by Peter Leslie
"That must be the old commissary that the freebooters used! There is a way down from the middle of a thicket just behind Wright's stables..."
"Is there a way that would bring us out inside Wright's grounds from here, though? That's the point now."
"Sure there is. Don't you want to try and get Mr. Slate out first?"
April sighed. "The assignment comes first," she said miserably. "We have to stop THRUSH, and that means nailing people like Wright. If we go for Mr. Slate first, we may be too late: the Wrights are being taken off in a submarine."
"But it may take time to get them. We might not make it. We may be too late for Mr. Slate..."
"Just show me the way, Ernie," the girl said harshly, "and leave the decisions to me."
Twenty minutes later, the boy was heaving at a square stone set in the ceiling of the passageway. They had zigzagged endlessly from tunnel to tunnel, with frequent references to Ernie's rough map, and at last they had hit a wider gallery in the rock which he recognised. In the fading light from the torch, he hurried to the end of a short cul-de-sac and began to search the rough-hewn ceiling for the trapdoor.
"Here we are then," he exclaimed triumphantly, "it's still here okay! Comes out in the middle of a ruined chapel, so we needn't worry about noise. When this place was the manor house..." He began to push at the stone slab.
The passageway was just short of six feet high, so that he had plenty of leverage. When April joined him, there was a shower of dust from the crevice all around the stone and it moved slightly. A moment later, the trapdoor lifted at one end...and then it was up and over with a crash that seemed to split the night and they were hauling themselves painfully up into the open air.
Through a wood and across a small field was the house. They could see through the lighted French windows the burnished hair of the woman who was crouched in front of the huge Devon grate tending a fire of papers, which she fed from time to time with documents from a suitcase open on the floor beside her. Wright himself, his silver hair as immaculate as ever, came in through the doorway, beyond which they could see stairs curving up in a gracious sweep. He was carrying two lightweight valises.
April sank down behind an ornamental shrub on the lawn, motioning the boy to keep out of sight behind her. Cautiously, she parted the spiky branches and peered through.
Instantly a bell started ringing wildly and the lawn was flooded with the livid glare of a dozen spotlights. For one frozen moment, she saw the THRUSH man arrested in mid-step, his mouth open in surprise, and then he had dropped the valises and leapt for the doorway to plunge the room into darkness. Obviously she had unwittingly touched off one of the alarms with which the place was ringed.
Footsteps clattered round the corner of the house from the stable yard. Mason appeared with a shotgun in his hands and stood at the edge of the lawn, squinting suspiciously out into the floodlit area. A shout from behind a hedge on the far side of the facade testified that Jacko, too, was out in defence of his master's domain... and then the voice of Wright himself was calling (April thought from an unlit upper window): "Out there, you fools! On the lawn, behind that bush at the side of the lily pond... There's just the girl and a man, as far as I can see. Get in there and get them!"
The girl had been unwrapping another of the smoke- producing pastilles from the packet in her bag. Now, before Mason or Jacko could start shooting, she lobbed it into the lily pond. As soon as the smoke boiled up, she screamed, "Run, Ernie! Run!" as loud as she could — and held Bosustow's arm in steely fingers to make sure that he stayed exactly where he was. A fusillade of shots rang out as the impenetrable screen mushroomed up and then streamed across the lawn before the wind. Wright, firing now from upstairs, and Jacko, using some heavy calibre revolver, were raking the blanked off area in the belief that they were stealing across the lawn behind the cover of the smoke. Mason was advancing cautiously towards it across the stretch of grass that was still visible, his more cumbersome weapon held in reserve.
April waited until he was some way past them, facing the billowing black cloud. Then, motioning the boy to stay where he was, she stole out from behind the bush on tiptoe and silently approached behind the chauffeur. When she was immediately behind him, she called clearly, "No! Back this way, Ernie," and threw herself to the grass.
In the instant that Mason swung the shotgun round towards her, there was a blast of fire from the far side of the smoke screen — four shots in quick succession from Jacko's revolver and two coughing reports from the direction of the house that sounded ominously like an express rifle.
