with a big trump.

There were several openings off this cavern also, and I bent to look in the sand for signs of any traffic by them. I found two only with marks of feet, and one of them I explored until I reached a small cave occupied by some boxes and a barrel, a rude mattress and coverings, and a chair. Evidently this was tenanted by some one, at any rate occasionally, and it served as a storehouse. A glance at the boxes showed me that it served as a larder also. So far good. It brought nearer the likelihood that Norroy was confined in the caves.

I had now wellnigh come to the end of my balls of string, which I had from time to time connected, and I feared that, if the galleries ran much farther, I should be forced to abandon my plan of following them up. I retraced my way back to the ore cavern, and tried the second opening. The corridor from this led by a long narrow way up against solid rock. It was a cul-de-sac.

Nothing was to be gained apparently on this side; and so I made up my mind to return to the central warehouse and trace the beetle's footsteps on the lower side. But I had hardly gone twenty feet or so backward on my string, when I heard a shout echoing through the grim and silent tombs. I stopped. It rose again like the hollow voice of a dead man, reverberating from the rock and booming unearthly in the channel atmosphere of the galleries. It was hard to guess at whence it came, but judging it to arise from the right hand I turned into a doorway that opened there, and let out more twine. I moved as quietly as I could through this broken passage, and emerged in a cross-way. Again the shout sounded, and it was now certainly louder, and more cavernous. I turned out of this gallery and my lantern gleamed on the walls of a narrow chamber.

"Plutus, or Charon, damn you!"

It was unmistakable. It was Norroy's voice. Eagerly I called his name.

"Good God, who is it? Brabazon, what?" he cried back in his familiar manner.

The voice came from near by, and I swung the light in its direction. It illumined a patch of the cell, where Norroy was lying on a pallet, his legs bound together by rope, and his hands similarly treated. He was propped up against the wall, and by his side I took in at a glance a pint pot and a metal plate.

"I say, old man," said Norroy, "how the devil did you get here?" He paused a moment, and then added weakly, "This is a bit thick, is n't it, what?"

I bent over him, put the lantern on the floor, and extracting a knife from my pocket cut the ropes which bound him.

"Thank goodness, you 've had no longer of it," I said heartily, and seized his enfeebled hand affectionately.

"It's been long enough," said he. "I thought you were old Plutus. I call him that because this is Hell, you know."

I did not distinguish for him between Pluto and, and after all in a way the beetle might be considered a god of wealth in that hidden mine. I had no doubt he alluded to the butler.

"Is that a dwarfish creature with his head low on his shoulders." I asked.

He nodded. "He's my gaoler. I wanted a drink. I say, is there anything in that pot, old chap?"

I handed him the pint pot, and he took a long draught. Then I gave him a sip from the flask I carried. "I say, what's the time? Is it night or day? How long have I been here? It's about ten days, I think, since I heard my watch stop. I used to listen to the ticking in my pocket. It was the only sound I could hear."

Ten days! Lord, how the man must have suffered! It could only have been as I reckoned seventy-two hours. But there is no such thing as absolute time, and days are marked merely by the contents thereof. Time that is blank means nothing; a thousand years are but as yesterday, and yesterday as a thousand years. I shuddered. But I had something to learn from Norroy.

"Were you kidnapped?" I asked.

"Regularly shanghaied," said Sir Gilbert, with a return of his old cheerfulness. "They copped me on the hop, old man. I'd no sooner got the blessed boat loose than I was tripped up on both sides and rolled over. Had n't a chance, what? If they'd been sporting at all they would n't have shot me sitting. What the devil do they want, anyway? I can't pay ransom. Got no money."

I knew what they wanted, and I noted with interest that they had not told him.

"Who are they?" I inquired.

"A tall thin black buffer and old Plutus. What the Hades do they want? Plutus won't open his mouth, and grins when I ask him. Got a cigar or anything?"

I shook my head. "We must n't smoke till we get out of this," I said. "It would betray us. Tell me what are this dwarf's habits."

"Well, when he gets up," said Sir Gilbert, plaintively, "I don't know, as it's always the middle of the night here. But he comes round with breakfast in the middle of the night; and by and by he comes round with dinner in the middle of the night. And then he gives me supper in the middle of the night. It's pretty hard tack too,—damned ship's biscuits or something."

"Then is this your supper you 've had?" I asked.

"Yes, or breakfast,—I don't know which. All the same, you know. Is it night? Plutus has just gone and I thought your steps were his coming back. That's why I holloaed out. I say, Brabazon, you did n't tell me how you got here."

"I 'll tell you that later," I said. "We must think of getting out now while the tide is low. Otherwise we shall be caught in here and run all kinds of risks. Do you think the dwarf sleeps here?"

He shook his head. "Don't know. Don't know any blessed thing except what I 've told you," he said mournfully. "I suppose I'm somewhere under the earth."

"We'll soon have you above it," said I, cheerfully. "Do you feel your legs all right?"

