by Andrew Garve
“It wasn’t, quite. I had to untie it and do without it for the last bit.”
“God! I ought to have my head examined.”
“We’re down, anyway.”
“Oh, sure! Well; let’s see what we’ve got ourselves into.”
They began to move cautiously across the floor of the Funnel Chamber. Though they used both torches together, the illumination was poor and it took them a little time to find the exit on the opposite wall and satisfy themselves that it was the only one. After that they made steady progress down the steep tunnel that Anstey had roped. It was Ben, a yard or two ahead, who heard the first distant murmur of water, and he called a halt to listen.
“This is a hell of a place,” he said soberly. “I wonder how much farther it goes.”
They set off again, but almost at once they came across the second lot of pitons and the second ladder. This time it, took Ben longer to find a loose piece of rock. In the end he managed to prise away a big lump and rolled it into the chasm. They waited, looking at each other. When at last it hit the bottom there was a crash like the roll of thunder drowning the sound of the cascade and setting up terrifying echoes. Ben drew back, aghast.
“Well, I guess this is the end of your Odyssey, baby! It must be all of a hundred feet deep and we’ve no safety line.”
She gazed into the sighing darkness and shuddered. She knew she couldn’t do it—it would be suicide to try.
“Perhaps we’d better go back,” she faltered.
He shone his torch on her face. “Scared to be left?”
“It’s not that. I don’t want you to go down there alone. I—I’d no idea it would be anything like this.”
“It can’t be too bad—he managed it. He’s down there now. Hell, Julie, we’ve come too far to turn back now. We’ve got to get him. I’ll try not to be long.” His torch, swept the broad flat ledge on which they were crouching. “You’ll be okay here, there’s plenty of room …” He broke off with an exclamation. The beam of light had fallen-on a whole pile of stuff—mostly lamps and torches of various types, with a huge stock of spare batteries and a sledge-hammer and something that looked like a rope cradle. Tucked away in a fissure of the wall was a small blue case.
“Look, there’s the radio!” Julie cried.
“Fine—you’ll be able to amuse, yourself! “He bent over the dump and equipped himself with an extra torch and battery. “Right, I’d better get cracking.”
“Take some food, Ben—take the thermos.”
“I won’t need that—there’s plenty of water, by the sound of it.” He stuffed a packet of sandwiches into his jacket pocket. “Now listen, honey. I’ll be as quick as I can, but don’t fret. These heights don’t worry me much, and I’ll watch my step. Look after yourself.”
“I will,” she promised. “Good luck, darling.”
He swung a leg over the ledge, waved to her, and started the long descent.
Chapter Fourteen
Rung by rung he groped his way down the twisting ladder into the inky blackness of the chasm. The vastness of the hole was terrifying; the tumbling water was like a warning in his ears. Only the knowledge that Quilter had passed this way kept him going. If Quilter had done it, he kept telling himself, so could he. All the same, he felt scared—not so much by the depth as by the utter remoteness of the place. The one thing that cheered him was the fact that he hadn’t Julie’s safety to worry about any longer. That more than halved the anxiety. And being on his own would enormously simplify the meeting with Quilter—if he should ever find him.
He had been on the ladder for almost ten minutes when at last he touched down in a patch of wet clay. Spray from the cascade soaked him. He gazed up into the vaulted darkness and waved his torch in case Julie should be watching from the ledge. Then he began to cast about for Quilter’s trail. His feeble lamp revealed none of the marvels which had held Anstey and Quilter spellbound, but at that moment he neither knew nor cared what he was missing. He took a step or two away from the ladder, shining his torch on the ground. Presently he gave a grunt of satisfaction. The wet floor of the chamber had been churned by repeated journeys into a track of clayey mud and broken stalagmite, which ran beside the stream as unmistakably as though it had been signposted. He followed the footprints, slowing where the ground became uneven, pressing on fast when it levelled out. His eyes were mostly on the way ahead; the only thing that caught his attention in the chamber were some bits of flat wood floating on the surface of a pool. They puzzled him.