Had she in fact been where she had led them to believe, April would have stood little chance of escape. The chauffeur was hurled a yard backwards by the impact of several bullets, dropped the shotgun, spun round with upraised arms and then crashed to the ground. He twitched once and then lay still.
"One," whispered April as she wormed her way back be hind the bush to the boy. "Grab that 12-bore and follow me..."
They circled the illuminated lawn, crunching their way through an herbaceous border loud with dead leaves. There had been no sound from beyond the screen since the shots... And then suddenly the woman's voice: "You imbeciles! You've been tricked into shooting Mason... and now they have his gun.
"Good!" the girl breathed. "That means she's out in the garden too. Now, we're going to go indoors and see what surprises we can work there!"
She flattened herself against a wall laced with peach trees as the huge bulk of Jacko pounded across the gap at the far end of a short avenue of yew bushes. From the far side of the terrace, high heels tapped in the other direction.
April and the boy stole down the avenue, skirted a summer house, and found themselves outside the French windows. The house was in complete darkness. In the blaze of light which centred on the lily pond, the last vestiges of smoke wreathed about the inert figure of the dead chauffeur. Jacko and the woman were somewhere near the garage: they could hear their voices over the roof.
With infinite care, the girl pressed the latch on the nearest door. It sank down silently and the French window swung open. Inside, there was warm air and a hint of tobacco smoke, the lingering fragrance of a cigar — a domestic scent distorted by the harsh tang of charred papers in the grate. Through the drawing room, wide doors gave on to a darkened hallway. a chequerboard of moonlight was admitted through a leaded window near the front door, and against the subdued luminance of stained glass they could make out the silhouette of banisters slanting up towards the first floor. Somewhere a clock ticked slowly.
Catching the boy by the hand, April edged towards the stairs. Abruptly the hall was blazed with light and, from behind and above them, Wright's supercilious voice drawled:
"Stay exactly where you are. This is a Mannlicher — I don't need to remind you of its muzzle velocity. It reloads very fast: I could drill the two of you before you'd moved two steps. Jacko! Come here... indoors... I've got a job for you
There was an answering cry from the terrace. There followed the thunder of heavy feet in the drawing room — and suddenly the whole place, it seemed to April, was full of people. Dark figures materialised from the foyer, the kitchen quarters, the cloakroom, even the upstairs passages, and in an instant the house resounded to the noise of hand to hand combat!
The intruders, she saw with stupefaction, were all policemen, led by the redoubtable Superintendent Curnow.
Jacko's giant figure was immersed in a flood of uniforms and, on the landing above, Wright struggled with two men who were trying to take the rifle from him. With six hands on the stock, the barrel sawed this way and that until finally there was a sharp explosion and a shower of plaster plummeted down from the ceiling on to the policemen battling in the hall below. At the same time, Wright and his adversaries, taken by surprise by the shot, lurched against the elegant eighteenth-century balustrading guarding the gallery and crashed through it. There was a splintering crunch, and a thump which shook the timbers of the old house as the three men landed.
One of the policemen was knocked cold by the impact. As the other staggered groggily to his feet, Wright leaped for the wall and grabbed for one of a pair of crossed sabres displayed over the stone fireplace.
The THRUSH man whirled, murder in his glaring eyes — and that was when Ernie Bosustow acted. Darting in under the gleaming blade, he dropped the shotgun, hacked viciously at Wright's shin, planted a useful left in the pit of the baronet's stomach as he jerked up a leg in involuntary agony, and then locked his fingers together and brought down his doubled hands on the man's neck as he doubled up, retching for breath. The next moment, Curnow and a tall constable were snapping the handcuffs on his wrists.
Jacko rose from the mêlée by the drawing room door like a balloon dragging at its moorings. With a roar of rage, he fought free of all his attackers. He picked up a beefy sergeant, lifted the heavy policeman above his head and pitched him bodily at the others. As they fell in a tangled heap to the ground, he shook his great head — and found himself face to face with April.
