Kate half-lifted, half-pushed, and Ronnie, clutching his friend now under the armpits, tugged until Sidney was through, lying on a floor of broken stones and bricks, coughing and weakly shedding tears, but through.
“Gosh, Miss!” said Ronnie, stooping and looking under the ceiling-arch to where Kate crouched on the rubbly ground and prepared to follow. “Sid doesn’t weigh much!”
“That’s a good thing,” gasped Kate, struggling head first and at full length through the gap, to find herself lying beside Sidney on the hard, unwelcoming stones.
“That’s a good thing,” said she picking herself up, her heart expanding with joy because at last she was able to stand upright, “because we may have to carry him before we’ve finished. I’ll take your net, Sid. I’ll take care of it. You hang on to me. We’re nearly home now.”
Ronnie gave her an odd, intelligent look, half-hopeful, half-sceptical. Clearly he would have liked to think that her remark was addressed to him as well as to Sidney, and was true.
They were standing in a narrow circular shaft, rather like the one at Llanhalo which had led down to the passage-entrance, but half-filled in with a floor of broken stone and brick that reached up to within two feet of the arch of the entrance-way to the tunnel. A flight of narrow stone stairs, this time of spiral form, ran round the narrow well and finished some three feet above Kate’s head. Above that, the shaft narrowed to little more than a chimney’s size. Undoubtedly, this must be the other end of Llanhalo secret passage.
This end had been filled in with stone and debris, probably long after its time of usefulness was past, but some property-owner who did not care for mysterious secrets and relics of the dangerous past and tunnels down which people could, after all, come as well as go. Thank Heaven the debris had sunk and slipped down the sloping tunnel in the course of years and made room for passengers again, or Kate and the boys might have found themselves, after all their pains, faced with impenetrable mass of broken stone and been forced to return to the perils that awaited them at the Llanhalo end. Kate wondered if Gideon Atkins ever struggled along so far as this, whether he knew what awaited them at the top of that flight of stone steps; or whether, content with using the central chamber as a prison, he had abandoned further researches when he found the tunnel half-filled with debris, deciding that he was safe from discovery from the forgotten and deserted further end?
At the top of that flight of steps, what awaited them? The lone hillside? Or some ancient ruin whose connection with Llanhalo Abbey had been long forgotten? Probably, thought Kate, the latter; for ground level must be about three feet above her head, where the stairs ended, yet the narrow shaft of masonry continued for six feet or so above that. Utterly ignorant of where they would find themselves, they must go up and look for a way out. Well might young Ronnie have looked sceptical to hear her say “We’re nearly home now!”
Once again it seemed expedient that Ronnie should go first, Sidney next, and then Kate. There was no handrail, but Ronnie did not seem to mind, gripping the rough stonework of the shaft with his left hand, and with his right assisting Sidney along behind him. At the top of the stairs, he drew Sidney up to him, and to allow Kate room to emerge upon the top stair, moved into a very narrow passage which seemed to be the only egress from the stairs. Kate, on the top stair, found herself in a narrow circular shaft of rough masonry, with little more than room for one person to stand upright, so much did the stair-shaft narrow above the stair-head. The circular shaft was broken at the stair-head by the narrow space, about eighteen inches wide, through which Ronnie and Sidney had passed. Kate followed them. They were now all three in a narrow passage, or space between two walls, not more than about eight feet long, of which one end gave on to the stair-head and the other end was blocked.
Ronnie and Kate had agreed before coming up the stairs, not to speak to one another until they had made sure of their whereabouts. But Ronnie’s interrogative and amazed look, as he shone his torch up to the cobwebbed grey boards which formed the ceiling of this narrow space, down on the earthen, dusty floor and along to the end where a brick wall, roughly mortared, blocked them in, made Kate break her silence. Sidney stood between them, leaning against the wall, his eyes shut, indifferent to his surroundings, quite exhausted. Kate leaned across him and uttered intensely in Ronnie’s ear:
“There must be a way out of this!”
“I reckon we’ll have to knock the wall down,” said Ronnie, half-ironically, half-trepidantly.