Soon he came to the high narrow tunnel which carried the stream out of the chamber. Here, too, there were signs of much coming and going. The floor was scarred with the scratches of nailed boots and littered with snapped-off calcite fragments. He strode quickly along the passage, oppressed by the fantastic extent of the pothole and anxious only to get to the end of his journey. He crossed the third chamber with barely a pause and plunged on, still following the tracks, until he emerged into a smaller cave and was brought up sharp by a blank rock face. The stream, he saw, trickled away under a chaos of huge boulders which, judging by their bright colouring, had only recently broken away from the mass above. Where the water ran under the choke a pile of wood and debris had collected. Not far away there was a black circle of charred wood fragments on the rock floor. Quilter must have brought the wood down to keep himself warm.
Lacking any helpful diagram, Ben searched without much confidence for some other exit. It almost seemed that this was the end of the road. He began to wonder if he had passed his quarry in one of the larger chambers without. realising it. The thought troubled him—he didn’t like the idea that Quilter might be behind him, with Julie alone up there on the ledge. He stood listening, hoping for some indication of a presence, some scraping of a boot or clatter of a stone, some beckoning gleam of fight. There was nothing—the only movement of any sort was that of the gently running stream. He clambered a little way up the rock face and swept it with his torch. He was on the point of deciding that he’d better go back when the beam revealed a possible opening.
He scrambled up to it and peered in. At first he refused to believe that this narrow pipe was a continuation of the pothole and that he would have to go through it, but as he flashed; the light he saw that the sandy floor had been scoured as, though by the passage of a body and when he looked more closely he found the toe-marks of nailed boots. It was incredible, but Quilter must be in there.
Ben went back to the stream and gulped some water and then he sat down to eat a sandwich and smoke a cigarette. He hoped that if he waited a while, Quilter would come out. Time passed, and nothing happened. Presently he knew he would have to go in after him. He wished profoundly that he hadn’t let Julie talk him into this foolhardy search. It was a job for experts. If he wasn’t careful he would get himself into a hell of a jam—literally a jam, he told himself ruefully, thinking of the tiny aperture. Well, he’d got to go through with it now—he couldn’t possibly go back to Julie and tell her he’d failed. He picked up his torch and once more climbed the face.
His misgivings increased rapidly as he entered the pipe. He was broader in the shoulders than Quilter, and he soon realised he’d been wrong in supposing that he could go whenever Quilter went. As he writhed forward foot by foot he had to keep his unprotected head well down to avoid the jagged points of rock that jutted from the roof, and he felt his clothes catching and ripping on the walls as he squirmed between them.
Just short of the narrowest part, he stopped. Ahead, he could see that the pipe twisted. He felt certain he could never get through. He made one last effort, inching his body forward until he could go no farther. So that was that—he’d reached his limit. Not even for Julie could he change his shape! He switched off his torch to save the battery and lay fiat, his head on his outstretched arms, relaxing after his efforts. He’d have a short breather, he decided, and then back out of this hell-hole before he got stuck for good.
As he subsided into silence, he caught the faintest mur
mur of sound from the pipe ahead. At first he wasn’t sure—his ears could have deceived him. Then it grew louder, resolving itself unmistakably into the scraping of a body through the pipe. It was Quilter!—he was coming out. Ben lay still, wondering if there’d ever been an encounter like this before. In a few moments the blackness ahead became illuminated as the rays of Quilter’s lamp lit up the rock wall at the bend of the passage. The scraping was much louder now, the light much stronger. Suddenly a blinding beam fell full on Ben, momentarily dazzling him.
For Quilter, the shock was unnerving. He drew in his breath in a sudden hiss of fear and his helmet clanged against the roof as he jerked back.
Ben switched on his own torch. At once he understood why Julie had been so upset by the apparition in the cottage. The change in Quilter’s appearance was staggering. His face was ashen, his cheeks hollow and bony, his eye sockets deeply sunken. A ragged beard covered his chin. If Ben hadn’t known who the man was, he would never have taken him for the sprightly, youthful, sunburned figure whom he had met in the Dordogne so short a time ago. Only the bright intelligent eyes were the same.
For a couple of seconds, neither of the men spoke. Quilter showed no sign of recognition; he lay motionless, staring, as though he couldn’t believe what he saw.
It was Ben who broke the silence. “Hello, Quilter. I guess I startled you.”
