Ernie set his mouth in a glum silence and said nothing.
It was in Oliver’s mind to wonder about Dr Harold Spenlow. Was it just his pleasant way to discover your pet corn, and then stamp on it, or was there some purpose in his talk? And where did he stand in the politics of this underworld? Much too soon to say, too soon even to hazard a guess. He thought he would see what he could get from Ernie.
They had emerged upon the low gallery of an old mine. The roof cleared the tallest head by a bare foot. The walls were rough, but the floor had been levelled. It was quite well lighted.
Oliver said, “Was this part of the old mine? It looks different.”
“Oh, it’s different all right,” said Ernie. He seemed pleased to change the subject, and glad to talk again. “That’s one of the old mine workings where we live, but hereabouts they run into a lot of caves and such like. I expect you’ve seen the ones in the Cheddar Gorge, and at Wookey. I went there once on my holiday when I was about sixteen, and I thought them something wonderful, but they’re not a patch on what we’ve got here. Why, these run, one way and another, more miles than you’d believe.”
“All the way to Hillick?”
Ernie’s frown came down again.
“I didn’t say that.”
“No—Captain Loddon said it.” Dr Spenlow’s tone was now extremely affable. “Captain Loddon said it, and Captain Loddon was perfectly right. An old mine here, and old mines at Hillick St Agnes and Hillick St Anne’s, and between them our unrivalled, our unexampled, our truly magnificent caves. Don’t be so shy about it, Ernie. Why not respond to a natural thirst for knowledge?”
“Mocking devil!” thought Oliver. He said aloud,
“How do you keep your ventilation going?”
Ernie relaxed. This was a subject on which he felt free to talk.
“Shafts,” he said—“like they have in mines. Most of them were here already—they only wanted clearing out, and when you get farther in there’s a system of fans. It’s quite simple, and it’s never given any trouble. Of course Uncle got a really good man on to it.”
“He means,” said Dr Spenlow, “that Mr Amos Rennard, who is our beneficent dictator, spared no pains in kidnapping a highly competent electrical engineer. His motto has always been ‘Get the best—it pays in the end.’ That, of course, is why I am here. We are mostly very carefully hand-picked, but you, I gather, are in rather a different category—something more in the nature of a gate-crasher—our first, I believe. It will be interesting to see what happens to you.”
“Now look here, Doctor,” said Ernie.
Dr Spenlow laughed.
“All right, all right—I am on my best behaviour. We approach the Presence.”
A pair of wrought-iron gates barred their way. The tracery showed black against a glare of light beyond. Someone on the other side called out, “Who goes there?” whereupon Ernie went forward and gave a password which they did not hear. The gates were swung back, and there appeared in the opening an enormous negro in a very odd uniform. It was made of scarlet cloth, with the baggy trousers of the Zouave, a belted Russian blouse, and a commissionaire’s flat cap. The man stood to attention as they passed in.
CHAPTER XXI
The gates were sunk in a recess. Oliver had to take a dozen steps forward before he could really see what lay beyond. That it was a hall of some size had been, of course, apparent, but as he came clear of the bay which held the gates, he stood still in amazement. The place was not only large, it was vast—a great natural cavern stretching away into the distance and rising to dim heights above the huge arc-lamps which lighted it. The place was the most extraordinary mixture of natural majesty and crude modernity, a blend of the cathedral and the factory—virgin rock and arc-lights—rough unhewn contours—bright jazz carpets in shades of orange, emerald and brick—walls gilded to a height of twenty feet—gilded but not smoothed, so that the inequalities of the stone caught the light and flung it sparkling back. The effect was barbaric in the extreme. The light, the space, the height above them, gave Oliver a feeling of dizziness. It was as if he had stepped on to some unknown plane where all the values were different. The sound of blaring music was taken up and repeated from the echoing rock. A wild rhythm beat its way through a crescendo and then suddenly ceased. A voice shouted at stentorian pitch, “That is the end of our programme of dance music,” and for a moment the great place fell quiet.