They stood one at each end of the narrow place, and examined it with their torches. One wall was of rough stone, and showed no sign of having, or ever having had, an opening in it. The opposite wall was of timber and brick. The wall-plate was a great timber baulk, white with dust from ancient stone and mortar. Four heavy upright oak timbers, rough-adzed, unstained and pale in colour, supported the beam upon which the ceiling lay. The spaces between these upright timbers were filled with unplastered brick panels, dried mortar bulging between the bricks. Kate remembered what Rosaleen Morrison had told her at the Veault about the timbering of old houses. Heavy upright timbers, close together, with no cross-pieces, meant a very old building.
If there was any way out of this place, it must surely be through the timber and brick wall. But brick is an unyielding substance, and these wall-timbers showed neither crack nor hinge. Kate rapped them with her knuckles. It was like rapping the trunks of great trees.
Kate was beginning to get desperate. The thought of attempting to take Sidney back through the hazards of the underground passage appalled her. There must be a way out here! The air in this little space between two walls was none too good, and their presence seemed to have disturbed age-old dust, which was dry now in her throat and nostrils. When Sidney suddenly opened his eyes and looked at her in a lack-lustre fashion, she was alarmed at the dumb distress of his look. He sighed, and slipped down against the wall, Kate’s arm supporting him, and sat on the wall-plate.
As he did so, and leant his head on his hands, Kate fancied or was it an illusion of her moving torchlight?—that the great upright timber at the back of him shifted slightly outwards at the base. Coaxing and pushing, she induced him to move a little way along the wall-plate and lean against the brick panel. As he did so, it seemed to her certain that the upright timber slipped back into position, level with the bricks.
Playing her torch over it, Kate saw now that the base of this timber was darkened and soiled and a little battered, compared with the others, as if it had frequently in its long life been kicked and pushed at. Ronnie at her side, she knelt down and pressed her weight steadily against it where it adjoined the wall-plate. It gave silently to her push, and as she relaxed pressure, slipped silently back to the vertical. Hinged, or more probably pivoted, at the top, the whole heavy timber hung from the ceiling-plate. The other two uprights were truly morticed into the wall-plate and truly supported the ceiling. This one was a false support, and formed, in fact, the hidden door of the secret place in which the three of them now stood.
Kate switched off her torch and signed to Ronnie to switch off his, and pushed again. Once again, the timber yielded. Kate holding it open, supported on her arm, listened intently. No sound. Absolute darkness.
“I’ll go first, Ronnie,” she said in a low voice. “Then Sidney. Then you.”
Kate had the impression, as she slipped out under the lifted timber, that she was stepping into a large, high, indoor place. It was quite dark, and she hesitated to use her torch. There was smooth stone on the floor: she had touched its cold surface with her finger-tips as she had slipped the wall-plate.
She helped the boys out, and carefully let the timber drop back. It made only a soft thud as it fell into place.
“Where are we?” whispered Ronnie.
“I don’t know,” said Kate irresolutely, fingering her torch, straining her eyes into the darkness, which was as quiet as if it were posted with waiting people. There was a smell of chrysanthemums in the air.
“Shal
l I put on my torch?” asked Ronnie, and before the irresolute Kate could answer, had clicked it on. Its beam fell startlingly and closely across the Jacobean pattern of a linen-covered settee. Kate switched on her torch too, for, if they were going to have a light, they had better have plenty. The smell of chrysanthemums came from a great bunch of them in a terra-cotta jar on an oak table. The lone hillside, the ancient ruins, the barns, faded and departed out of Kate’s fancy. She turned sharply and looked at the broad dark-stained timbers and light-coloured plaster panels of the wall through which they had just come: the wide, open fireplace in which a few burnt-out embers lay: the wide stairs with the turned newel-post and twisted balusters. Then she relaxed and laughed softly, if a little wildly. She could almost have dropped on to the comfortable settee and had her laugh out, with hysterical relief. They were in the hall of the Veault.
“And Mr. Morrison said he was afraid there weren’t any hidey-holes in his house!” she murmured. Ronnie looked at her with dazed, inquiring eyes. “It’s all right, Ronnie. You can relax. Let Sidney lie down on that settee and forget his troubles. We’re with friends.”
