Deep Moat Grange

by S. R. Crockett

  CHAPTER XXVI

  COMRADES IN CAPTIVITY

  After that we had much intercourse. There was, indeed, little else todo, though now I know that the periods when I could get no answer werethose in which the three sisters still in hiding were in the habit ofvisiting Elsie in company generally with Mad Jeremy. Little by little,however, Miss Stennis--well, after being addressed as "Dearest Joe" Isuppose I may as well say "Elsie"--told me all about her position--themanner of her capture, and the liberty, comparative though it was,which she enjoyed. I made up my mind at once that if I were to escapeat all, it must be through her chamber.

  It was about this time that the truth as to the manner in which I wasattached to the wall flashed upon me. I could see it all now, andwondered how I had not understood it before. I have already explainedthat the rings to which my ankles were attached ended in round rods orbolts that passed through the wall. But the bolts turned easily withevery movement of my body, instead of being (as one would haveexpected) firmed into the thickness of the wall. Now it was all clearas an invoice. The bolts passed right through into the chamberoccupied by Elsie, and were there attached either to other similarrings or held in place by a crossbar of some sort.

  I used the code--my foolish thought for Joe, now so useful--to ask thegirl if she could see anything at the place upon which I knocked withmy feet. She replied that it was impossible, because in that placethere was a deep cupboard of which she had not got the key. Now, Iknow the locks of cupboard doors. I sell them. And the fact is thatmost of them are worthless as fastenings, except perhaps a few like theone in Miss Elsie's room, which had been planned by the monks somehundred years ago.

  But even so, the lock would almost certainly have had to berenewed--probably quite recently--in view of the use to which theunderground passages and cellars were to be put. I therefore "knocked"a message through to Elsie to secrete a stout knife. She had italready. I might have expected as much of her. Then I told her how toslide the blade of the knife with its back downward into the crack ofthe door. The supple bend of the knife blade, taking the shape of thebolt, would in all probability after a little trial cause it to slideback easily.

  After a little Elsie succeeded. The bolt, as I expected, was a biasedone, not square on the face, and hardly caught into the bolt hole atall. It had come from my own shop, and I knew its capabilities. Theymake them by the hundred gross, all as like as peas, and justsufficiently strong to keep out the cat. But mostly, if people think aplace is locked, it _is_ locked--especially women.

  I could hardly wait the reply, after Elsie had been into the deepcupboard. It was all I could hope for. The bolts came through intothe cupboard about three feet from the floor, which showed that mychamber was higher than hers; they were caught by iron linch-pins inthe same way that an axle of a red farm cart is fastened on to theoutside of the hub.

  "Could Elsie knock them out, did she think?"

  Elsie thought she could, but she would need something heavy--like a barof iron. She had it--the handle of the broken rake that had been usedin the oven furnace. So the first thing after supper and the departureof her visitors, Elsie knocked out the pins. I drew out the bolts onmy side, and was free to move about--with, it is true, the rings andbolts jangling about my ankles. Still, in part I was free, and myheart rose within me.

  First of all I managed with the cord of my hat to tie up the bolts sothat I could move noiselessly about, being careful for the time beingnot to go far from my couch. For of course it was necessary for me, atthe first alarm, to undo the cords and thrust the bolts through theholes, so that no change might be apparent to my jailers. Still, thething comforted me. For not only was I able to take some exercise, butto attend to the proper ordering of my chamber, which had hitherto beencarried out in the most perfunctory manner by Jeremy, and also at veryuncertain intervals.

  But what chiefly occupied my mind was the thought that, according toElsie the oven was of easy access from her room, and doubtless wouldhave been visited frequently by whoever had the charge of the baking.

  I could therefore, with Elsie's iron bar, if no better turned up, makea good fight for both our liberties. The situation was gettingaltogether too ridiculous for a man of business habits, shut up withina few miles of his own horses, lorries, his grocery, ironmongery, andother supplying and contracting establishments.

  How I was ever to face Bob Kingsman I did not know. I wondered if allthis time he were taking his orders from "Dearest Joe." Joe indeed! Ilacked confidence in my son as a man of business--as it turned out,without reason. He might even have brought me to the verge ofbankruptcy. There were, I was informed, two young ladies from Londondwelling in my house, of whom--especially one of them--Elsie reportedto me by code a very poor account. They seemed completely to havegotten the mastery over my poor wife, who was, as it appeared,prostrated with grief--a thing I should not have anticipated. On everyaccount it seemed about time that I should come to life again.

  The question was merely one of detail. How?

  Of course, I did not hide from myself that as the days went by, marked,for me, only by the lighting and darkening of my jackdaw's entranceabove, many things would certainly be happening outside. For onething, I was a prominent ratepayer, and the cleaning and lightingtaxes, as well as the school and road rates for the parishes ofBreckonside and Over Breckonton, would be coming due. If for nothingelse, they would be sure to hunt me up to pay them. For, as I hadappealed against them all--on principle--Joe would not be able tosettle them without me. He would have done it if he could, having no"fight" in him--that boy taking after his mother--but my lawyer wouldsee him further first, being a minor. I could trust Mr. C. P.Richards--he would not pay a farthing till he had an order under myhand or a proof of my decease. Yes. They would seek for me. No doubtof that.

  And Elsie? Of course she was not a ratepayer; but--well, if, as waslikely, they had seen her shake out her skirts to trip across a muddyroad they would be just as great fools as myself.

  And they were greater--every man of them. I know Breckonside.

