After a while the floor began to slope gently downwards, and the earth was replaced by a fine gravel. The sound of their steps became a queer metallic chunk. The walls now bulged out in concave fashion on either side of them, and the light of the torches still failed to discover the roof. On several occasions rats or other small animals scuttled quickly across their path.
James was of the opinion that they had been tramping for the best part of an hour before the first sign of danger loomed in front. It was a tiny point of light far ahead, staring like a luminous eye out of the vault of darkness.
Though nothing was said, the group of men stopped with one accord. All the torches were snapped out and they stood silently in the darkness, waiting for — they knew not what. Somewhere near at hand a stream of water trickled along its rocky bed. James could hear his own heart beat, and he could distinguish the heavy breathing of Inspector McMillan among that of the others.
The point of light in the distance grew stronger as it approached, until it was a blaze of radiance, resembling, James thought, the headlight of a motorcycle on a dark country road.
“Any cover?” snapped out McKay.
“There seems to be a groove between the floor and the right-hand wall hereabouts.” It was the Chief Constable who made the suggestion.
“Let’s try it, anyway,” said Sergeant Wilson.
As quietly as they could they sidled up to the right-hand wall, lay down, and squeezed themselves into the restricted space, not more than two feet high at any point. James, despite the approaching crisis, grinned to himself as he heard Inspector McMillan, who was immediately behind him, panting and groaning, by reason of his efforts to insinuate his corpulent body into a chink all too small for the purpose.
As the approaching light grew more brilliant James distinguished the sound of footsteps. It was probably a sentry, he thought, who had seen the flicker of their lights or heard the muffled beat of their marching and had come to investigate. Nearer came the chunk of the stranger’s steps in the loose gravel.
“Get him when he comes abreast!” whispered McKay to Tames.
“Right!”
The glare of the unseen person’s huge torch now splashed on the rock wall above the heads of the raiders. The whole vault of the cave was illumined, but the stranger was still invisible behind the dazzling beam.
Suddenly the moving light stopped. Possibly its user sensed danger about him, or he may have caught a glimpse of one of the party who had not been quite successful in remaining within the shadow of the crevice. He stood motionless, a few feet from McKay and James. The latter touched the detective on the leg, and with a concerted movement they had pushed themselves outwards and had leaped to their feet.
There was a click, and the cave was plunged into utter darkness. The sound of flying feet receded into the blackness.
“After him,” exclaimed McKay, “before he gives the alarm!”
James sprinted, his feet sinking and striking savagely among the yielding gravel. McKay, in training every whit as perfect as the heavyweight champion of Argyllshire, kept by his side; but the others were left about twenty yards behind. After proceeding only a few short steps they had to leap across a rivulet which gurgled out from one side of the cave, and, crossing their path, disappeared into an aperture in the opposite wall.
Steadily they gained on their quarry. They could hear now the quick, panting breaths in front, as the strides of the runner became slower and more laboured. But they themselves were tiring quickly, and an age seemed to pass before the success of their chase became at all probable. It was like a pursuit in a nightmare — vague, unreal and endless.
And then the fugitive, despairing of escape, whirled round in his tracks, and flashed his torch with blinding force in their eyes. It was a move for which, they felt afterwards, they should have been better prepared. As it was, it caught them quite unawares. Some instinct prompted James to swerve in his tracks like a Rugby player, and this fact probably saved his life. There was a sudden hiss, and he felt a sharp pain in his cheek, as if he had been struck by a whiplash. The knife clattered against the wall behind him and fell to the gravel.
McKay, however, did not falter in his forward dash. He closed with their unseen adversary, almost at the same moment as James put his hand to his face and brought it down again, sticky with blood. The torch flew from the stranger’s hand, to lie, still blazing fiercely, on the ground. Within the circle of light James saw McKay on his back, struggling to free his throat from the hands of a huge man kneeling over him. It was the giant who had appeared with the white-robed man and O’Hare at Dalbeg.