Dr Spenlow broke the silence with his laugh.
“In the loss of everything else, we still have the B.B.C.,” he said.
It seemed to Oliver the maddest thing that had happened yet.
They began to walk up the horrible carpet with the arc-lights picking out every detail of its infernal pattern. Oliver’s head hurt him a good deal. He had never felt less inclined for jazz. It seemed quite a long walk to what Dr Spenlow had called “the presence.”
At the far end of the hall, raised by four steps, was a kind of dais—only the word dais suggests something small, and this must have been forty feet across. The steps which led up to it, and the dais itself, were carpeted in crimson. In the middle of this expanse of crimson stood a large gilt arm-chair with six negro guards on either side of it, and in the arm-chair there sat quite the most amazing figure that Oliver had ever beheld. He didn’t know quite what he had expected Amos Rennard to be like, but he certainly hadn’t expected what he saw. The dictator of this under-world must have weighed a generous eighteen stone. There was no grey in the opulent wave of his fiery hair or in the flaming masses of the beard which hung down over his knees. The hair did stop short of his shoulders, but the beard appeared to go on for ever. He sat there on his gilt chair with its crimson velvet cushions in a bulging pair of grey flannel trousers and a dressing-gown of red and blue silk. His beard kept the secret of whether he wore a collar or not.
As Oliver mounted the steps, a pair of shrewd, twinkling grey eyes were fixed upon him—little piggy eyes under bristling red brows. Oliver had never seen so much red hair in his life. Tufts of it projected from the wide nostrils. Sporadic hairs encroached upon the sanguine cheeks. The backs of the hands were covered with a thick growth. What a king beaver! The words slipped through his mind as he stood a couple of yards away and gave Amos Rennard back stare for stare. Unlike most fat men, the Old Fox had a hearty voice.
“Well, Ernie my boy,” he said, “and how’s the youngster? Going strong? Good! Harold, you run away to your lab—you’re not on in this scene. Yes, I know I sent you, but that was because they said his head was stove in. I can’t see much wrong with it myself, so you can run away and play. Ernie, you needn’t wait neither. Two’s company and three’s none. You go and put the wireless on nice and soft. Switch off the amplifier. Captain Loddon and me will be talking, and we’ll want to be able to hear what we say.” He jerked his great head round to right and left and dismissed the guards.
“Get down into the hall! You’re off duty for half an hour. And now, Captain Loddon—I’m very pleased to see you, and I’d like you to sit down and have a talk.”
The guards melted away. Dr Spenlow turned on his heel, and Ernie followed him. Oliver sat down on a horrid little gilded chair, and wondered what sort of polite conversation he was supposed to make.
“Well, well, well—” said Amos Rennard. “And what kind of wind brought you here, Captain Loddon?”
“I think you know that,” said Oliver.
“Philip stole your girl, didn’t he? You’d better have put up with it and got yourself another. Lots more up there, but not so many down under, so that’s where the shoe pinches. It’s a pity you didn’t stay at home.”
Oliver said nothing. The Old Fox pulled at his beard.
“Well, I’m pleased to see you anyhow, and I daresay we can make some use of you if you don’t set out to give trouble. We don’t waste time over people who give trouble down here, you know. If they don’t fit in they have to go.”
“Where?” said Oliver.
Amos Rennard gazed p
iously at the distant roof.
“That depends on their way of life. We do our best. The Reverend Luke is very particular about the funeral service.” He twinkled cheerfully at Oliver. “No need to talk about funerals—yet. We’ve all got to come to ’em, but no need to hurry things on. You mind your step and make yourself useful, and I’ll hold Philip off you. See?”
Oliver saw. He said,
“I don’t quite know what use I could be.”