Chapter Twenty
On the table, as well as a jar of chrysanthemums was a silver two-branched candlestick. Kate lit the candles, smiling to herself, feeling quite lightheaded with relief from the long strain. The bracket-clock on the high mantel marked twenty minutes past four.
“Where are we, Miss?” asked Ronnie at her elbow. He had helped Sidney to a seat on the settee, murmuring to him and patting him like a horse. Kate met the eager look of his clear grey eyes, and the thought of the dangers he had just been through in her company made her heart contract. She pushed the quiff of dark hair off his eyebrows.
“The Veault. People I know live here. They’ll look after us,” she whispered. “They’re nice. I’m going to wake somebody now. You stay with Sidney. We’ll soon have him in bed.”'
When the relief of their escape from immediate danger had worn off, Kate would be able to reflect on the fact that she had actually succeeded, as she had believed she would succeed, and as very few others had believed she would succeed, in finding Sidney Brentwood.
In a relaxed and almost light-hearted mood she tapped on the door of the small bedroom over the porch in which, she remembered, Rosaleen had said she slept. When there was a responsive rustle and a sigh, she opened the door a little and whispered to the darkness:
“Rosaleen!”
Rosaleen woke with the wary, instant liveliness of an animal.
“Yes? Who is it?”
There was a creak of springs and an upheaval of white sheet in a darkness faintly modified by the square of the uncurtained window.
“Kate Mayhew. I say, Rosaleen—”
Black-out or none, Rosaleen lit a candle and looked round at Kate with great, dark, startled eyes.
“Say, what the—Is anything the matter?”
She looked alarmed, as well she might, and, without waiting for an answer, flinging the bedclothes back, she reached out for her dressing gown.
“I hope I haven’t given you a shock, I tried not to,” prattled Kate in a whisper. “Only I had to wake somebody, and—”
“Yes? Yes?” interrupted Rosaleen, tying the sash of her dressing gown tightly round her waist.
Having made her concession to apology, Kate could not keep the lilt of triumph out of her voice:
“I’ve found Sidney Brentwood, Rosaleen! He’s here!”
Rosaleen’s little fingers froze on her sash.
“What?”
“Yes, only he’s awfully exhausted, poor kid! There’s all sorts of things to tell you, Rosaleen! A secret passage—you know, I told you there was supposed to be one at Llanhalo!”
“Sure you did.”
“Could you possibly give Sidney a bed? He ought to have a doctor in the morning, too. He’s down in the hall. I’ll tell you all about it.”
Rosaleen slowly finished tying the sash of her dressing gown with mechanically-moving fingers.
“Sure, we’ll give him a bed,” she said slowly. Her reactions to surprise were not, after all, as quick as her lively waking would lead one to expect. She seemed a little bemused, as though events were going too fast for her. “Sure we’ll give him a bed,” she repeated. “Is there anyone else with you?”
“Only Ronnie, the kid from Llanhalo. But he’s all right, bless him. It’s only poor little Sidney that wants coddling.”
“And you say you found him in a secret passage! Well for land’s sakes! You go on down, Kate, and see if the bellows’ll get the fire up again! I’ll just wake Auntie and be right down.”
She smiled, her voice rose, fresh and charming, she had become hospitality itself as she hurried Kate out of the room and lit a candle on the landing. Kate had been a little disappointed at Rosaleen’s first reception of the great news. But she reflected as she turned to go downstairs that great news is difficult to assimilate when flung at one without warning as one wakes.
Kate was still carrying under one arm in a bundle the net that Sidney Brentwood had insisted on bringing with him. It was not properly tied, and had become unrolled and somewhat of an impediment during their attempts to find an exit from the hiding-place in the wall: and as she started down the stairs one end dropped loose, and she caught her heel in it. Putting her torch down on the stair, she paused to extricate herself and to roll the end of the net up again. Since it was Sidney’s dearest treasure, she must be careful of it. Sidney, when he was restored once more to his happy and active life, should not ask in vain for his handiwork. Rolling the net up in the semi-darkness, seeing over the slant of the balustrade, the soft glow light of the candles she had lit, and hearing the chirpy and soft little voice of Ronnie encouraging Sidney on the settee, Kate smiled to herself. Half-an-hour ago nothing seemed to matter for herself and Sidney and Ronnie but to get to safety. But now she could afford to dwell again on little happinesses, and to think it important that a boy should not lose his little treasure of handiwork.