In the glare his hawklike face was fiendish. The long beaked nose and the straight-lipped slash of mouth seemed incredibly evil and menacing. James, as the blood flowed from the wound on his cheek, was filled with an overweening anger and hatred. With a gasp of rage he leapt to McKay’s assistance. His fist caught the giant a stunning blow on the left temple, and McKay, the grip on his throat loosening, flung his opponent from him.
The giant crashed against the wall and lay still.
“Unconscious!” gasped McKay, breathing heavily, his face livid.
James nodded.
The remainder of the party had by this time reached the scene of the encounter.
“Wallace,” commanded Inspector McMillan, “you have the rope. Tie him up!”
“Here is my handkerchief for a gag,” supplemented Major Dallas.
The Rev. Duncan Nicholson’s drawl broke into the subsequent silence.
“We’re on the right track after all,” he remarked.
“Did you ever doubt it?”
James spoke truculently, for the cut in his cheek was extremely painful, though the bleeding had now practically ceased. He quite overlooked the fact of his own manifold doubts which had possessed him less than an hour previously. But Nicholson’s general attitude always seemed to irritate him, for some strange reason.
“Ah!” said the young minister, ignoring James’s question. “See you’ve cut your cheek slightly.”
“A rat bit me,” returned the editor of the Gazette.
But Major Dallas, who had chanced to pick up the knife, looked at James straightly and with understanding.
*
Constable Wallace had almost completed his task of binding the prisoner, who was breathing in jerky gusts, when he turned to Inspector McMillan.
“Please feel under his waistcoat, sir.”
Inspector McMillan bent down, and the others suddenly saw the expression on his heavy features change from puzzlement to distinct relief.
“Well, well!” he sighed, rising at last to his feet. “He is wearing a bullet-proof vest. The other person must have been wearing one, too.”
The load of superstitious fear which they had carried with them since Detective-Inspector McKay’s vain shooting at Dalbeg, and which all had striven to keep secret from each other, fell at once from the shoulders of five of the party.
“I rather suspected that explanation,” drawled the Rev. Duncan Nicholson.
Had they been in a quiet meadow, with no immediate and important task on hand, James would gladly have called him a liar.
“Now to get on,” said McKay.
Though still feeling the effects of his struggle, the detective was keener than ever upon completing the business on hand. His dread of the unknown had passed: after all, they were ordinary human beings with whom they had to deal, and he was afraid of no creature of flesh and blood. Now that the fact of his bullets having proved ineffective had been shown to possess a perfectly natural and prosaic explanation, he was intensely relieved, and, as an outlet for the feelings which he had kept pent up during the last four hours, he longed only for desperate action.
James carried their prisoner’s torch — unlit — for use in emergencies; for he had first-hand knowledge of its effectiveness as a supplementary weapon of offence. His stinging cheek, he thought, had now stopped bleeding; but, as a temporary and precautionary measure, he had tied his ha
ndkerchief round his head, knotting it beneath his chin like a mutch. He was glad for that reason, as well as for other more obvious causes, that Eileen had not come with them.
They had trudged on for perhaps another three furlongs when the cave again narrowed suddenly, and the sweet, sickly scent, like incense, grew strong and unmistakable. The passage at this point twisted sharply to the left, at right angles to its former course, and became high and narrow, like the lobby of a tenement house. A curious notion came to James that it must have been about this part of the cave that the Piper’s tune had changed …
And then, without warning, the whole universe seemed to be filled with a vast throbbing and moaning. It seemed as if the very walls shook with the whining, thudding sound, which obviously came from somewhere near at hand, through the “lobby” at whose entrance they stood irresolute. Deafeningly it roared about them, welling out of the narrow passage in waves of terrifying power. The men hesitated, and it appeared as if some of the younger policemen were ready to run for their lives.
“What in Heaven’s name is that?” cried Inspector McMillan.