“Well, you can talk to me for a start. I like to hear how things are going on up there. Philip and Mark, they come and go of course, and Ernie too. They’re the only ones I can trust, being my own flesh and blood. But it’s not like hearing the news from a stranger. Philip and Mark and Ernie, they’re not interested in the things that interest me, so when anyone fresh comes down under I always have him up here for a talk. So that’s the first way you can make yourself useful—you can talk.”
Oliver couldn’t help laughing.
“What in the world do you want me to talk about, Mr Rennard?”
The little piggy eyes brightened.
“Start by telling me how you know my name, young man.”
Oliver laughed again, carelessly.
“Well, you made a bit of a splash in the world, didn’t you?”
The Old Fox grinned.
“I should just about think I did. But it’s a long time ago—ten years is a long time. They still talk about me?”
“I shouldn’t be here if they didn’t,” said Oliver.
“And what do you mean by that, young man?” The little eyes were blank and steady. They weren’t giving anything away.
“Well,” said Oliver, “a friend of mine was talking about you—the case, you know, and how you tried to get away by aeroplane. He didn’t believe you were dead. He said they’d found the pilot’s body after the smash, but not yours, and he didn’t believe you were dead. He’d made a regular study of the whole thing, and he’d got amazingly near the truth—near enough to set me looking for you.”
He had glanced away. Now, at a sound, he looked back to see Amos Rennard’s face convulsed with rage. So sudden was the transition from an easy good nature to this mask of rage that it fairly took his breath.
“Near enough—near enough—” The words came on a deep growl. And then suddenly oath followed oath in a torrent of language as foul as Oliver had ever heard. “Near enough! I’ll teach him to come nosing after me, blast him! By this, and by that, and by the other, I’ll teach him! If he’s near enough, he’ll come nearer still, and I’ll teach him same as we taught the poor fool, the blank, blank, blank dashed fool, who came messing about the shaft at Hillick St Anne’s, blast him! Dashed, blank clever he thought himself, I’ll be bound! He heard the dynamo, you see—or thought he heard it—and came back to make sure. And they picked him up at the bottom of the cliff with a broken neck—and lucky to get off with that.” He leaned forward suddenly, shot out a hairy hand, and caught Oliver by the forearm. “What do you know about John Smith? Here—out with it!”
The man was a human conflagration. The redness of his face, his hair, his beard, the heat of his gross body and clutching hand, affected Oliver. He felt giddy and sick. It was like being pawed by a gorilla. He must be careful what he said … it didn’t matter what he said … it didn’t matter, because they were doomed already—he and Rose Anne. In the midst of his physical distress his mind had a moment of fearful clarity. He had butted in upon Amos Rennard’s private kingdom. Amos Rennard would squeeze him dry and throw him away.… That was a mixed metaphor. The image of the gorilla cropped up again—great hairy hands clutching at an orange, squeezing out the pulp, and chucking the rind away. Through the mist of his giddiness he heard himself repeat the name of John Smith.
Amos Rennard said it again with a snarl.
“John Smith—that’s what I said! What do you know about him?”
Oliver heard his own voice a long way off.
“He had a bicycle accident—”
“And you believe that?”
His head throbbed horribly, but the mist was clearing. He said,
“No, I don’t think so.”
He was released. The little piggy eyes stared.
“How do you mean, you don’t think so?”
“Well, just that. I looked at the place, and I didn’t think anyone in his senses would have tried to ride a bicycle down a track like that.”
Amos Rennard sat back.
“I’ve no business to lose my temper—it’s bad for me. Do you know what I weigh? Eighteen stone and a half last Monday.” He shook his head. “No, I’m too stout to lose my temper, and I’ve got to be careful—the doctor says so. So you knew about John Smith breaking his neck? You’d be bound to of course—I’d forgotten that. But you didn’t know why he broke his neck—you didn’t know he’d heard one of our dynamos.”
“No,” said Oliver, “I didn’t know that.”
Amos Rennard looked at him sharply.