The girl didn't hesitate. Drawing back her right arm as far as it would go, she hit him — a long, looping, roundhouse blow that came up from the floor and buried itself with all her weight behind it in his solar plexus.
The giant stared at her unbelievingly, the breath whooping from his savaged diaphragm. Slowly he folded up — and then the police were on him again. And this time they had his hands behind his back and the handcuffs locked before he could draw one agonised breath.
"All right then," Curnow panted, straightening his tie and glaring at Wright. "Let's get the formalities over with, for a start. I must—"
"No, no." It was April who interrupted. "Mark — he's got Mark tied up in some cave with a booby trap bomb designed to blow up the station on the Tor. We must get him out first.. .
"Go ahead and get him out," Wright said venomously. "The door's not locked. Be my guest."
"Since we've got you anyway," Curnow began, "I'm in a position to say that, if you assist the forces of law and —"
"Law and poppycock! I'm saying nothing. You have..." he consulted his wrist watch "... exactly thirty-one minutes, Miss Dancer. And the best of luck to you."
The superintendent sighed heavily. "I think he means it, too," he said grimly. "Looks as though it may be up to you, young Bosustow, after all."
"I'll do what I can — but how did you get here anyway? What in the name of... How did you all get here? And why?" There was blank astonishment in the boy's voice.
"Have you forgotten already? You were carryin' on about it enough! You were being tailed, boy. We've had men on you for days. You know that."
"You mean... out in those seas... you followed in another boat? You sailed into the Keg-'ole? You found your way down those passages?" There was stark disbelief in Ernie's voice.
Curnow nodded. "When we follow someone, we follow. And there's others but you can handle a boat, others but you were in school at Porthallow and messed about down here as kids. Some of 'em maybe in the Force."
"So I did hear voices," April said. "But we're wasting time. Come on!"
As she seized the boy's arm and led him to the door, she heard the policeman say: "There's a boat out, down in the cove. Ready to launch. A nice freshly painted boat in a strange reddish-orange colour. Would it be yours?"
"Of course it's mine," Wright sneered. "I have a licence for it, too. I demand an explanation for this unwarrantable intrusion, this insufferable—"
"That's all I wanted to know... Gerald Everard Wright, I am a police officer engaged in enquiries into the deaths of Sheila Duncan and Harry Bosustow. I have reason to believe that you may be able to help the police in their enquiries and I must ask you…
But the girl was outside the front door, running, running for the stables and the thicket which concealed the entry to the passageway leading to the chamber where Mark Slate was held a prisoner.
Bosustow found the place immediately; he led her unerringly down a maze of tunnels and corridors in the rock, stumbling over stones, sliding on the damp patches, lurching against projections in the wan light of a torch whose battery was almost spent. But fourteen more minutes had passed before they stood before the oak door leading to the chamber, for it must have been all of half a mile in a straight line from Wright's house to the main mast of the secret station.
Sobbing for breath, April stood outside the door and stared at the thread of light outlining it. At least Mark wasn't in the dark, she thought.
"Mark," she croaked. "Mark? it's April — are you all right?"
"April! Don't for God's sake come in! Don't touch the door." The voice was tight with anxiety, the voice of a man dragged back from a journey from which there was no return.
"All right, Mark..."
"No, you don't understand. There's some kind of infernal machine wired to the door; it'll go up the moment you
"I know, Mark. I know, Listen, we've got to get you out... Tell me: can you see the door on your side?"
"Very nicely, thank you."
"How is the booby trap fixed? Is it a wire attached to the handle? Could we maybe saw through a different part of the door without tripping it? Is it a circuit that gets broken? Is it a contact? Can you see if —"
"It's none of those," Slate's voice cut across her, stronger now. "There's a trembler coil. The slightest move would You don't have to open the door. If you leaned hard on it, or rattled the handle…"
"What's in the chamber, Mark?"
"Me."
"Mark, this isn't the time... What else?"