*
As the seconds dragged by it became clear that the sound came from some stationary object. At one moment it would plunge into deep, heavy notes; the next it would develop an awesome humming and shrieking. It was a startling, terrible sound to come echoing along these corridors, in the very bowels of the earth; but at last something familiar in it struck James’s consciousness.
Where had he heard that sound before? Wait now! There was no reason to get panicky. Where? … When? … It must have some natural explanation, just as the immunity from revolver bullets of the white-robed man had been discovered to have an explanation. Oh, let him think!
Then he remembered.
“Probably an engine and dynamo,” he said shortly. “For electric light. And perhaps for other purposes as well … They must be charging the batteries.”
He did not tell the others of the memory that had come to him … It had been a raw winter’s morning in Chicago, and, young and trembling among the rows of hardened reporters, he had awaited in a certain room of the State Prison the last public appearance of a murderer. Slowly the time had gone on, until less than ten minutes remained before the prisoner was due to be placed in the chair. And then the great thudding and whining had begun to shake the building, and he had almost screamed.
“Merely the dynamo,” explained Mervyn Whalley, his companion and mentor. “They run it to generate power until this business is over.”
Less than ten minutes. James did not allow himself to dwell on present possibilities.
“A dynamo … that’s it!” agreed McKay quickly. “And they can only use it during the night-time. No one will be about to hear even the faint echoes above the ground.”
“Now that we have settled this little matter,” remarked the Rev. Duncan Nicholson, above the roaring and whining of the hidden machine, “what do we do next?”
“I think MacPherson and I should reconnoitre this passage.” McKay spoke more mildly than James would have done in the circumstances. “We are getting near our objective, and I don’t think it would be wise for us all to be jammed up in that narrow space in an emergency.”
“Good idea!” said James. “If we want you to come on I’ll flash on this big torch three times.”
“Very well,” agreed Major Dallas.
The roar of the engine and of the dynamo was, in one way at least, of assistance to James and the detective as they made their way — not without some difficulty, on account of the confined space and the lack of light — along the “lobby.” It effectively muffled the crunching sound of their shoes on the gravel from the ears of any listener. And later this fact was discovered to have been of extreme importance in assuring the comparative success of their expedition.
About thirty yards along the passage they came to the first branch cave on the left. It was, in fact, merely a small hollow scooped out of the solid stone by some unknown agency — probably a steady rush of water in a prehistoric age. But it indicated to the two men what they might expect further on. Presently — and their pulses began to hammer at the sight — they saw a streak of yellow radiance lying athwart their path. It came from the right-hand side of the cave. The roar of the dynamo was now of stunning power, and James had an idea that it must be situated not twenty yards from where they stood, and only a short distance beyond the side opening from which issued the shaft of light.
Carefully they crept along, their hands touching the cold stone of the cave walls, until they reached the very edge of the stream of light. Peering cautiously forward, they saw at last that the entrance to the small cave was covered by thick red curtains which, designed to overlap in the centre of the opening, yet on this occasion left a narrow chink. It was through this chink that the radiance streamed.
James stepped forward and glanced in. And he gasped at what he saw. For inside the cement-floored apartment was a strange tableau. Two easy chairs were ranged along one wall, while in a comer blazed a red-hot electric fire. A few inches above the latter there was suspended from the roof a metal plate resembling a censer, from which eddied the sweet perfume noted by James. An electric bulb, glaring brightly, swung naked in the centre of the apartment from a bracket near the stove.
On the bed lay Professor Campbell, bound, his eyes staring. On one of the easy chairs sat Miss Dwyer, apparently unconcerned; while, towering above the Professor, stood the man with the white robe and the death-mask face. The latter seemed to be speaking rapidly, and by his gestures he was threatening the old, white-haired man, who crouched away from his tormentor in speechless terror.
James stepped back, and in a hoarse whisper told the detective of his discovery.