“It was all Ralston’s fault. I always told him he’d got that dynamo too near the shaft, and he said there wasn’t anyone to hear it, and he’d got it where he wanted it and he wasn’t going to put it anywhere else. You can take a bit of notice about Ralston, young man. Obstinate—that’s what he was—a good engineer, but pigheaded. Well, he had to go.”
Oliver said, “Where did he go?” because there was a pause and it was the easiest thing to say.
“I wouldn’t like to say. We had his funeral a week ago. He’d got above himself, and it don’t matter how clever they are, if they get above themselves they’ve got to go. We’ll be put to all the trouble and expense of getting another. That’s the worst of your clever ones, they don’t care a dash what trouble they put you to, or how much you’re out of pocket over them.” His red bristles drew together in a frown. “We’ve got to have someone good,” he said. “Philip’ll have to look into it. Well now, you haven’t told me how you got here, and that’s a thing I’d like to know.”
Oliver told him quite baldly. It didn’t seem to matter what he said or did. Whether he pleased the Old Fox or put him in a rage, the end would be the same. He could think of no way in which he could become indispensable, and only the indispensable had any future here.
His head was getting worse all the time. Once or twice he did not know whether he had spoken or not. The mist got thicker. Amos Rennard’s voice came booming through it.
“Hold up, young man—what’s the matter?”
Oliver put a hand to his head and touched it gingerly. It didn’t seem to belong to him at all. He said in a slow, careful voice,
“I don’t know. Can I have something to drink?”
A rift in the mist showed him a red, reproving face.
“Not if you mean alcohol, you can’t, young man. Now a good cup of cocoa, or tea—I’ve no objection to tea.”
Oliver heard himself asking for tea, heard the hall echo with a stentorian order, and for a moment or two heard no more, because the mist seemed to have got into his ears. When it cleared, he was being treated to a lecture on the advantages of total abstinence.
“How do you suppose we’d manage down here if we’d liquor knocking about? Keep ’em sober, keep ’em safe—that’s been my motto all along. And how are you going to keep ’em sober if there’s liquor knocking about where they can get at it? No, no, no, young man, we’re all blue-ribbon down here, and that ought to be a great consolation to the Reverend Luke. When he gets low in his mind I put him up to preach a real good rousing temperance sermon—none of your namby-pamby pulpit essays, but real good meaty stuff with plenty of hell fire about it. It don’t hurt us, and it does him a power of good. That’s the type of sermon you want, something that makes you feel good. You haven’t met the Reverend Luke yet, have you? He’s not a bad fellow, and he’s a pretty good preacher. Of course there’s a sameness about sitting under the one minister Sunday in, Sunday out, but I don’t see my way to getting round it. It’d make a bit too much talk if too many of our ministers
went missing, so we just have to put up with the Reverend Luke.”
Someone brought tea in a china pot with a gay pattern of roses on it. The cup was a satisfactorily large one. Oliver drank thirstily.
The conversation had become a monologue. He listened with imperfect attention to Amos Rennard’s views on such diverse subjects as education, religion, horse-racing, and the culture of mushrooms, Amos thought children were brought up all wrongly. If he had his time again, he’d bring his up differently, but Oliver did not discover wherein the difference was to lie. Religion he liked strong, with plenty of pulpit thumping, and flaming penalties for all the sins to which he himself was not inclined. Horse-racing was the parent of betting, and betting was the curse of the country. “Believe it or not, young man, I’ve never had a bet on anything in my life.” What the Americans call “Playing the markets,” did not apparently come under this heading. Mushroom culture was an interminable topic. Oliver leaned his head on his hand and stopped listening.
At long last the audience was ended.
He walked beside Ernie through lighted passages which rocked beneath his feet till they came to a room with a bed in it. Oliver sat down on the edge of the bed and looked stupidly at his feet. He ought to take his shoes off, but he seemed to have forgotten how. He stared at the laces until Ernie’s big hands interrupted his view. His shoes were taken off, his coat and trousers were taken off, he was pushed down upon the pillow and covered. The light went out with a click. He went to sleep.
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