The smile was still on her lips when she heard a low voice in one of the rooms off the landing—and her mind had to register carefully the fact that it was Rosaleen’s voice, for, although it was Rosaleen’s voice, it was speaking quite out of Rosaleen’s part in this drama. It said:
“That blasted kid’s escaped!”
The smile became fixed on Kate’s face. She could feel it, after a second tightening her facial muscles. That blasted kid’s escaped! No stretch of license could read the feelings of a friend into that choice of words. But it was not so much the words, as the tone, bitter, angry and agitated, in which they were spoken, which paralysed Kate.
“It’s that bloody girl,” went on the voice. “I knew there’d be trouble! We ought to have got rid of the damn kid as soon as she turned up. Now what? Now what?”
As if the overheard question, which was uttered in a voice of anguished fury, had been addressed to her, Kate came suddenly to herself; and without waiting even to call herself the fool she suddenly knew she was, she had seized off her shoes— for shoes were noisy on these wooden stairs and stone floors —and was down in the hall.
“Quick, Ronnie! We must go! Quick, quick!”
The child’s look, startled, wide-eyed, dismayed, touched Kate’s heart and irritated her both at once. He had been sitting, curled like a little dog, in the corner of the large settee, with Sidney leaning against him. She shook him impatiently.
“Quick! There’s danger here! The back door! I’ll show you!”
Sidney, thank Heaven, was docile, not obstinate, in his weakness, and only sighed when Kate roused him and walked him to the door. It was an old door, probably one of the original doors of the sixteenth century house, with a great old wooden bolt as well as a more modern chain and socket. Ronnie’s small fingers could not manage the bolt, and he looked at Kate in anguish, and she quickly handed him the torch and tackled the door herself. All was still quiet in the hall. No one had come down yet. No doubt Rosaleen thought that Kat
e was innocently blowing up the embers and awaiting her hospitable hosts.
But as the bolt grated softly back, and the chain, flung dangling, struck against the door-frame, a voice behind Kate said softly:
“Why, Kate, where are you going?”
It was Rosaleen, who had approached down the back stairs and through the kitchen. She had put on slacks and a blouse. Perhaps it was the moccasins on her feet that had made her approach so silent. In the light of Ronnie’s torch, without her make-up, she looked much older than by daylight, and at the same time even more fragile and appealing. The expression on her face was one of simple astonishment.
Kate was at a loss.
“Sidney wanted air,” she improvised. “He nearly fainted. I thought we'd go out for a bit.”
“Why, of course! But—without your shoes, Kate?”
“I’ve blistered my heel.”
“That’s too bad! I must find you some slippers.”
The wide door swung open to Kate’s hand on the latch.
“I’ll take the kiddie out for you,” said Rosaleen. “You can’t go out without your shoes.”
I think I’d better, he knows me,” said Kate hastily, retaining hold of Sidney’s arm. Rosaleen had put her little hand on the boy’s shoulder. Kate felt quite a horror of that little hand with its long painted fingernails: it lay there so lightly, yet looked as if at any moment it might sink, like a claw, in the boy’s shoulder. Kate knew that Rosaleen had no intention of letting them go. Kate’s only advantage was, that Rosaleen did not know that she knew this.
“Then we’ll both go,” said Rosaleen with a little laugh. But it seemed to Kate that she was holding Sidney where he was, and that her laugh lifted her upper lip stiffly. While Kate was wondering what to do, a little tug came at her sleeve. It was Ronnie. His lips were pursed in a soundless whistling, and he was carelessly allowing his torch-light to play about here and there; but a flick of his eyelids and his torch together directed Kate’s glance towards Rosaleen Morrison’s other hand, her right one. And Kate saw that what she had taken to be a torch in that hand was not a torch at all, but a small pistol.
There May Be Danger Page 19