"A bit paralytic," confessed Sir Gilbert. "So would you be. But I'm on. I say, you are a good chap to hunt me up like this. How's Miss Harvey?"

I reassured him of Miss Harvey's health, and he seemed pleased to think that she had been distressed by his disappearance. "Jolly good of her," he remarked, "awfully kind of her. By Jove, to think she was put out! Ripping of her, what?"

He never remembered to inquire about Miss Fuller or Perdita, but I forgave him. His spirits rose, till presently they were quite normal. "It's the constant darkness that tries you most," he explained. "Lord, I did get sick of it. Old Plutus I used to hail as a dear friend. I say, Brabazon, I wonder if Hell will be like this. If so, I 'll take jolly good care to get to the other place. What have you got there?" he broke off, eying the string in my hand.

I told him, and his admiration knew no bounds. "That's a cute trick," he said. "Fancy thinking of that. We 'll be out in a brace of shakes."

I hoped we should, for I conceived that the dwarf had completed his task for the night and had gone. The tide was by this time rolling in, and he would naturally be anxious to get away from the caves and not remain shut up in them all night. So I did not look for any encounter with him, or with the lean dark fisherman who was evidently his associate in this nefarious kidnapping. And so, with a comparatively light heart I led the way, lantern in hand, and winding up my string as I moved towards the mouth of the caves.

We had gone some half of the distance, as I estimated from the amount of the reclaimed string, when I noticed that the twine lay on the sand in loops, looser, that is, than I had imagined it would lie from the fall I had given it on my entrance. I paid, however, small heed to this, giving it nothing beyond a vague wonder. And next it came into my mind to speculate as to whether this passage I had happened upon was that used by the dwarf and his confederates. I was still without any misgivings as to my power to reach the ultimate outer cavern, and had thus room and time to devote to some curiosity. I stopped and scrutinized the floor. But here the rock outcropped, and though I fancied I could discern the print of feet I was not sure. We continued, therefore, until I felt the ground under me soft with «and, when I made another examination. You see I thought my observations might come in useful in the subsequent operations on those galleries that I saw imminent.

I resumed, slowly, ever pulling the cord which lay on the ground; and soon I was aware that I must be approaching the mouth, for I had wound up almost the whole of my last ball of string, A little farther, I reckoned, I should get into the gallery leading to the second cave. I wound up, the ball increased, grew into a monstrous bunch, as you know string will under amateur hands, and suddenly and without warning, I pulled up the end, which dangled through my fingers loosely as I wound. I stopped paralyzed by fear.

I had reached the end of the twine, and this was a strange place! The end of the ball was not where I had left it—in the outside caves!

I was aghast at this discovery, so much so that I did not immediately grasp its meaning. When I did so my consternation was the greater. The end of the string I had fastened, as I have told you, on a projection of rock in the second cave. Human agency had removed it thence. We had no longer a clue to guide us out of the subterranean passage!

"What's the matter, old chap?" said poor Norroy, seeing me come to an abrupt halt.

It went to my heart to tell him. Yet it had to be done. He drew a finger ruefully down his long nose.

"I say," he said. "What a beastly nuisance! Who the deuce can have shifted it?"

I saw plainly now, and cursed myself for the stupendous folly which had prevented me from being alive to the danger earlier. As I had read the dwarf's foot-steps, so could he read mine! They had betrayed me doubtless to his accustomed eyes, and he had taken the best means of disposing of the stranger. There was no need of violence, no necessity for angry words and furious encounters; this custodian of the inferno, as Norroy rightly considered him, found the means for my undoing ready to his hand, and supplied by myself. He had removed the thread of twine into the intricate maze of the labyrinth, and now we two hapless creatures stood there, somewhere deep in the bowels of the cliff side, with only a remote chance of beating our way out.

The blacker grew the prospect every minute that I considered it. It was true we had a lantern, but I did not know how long the oil would last; and if we had not succeeded in breaking out of the ravelled web before that happened, our case would be ten times more desperate. I will admit that I lost heart in that terrible moment. Can you call the picture up?—A hundred dark and narrow intercommunicating passages, a rabbit-warren of holes, an endless journey along blind alleys, and a man weakened and dispirited by solitary confinement for days and poor food? Did I say dispirited? Sir Gilbert's voice issued thinly just then to give me the lie.

"I'll tell you what! If old Acheron has n't cleared out, let's get hold of him and screw his neck till he tells us how to get out."

It was a bright idea! He seemed pleased with it, and feebly stuck his eye-glass in his eye to see how I took it.

"An excellent idea," said I, judicially, "if we find him." This perhaps set him thinking, for he turned his mind aside from that happy thought and surveyed the hopeless corridor.

"It stands to reason," he pronounced, "that the entrance is n't this way since old Plutus would n't be fool enough to shift it nearabouts. I vote we turn and hark back."