“Who are you?”
“Benson Traill—remember, we met in France?”
The eyes gleamed. “What the devil are you doing here?”
“Looking for you.”
“How did you find this place?”
“Look, Quilter, let’s get out of here and then talk. It’s a damn silly spot for a discussion.”
Quilter looked as though he hadn’t even heard. “Tell me how you found it?”
Ben’s shoulders contracted in a shrug. “Okay, if it’ll make you any happier. You know a man named Anstey?”
“Yes,” said Quilter.
“Well, the police found a plan of this cave in his wallet.”
“That’s impossible!”
“It happened. The wallet was washed up on the beach, some place near here.”
Slowly, the look of disbelief faded from Quilter’s face. “I see,” he said in a toneless voice. “So Anstey was right about the stream.”
Ben couldn’t make anything of that. “Is Anstey dead?” he asked.
“Oh, yes—he’s dead.”
Ben was staggered by his nonchalance. “There’s a sort of idea around that you may have had something to do with his death. Did you?”
“In a way. I can tell you exactly what happened.”
“Keep it till later, we’ll suffocate in this passage. Besides, Julie’s waiting back there at the top of the big cave.”
“I’d sooner tell you now while I’ve got the chance—I wouldn’t like it to be thought that I’d murdered the man. You see, Anstey came down with me to explore this place. There was a sudden storm overhead and he got trapped in what used to be a tunnel—that place where the stream runs under the boulders. I could have saved him, but I was a coward and ran for my life. Afterwards I was afraid someone might get to know I’d abandoned him, so I tried to bide all the traces of our association. And that’s really the whole story about Anstey.”
It was Ben’s turn to stare. “You mean it was just an accident?”
“Yes.”
“Then all I can say is you’ve been a damn fool hiding down here. Hell, you’re not the only guy that’s been scared. Where’s his body?”
“It’s still in the tunnel, but the place is all blocked up now. I didn’t want anyone to find it, ever, so I brought down some explosive and blew up the entrance.”
“Christ! You must have got yourself into a state. I still don’t see, though, why you’ve been hiding all this time. What was the point? You must have known you’d have to account for yourself sooner or later.”
“Not necessarily.”
“I don’t get you.”
“I don’t suppose you do,” said Quilter. “It really doesn’t matter.”
“It matters that you’ve been doing a disappearing trick. Julie’s almost off her head with worry. The whole country’s looking for you—do you know that? I must say, looking at you now, that it’s kind of hard to believe, but I gather you’d probably be a Minister of the Crown by now if you’d been around.”
“Really?” Quilter couldn’t have sounded more indifferent. “That’s ironical, I must say. When did the message come?” “Oh, about a week ago, I guess.”
“A week ago. H’m. I wonder if it would have made any difference if I’d known? I don’t suppose so. I’ve been a bit out of touch, you know—I brought the radio down to keep a check on what was happening, but it wouldn’t work properly at this depth. Even up on the ledge I could only get a murmur. Ah, well, it’s all the same now.”
“It’s not all the same whether we stifle here or not. If you ask me, Quilter, you’re ill—very ill. The sooner you’re above ground and being looked after, the better. Come on, let’s clear out.”
“You can go,” said Quilter, “I’m not leaving here.”
“Of course you are. You can’t stay down here—you’re all in. You’ll die, man.”
“I’ve no choice now—I must stay.”
“That’s damn nonsense. If you didn’t kill Anstey deliberately …”
“Anstey? Oh, he’s nothing to do with it.”
“No? Then what the hell are you talking about?”
Quilter gave a little smile, ghastly in its incongruity. “I’ll tell you, Traill, if you like. Do you happen to know where we are?”
“I know we’re in a goddam awful spot.” “Do you know the location of the place we’re in?”
“How would I? Somewhere in Cumberland, England. Why?”
“We’re almost exactly underneath the biggest atomic plant outside America, and in about five minutes I intend to blow it to rubble.”
Chapter Fifteen
Ben slowly shook his head. “Look, bud, you need a doctor. Now come on out—you’ll feel better when you get up top.”
Quilter gave another of his ghastly smiles. “You don’t believe me, do you?”
“You’re darned right I don’t!”