"A great number of sticks of dynamite, a quantity of nitro glycerine in drums, a huge Victorian hour glass connected to an electrical complex that looks like the inside of a computer, a bulb hanging on its flex, and that's all!"
"There's no other entrance, no other door?" Her voice was taut with despair.
"You want jam on it, don't you, lovey?" Mark Slate said.
"How's the air in there, Mr. Slate?" Ernie Bosustow asked suddenly.
"Hallo! That sounds like our lighthouseman… Nice and fresh, thank you, if that helps... Oh. I see what you mean... Yes. There is a grating. Rather an old one set in distinctly ropey-looking cement, high up in the wall. You don't think...?" The voice was suddenly tinged with a trace of hope.
"We haven't time to think. We must go," Ernie yelled. "See you."
"I don't want to be a bore," the imprisoned man called, and there was a break in his voice, "but... the sand is pretty low. How much time is there left?"
The girl looked at her watch and caught her breath. "Eleven minutes."
"Eleven minutes. Oh... well, the best of Cornish luck to you."
But the man and the girl were already pelting down the tunnel, to leave the prisoner alone with his solitude and his despair.
"What is it?" April hissed when they were out of earshot. "How...?"
"Old air shaft I suddenly remembered," Ernie panted as he ran. "The smugglers had to put it in... otherwise things went bad... kept their food and provisions there."
"But, Ernie..." The girl dragged him to a halt. "If we have to go all the way back, and then return on the surface to find your shaft in the dark — we'll never make it. You know it took us fourteen minutes just to get here."
He was already running again. "'Course not... There's a way out just round the corner here... if I remember rightly..."
There were eight and a quarter minutes left when they burst out of a clump of bushes and felt the cool night wind on their cheeks. Stars pricked the sky overhead, but the moon had disappeared behind a bank of cloud to the west. Immediately above them, red Lamps glared fiercely two hundred feet from the ground. Farther down the slope of the moor, lighted windows marked the site of a clump of low buildings.
"Good heavens!" April breathed. "This is the main mast. Do the military people know there's a warren of passages with an exit inside their closely-guarded perimeter?"
"Reckon not," the boy chuckled. "But I guess that's how our friend reached a lot of his s
ecrets. How much time now?"
"Seven and a half," she reminded him urgently.
"Should be in the middle of that patch of furze over there no, not this one: the one just beyond that boulder!
"Watch out!... Ah! Ernie was right!... Here we are, my beauty..."
He was holding aside a branch of gorse and staring with evident delight at what April at first thought was a large rabbit hole.
"There?" she asked incredulously. "Down there?"
He nodded. "Slants down at an angle of forty-five degrees. If we go feet first, and the grating's as insecure as I remember, I may be able to push it out into the room with my heels and then we can drop through. You'm best take off that sheep skin: the shaft's only eighteen inches square...
There were six minutes left before the hourglass was exhausted and Wright's contraption blew them all sky high when April lowered herself into the burrow after the boy and began wriggling downwards on her back. Of all the under ground journeys she had undergone that night, the twenty-odd feet of the slanting airshaft was immeasurably the worst. For the first few feet, dust, wet earth, pebbles and nameless things that moved were all about her face, threatening to suffocate her. After that, the conduit was carved in the solid rock and she was aware of nothing but coldness, damp, hardness, and the remorseless pressure of thousand of tons of earth, the thickness between her and the man-made steel structure which might at any minute, with her and the earth and the man bound in the cell somewhere below them, go howling skywards in a million fragments. At any minute? In four and a quarter minutes, to be precise.
The passage became so narrow that she could no longer raise her hands from her sides; they were pinioned as effectively as if she had been in a straightjacket. The darkness was total and absolute, the air stuffing, in the two inches of black space between her nose and the wet rock. And she couldn't take a deep breath because the rock pressed too closely upon her ribs for her to inflate her lungs. She couldn't move back upwards because she had no purchase; all she could do was to inch down into the after the scrabbling noises and gasping breaths that were Ernie.