“Wait now!” said McKay. “What is our best plan? Signal the others, or try and get the Professor and the girl to safety ourselves? If we signal, the passage will be completely blocked in no time … and goodness knows what devilry that fellow with the bullet-proof vest may bring about.”
“We must get the Professor,” returned James. “Once we bring old Campbell and Miss Dwyer out into the open cave we can raid the place without endangering them in any way.”
“The sound of the dynamo will help us,” said McKay, who seemed to be quite cool and levelheaded. He knew the secret of the white-robed man’s apparent invulnerability.
He and James stood poised before the curtains. They saw the white-robed man raise his arm as if he intended to strike the Professor. Then, tearing the curtains aside, they leaped forward into the glare.
Miss Dwyer screamed, and her scream pierced the throb of the dynamo and echoed to the vaulted roof. The Professor seemed to take no heed of the disturbance. James remembered afterwards that he noticed the old man turn his head away and lie still, as if exhausted, when his inquisitor turned from him swiftly and faced the intruders with bared teeth.
He had been taken completely by surprise.
“Stand back!” he roared. “My curse be — ”
But though McKay suddenly hesitated, James laughed harshly and struck the death-like face with a fist as hard as iron. The white-robed man staggered back, and lay groaning on the cement near the bed. James stepped over him, lifted Professor Campbell bodily and staggered with him back through the curtains and along the narrow passage. The detective grasped Miss Dwyer by the arm and drew her with him in James’s wake. Her big eyes were filled with fear, and her body, still clad in the green gown, trembled strangely.
They had almost reached the junction of the “lobby” and the outer cave when the throb of the dynamo suddenly ceased, and another commotion sounded behind them. Menʼs voices mingled with the clatter of feet on cement and gravel. Lights blazed on, throwing their shadows, long and thin, in front.
Panting, they reached the others. James laid the Professor on the ground. Miss Dwyer stood irresolute among her rescuers.
“Charge in, lads!” snapped Detective-Inspector McKay. “On with your torches! Get your
guns out!”
He prepared to lead them on, then jumped back with a cry. There was a heavy, rumbling sound in front of them. And in an avalanche the roof of the “lobby” caved in. leaving them faced with a solid wall of fresh earth and stones.
*
Neither Miss Dwyer nor Professor Campbell spoke a word during the journey back to Dalbeg. The old man, it was obvious, had received some severe mental shock, though he suffered from no physical injury. His bonds removed, he stumbled on through the cave, supported by James and the Rev. Duncan Nicholson, as if in a dream. His head rolled from side to side, and his eyes stared vacantly ahead.
A further misfortune was to overtake the expedition. Reaching the spot where they had left him, stunned and tied securely, they found their prisoner gone. Constable Wallace’s ropes were cut and the fragments strewn in all directions. The party however, wasted no time in vain regrets.
“Doesn’t make much difference anyway,” said Detective-Inspector McKay. “He’d have said nothing … Some member of the cult, coming in after us, must have found him.”
Inspector McMillan, though he did not speak, felt a little crestfallen. This was the third prisoner that had escaped from his men. But he was sensible enough to perceive that no blame could be attached either to himself or to those under his authority. They were pitted against an organisation of unusual power. Reverses were only to be expected.
Eileen rushed out to meet the cars when they pulled up on the avenue. The wan morning light was spreading over the sea and the hills.
“Oh, Daddy!” she cried, and put out her arms to him.
But he only glanced at her incuriously and stepped past her into the house. Reaching the low couch in the drawing-room, he lay down and closed his eyes wearily.
Eileen, who had followed him with certain of the others, clutched Miss Dwyer’s arm.
“Tell me, Millicent, about everything,” she pleaded. “Tell me. Are you hurt? What has happened?”
Miss Dwyer shook her head.
“I can’t remember,” she answered in her deep voice, and put a hand to her forehead.
Death by the Mistletoe Page 11