  Well, now, to join on our doings in the cellar (as it were) to those upaloft in the front hall, it was about this time that our meals began towax irregular. The Breckonside mob, ill led, and incapable of knowingexactly what it wanted, had come and gone, defeated by the cunning ofMiss Aphra--very clever woman, Miss Aphra--and the cheerful, innocentbrutality of Dr. Hector.

  There was still talk about us, no doubt, but desultory--some semblanceof action, too. In fine, little real work was being done, when ourprovisions began to get scarce down below in the old stone storehousesof the monks.

  Indeed, so far as I was concerned, I should have starved if ElsieStennis, who was still occasionally remembered, had not pushed throughthe bolt holes long strips of the home-made loaves with which MadJeremy supplied her. As for water, she had a spoon tied to the end ofthe iron rod; and I took it as a babe does pap. It was, I am free tosay, most kindly done. For at no time had she too much for herself,and though I do not make too much of a thing like that, neither, on theother hand, do I forget it. After a long, sleepless night of thought,I resolved that the very next evening I should borrow the iron rod fromElsie, which had formerly been used as a rake shaft of the bakeryfurnace.

  Elsie passed it to me through the communicating hole. But there was ahooked handle at the end which prevented it coming all the way tillElsie in her dark cupboard had made a hole sufficiently large to pushit through; while I, with Elsie's knife, cut out a piece of the woodenlining of my cell so that it could again be fitted in to avoidsuspicion. Then I had a thoroughly strong bar of iron in mypossession, with which, considerably elated, I began to make a waythrough into Elsie's room. But it was slow work. The knife had firstto be serrated on the back to form a kind of rough saw. I did thiswith a sort of projecting tooth or claw of the rake handle, where ithad been broken off. And I own that the work was not without a certaincharm of its own. In my youth I remember--t
o my shame--to have carriedthe life of a certain Count of Monte Cristo--whose name I have not metwith elsewhere, but with whom I should much have liked to have hadbusiness relations--under my waistcoat to school. He appears to havebeen, like us, a prisoner. And his account of how he pierced thickwalls was not wholly without interest. I wished I had kept the notes Imade in my pocket-book reporting his manner of procedure. It was fromhim, for instance, that I got the idea of the rook's feather, while thejackdaws, chunnering to themselves up above and occasionally descendingto peck, did the rest.

  Ultimately I was enabled to cut through the wooden lining of my cell,only to find the wall behind of solid masonry, but with the limehopefully crumbly round the little holes by which the bars passed intoElsie's cupboard.

  All this took some time, and I required the help of Miss Stennis atevery step. I fear some nights the young lady did not get much sleep,for every particle of debris--stone, lime, sawdust--had to be conveyedthrough the narrow holes made for the leg bolts, then taken up in thepalms of her hands and conveyed to the little trapdoor behind her bedbeneath which was the flowing water. It was not much of an operationon my side--rough work, ill done--and had any man in my employ tried topass off such workmanship on me, I should have showed him round theyard with the point of my boot--ay, and out at the front gate, too!

  Still, it was done, which was the main thing. And after I hadbethought me to widen the two bolt holes by making them one--all, thatis, except the pieces of wood which hid the tunnel on either side--thework went on much faster. You see, I was always in fear of Mad Jeremyor somebody coming to search. But, as a matter of fact, nobody lookednear me, and on Elsie's side she was protected by the dark cupboard.Still, it was better to leave nothing to chance, and to treat MadJeremy, with his wild eyes and insane freaks, as if he had been themost suspicious of jailers.

  But any one who gives the matter a thought will see in what ahumiliating position I was placed, utterly forgotten, as it seemed,even by those who had taken possession of my cheque in order to compelme to sign it. Was it possible, I asked myself, that they had foundsome one to forge my signature, negotiated it at a distance, and fledwith the proceeds? Of Mad Jeremy I still had news. For at intervalshe supplied Miss Stennis with food, sometimes days old, for it was butseldom that he baked now; and though the weather was milder without,both Elsie's cell and mine became much less comfortable, though not, sofar as I could observe, damp.

  It was evidently a period of great excitement with the lunatic who hadconstituted himself our caretaker. Putting my ear to the excavation, Icould hear him whistling and singing while he was in the chamber behindthe oven talking to Elsie. Once I heard him. playing upon someinstrument, which sounded like the bagpipes, but was in reality hisprecious fiddle. And I will say that I lay and gripped my nails intomy hands in impotent anger to think that there was, according to mymost accurate measurements, at least a foot of stone and lime, laidwith burned shell and sand as only the old monks knew how, all to pickout piecemeal with the point of my weapon before I could be of theslightest use to the young lady in the case of an attack.

  Once it was evident that Jeremy had been listening at the door. Heopened upon me suddenly and demanded what was that knocking he hadheard? I answered that I was trying to attract attention to the factthat I had been several days without either food or water. He lookedat me suspiciously, and said--

  "It sounded more like somebody beating a tune!"

  I turned over immediately, and, with my knuckles as far away aspossible from the boards I had been so long patiently sawing out, Itattooed the measure of "The Wind that Shakes the Barley," theidentical tune the madman had been playing in Elsie's chamber.

  "Oh!" he cried, "can you fiddle?"

  "No," said I, "but I have a good ear, and I used to be able to foot itin my day!"

  "So," he said, "then you shall have a bite and a sup for that. I hadthought you were only an old penny-worth-o'-snuff money-grabber!"

  And along with the provisions he fetched in his fiddle, and played menearly out of my reason, for two mortal hours. Like nothing human itwas, and I, all the time with my toes pressed to my ill-fitting sawedpanel, fearful, that it would fall outward and reveal the work on whichI had been engaged. I declare I would rather have supped with Elsieout of the spoon tied to the oven rake.