“It’s the truth, though … Here, perhaps this will convince you.” He twisted round on to his side and with great difficulty succeeded in passing something through from behind him. Ben saw the ends of a coil of wire—and something else.
Quilter held the object in front of him. “Do you know what this is?”
“Sure,” said Ben. “It’s a plunger for detonating explosives.”
“Exactly. You’re familiar with such things, of course—it took me some time to find out about them. However, an intelligent man can soon pick up a new skill. The other end of the wire, by the way, is already connected to the detonator. I was bringing the plunger out to a safer place—it’s going to be a very big explosion.”
Ben looked at the plunger, and then rather helplessly at Quilter. This was the first time he’d ever had to handle a man who was quite so obviously round the bend.
“Of course,” Quilter went on, “I had a bit of a job over the explosive.” He seemed anxious to talk after his weeks of solitude. “There wasn’t any difficulty about the gelignite and detonators and plunger—I got those from a shed on my own land—things they’d been using to blow up tree roots. But I had to steal the bulk of the stuff from an army dump near Lancaster—I did that while Julie was in France.”
Ben stiffened. What was that he’d read in the paper about a theft of explosives from an army dump? Yesterday, it was—but maybe they’d only just found out. It had been Lancaster, or some place very like it. Was it conceivable …?
“Actually it was much easier than I’d expected,” Quilter continued. “The explosive was stored most conveniently in wooden boxes in a forest by the roadside, quite unguarded.
The Army’s gift to saboteurs! I happened to know about i
t because a colleague of mine in the House was kind enough to write to The Times complaining. So I drove over and took my pick. I could have had shells, grenades, anything. I chose land-mines—anti-tank mines. I had to make a lot of journeys, but it’s amazing what the station wagon holds. I filled it up, night after night, and by dawn each morning they were safely hidden away underground. I flatter myself it was a most efficient operation. I lowered the boxes down the precipices in a sort of improvised sling, broke them open in the big cave, and floated the mines downstream on the bits of wood. It was really extraordinarily simple—getting them through here was the most tedious part of the business. Anyway, they’re all stacked up there now behind me—hundreds of them, perhaps thousands. I don’t know how many, I lost count. And the explosive force of each one, Traill, is sufficient to destroy a tank. Think of it!”
Ben ran his tongue over his dry lips. “You can’t be serious!”
“Indeed I am. I assure you everything’s been attended to down to the last detail. Anstey made a most conscientious survey of the cave—it was looking at his plan of the place, after I got back from France, that gave me the idea. When I superimposed it on a local map and discovered that the end of this passage was right underneath the plant, and not far underneath, the temptation was irresistible. Mind you, I had to do some digging—that was the hardest bit of all. I had to drive passages up at a slant through the sandstone and I’m not used to pick-and-shovel work.” He held out his hands, and Ben saw that they were filthy and calloused, with black broken nails. “Still, I got where I wanted in the end. I had to work night and day, but it was worth it. In some places the mines are actually stacked right among the concrete footings of the plant—I didn’t dare to go any higher in case someone might hear me. It’s rather amusing to think of all the trouble they went to to put a double security fence around the plant, isn’t it?”
“Sure! The whole thing’s a hell of a joke. God, it’s unbelievable! You can’t know what you’re doing.”
“Oh, but I do. You see, Traill, my loyalties aren’t yours. You’re for American imperialism, I don’t doubt. I’m on the other side—I have been for years. I’ve been a secret communist since 1942. Not a very good one, perhaps—I don’t take very kindly to discipline, especially when it involves patience. In all these years the people I’m in touch with have given me only a couple of trivial assignments—hardly worth the effort of lying to Julie when I had to go away. The idea, you see, was to use me as a long-term investment. I was to be an orthodox member of the Labour Party, a respectable politician. Then one day I’d be offered a big job in the Government and I’d be able to operate from a key position. Well, I got tired of waiting—I even began to wonder if I was really trusted. And this Anstey affair upset me. I wanted to do something. I wanted to get into the fight. Suddenly here was my chance—by pure accident, by a piece of fortune that would never happen again. I couldn’t turn it down. I knew it would be the biggest stroke of peace-time sabotage in the history of the world.”