The notion was as good as any that I could suggest, and I agreed. We might, in truth, as well toss a coin for it at every corner. We retraced our way to an opening.

"I'll tell you a good idea," said Norroy, presently. "We'll mark these places. I've got a pencil in my pocket; and we'll mark 'em. And then, if the route fails, we'll know we've tried it, see."

I wondered how long it would take us to mark all the openings in the rock, but I did not dare to discourage him. He made a cross after some efforts on the dark stone, and marched cheerily on, repeating the same operation at the next turning.

"Don't they blaze trees somewhere or other to guide them?" he asked, as his mind caught at another brilliant notion. "Oh, I say, Brabazon, we 'll wear 'em down yet. You 've only got to keep going, you know, what?"

Well, we kept going, until both of us were exhausted, and without the slightest result. Let me briefly rehearse the proceedings of that awful night.

Naturally I first thought of the foot-tracks, that unhappy medium of our ruin. Since the dwarf had shifted our clue he must have left imprints of his passage behind. These I discovered occasionally where the sand was loose underfoot, and it was these that we followed during our first attempt. Sir Gilbert was content to mark his crosses at the turnings we took on the chance that our essay would not prove successful. In this he was right. The dwarf's tracks led by impish devious ways, and once crossed the central vault which I have described. But when my hopes were raised to a high pitch by the hypothesis that he was now on his road to the entrance I lost them altogether on a rocky floor. I tried one way and then another, but all in vain; the footmarks had vanished. Nevertheless, I swore that I would exhaust all the possible permutations of the various directions, and, accordingly, I resolved to rest where we were and start again with renewed strength. Norroy's pencil had been eagerly busy as he ticked off the passages we had tested. He had never once lost hope, and even confidence; and to hear this amazing man you would have conceived him to be amusing himself on a pleasure excursion rather than to be fighting for his life in a darkness which had owned him for days.

We sat down, put out our lamp to economize the oil, and rested. My watch had told me a little before that it was two in the morning, and a low moaning in the ears, informed us that the tide was up and was breaking in the outer caverns. The sound was ghastly in its quality, not threatening and angry as it was on the cliffs without, but pitifully whining and groaning—as it were the voices from a lake of damned souls with no hope of redemption. Its lamentable clamor filled the subterranean corridors. It went to the heart. It never rose or fell, but remained ever one long low burden of woe, forced, as it were, from victims who knew there was no answer to their cries, but could not contain them for sheer physical suffering.

Norroy made some remarks, a poor attempt at conversation, and at last was silent; and then I think we both dropped off to sleep. When I awoke I felt hungry and stiff and bewildered, and I wished that the larder I had come across earlier in the night was accessible. I took a little whiskey from the flask. I lit the lamp and examined my watch. It was past eight o'clock and the tide would be out again. There was no sound in the corridors; all was still as a graveyard. The dying were dead and the damned were silent.

I woke Norroy, who confessed to hunger, but was eager to resume work.

"Look here, we can't be far off," he said after a nip of whiskey. "Look at that row there was all night. Let's get along."

We started on our task again with some freshness, and explored several more passages, but without finding any traces of feet which would suggest that any of them was the adit from the mouth of the cavern. After two hours' work we rested again, and made a renewed attack in force thereafter. Norroy's stump of pencil had been worn out, and with its fading he grew less confident. And now I regretted that I had not attempted to get at the larder when we had struck the central warehouse, from which I had originally reached it.

"If we only had a bottle of ale and some cheese!" he groaned, and then "I say, Brabazon, let's smoke a cigar," he brightened. "That keeps you from thinking of your stomach, they say."

I had no cigars, but I had a case of cigarettes, which I had forgotten in our wretchedness, and now we lit one each with a certain satisfaction.

"It's very odd," mused Sir Gilbert, as if he were talking in his smoking-room, "how you've got to see the smoke you make to properly enjoy it. I ought to be revelling in this, but I'm not."

Of course we had put the lamp out while we rested.

"Got another match he said. "I've lighted mine sideways. Cigarettes are no good to me."

I felt in my pocket. I had only a few matches left. "We must husband them," I said.

We finished our cigarettes and resumed, and we had not been at work ten minutes before I called out that on the sand before me was the print of heavy boots.

"Good old Brabazon!" cried Norroy, admiringly. "I say, you are a daisy! Now we shan't be long."

I am not ashamed to say that my own heart was pumping excitedly. I put the lantern closer to the floor and hurried on. The tracks led downwards the way we were going, and there were several of them. Undoubtedly this was the main gallery used by the conspirators to and from the copper lead. The reflection just flashed through my head that I had not yet revealed to Norroy the explanation of the mystery, and that he had not asked again about it. How like a child! His mind had no persistence; and yet his will was obstinate. Why this thought came to me in so triumphant a moment I knew not; I was hastening on, nose to ground, running up the scent almost mechanically, and with a swelling heart. And then without warning the lamp sank and expired, leaving us in utter blackness.