by Don Wilcox
“It’s getting too crowded around here for me,” said Mac Macklevitch.
“That’s my sentiments,” said Krug. “If a racket’s good on Southwest Boulevard, it’s good at the other end of town, too.”
“I make a commotion that we start packing,” said Macklevitch.
“When we move out,” said Marcus Drake, “we won’t bother to pack. The doc will never get fixed up in another nest like this in a long time. That’s why we’re squeezing this game to the last drop. All we have to pack is a half a ton of greenbacks when the game runs out. And we’ll leave Doc Silverhead hanging to the goal post.”
Mac and Krug had hinted that they could do with a few pounds of greenbacks most any time. They felt the need of a vacation in Florida.
Drake had silenced them with a gruff bark and reminded them that there was lots of business on the docket. At this point Archie had got a keyhole glimpse of Drake’s demonstration with the pruning shears.
“One clean snip right over the Adam’s apple.”
Drake had moved toward Mac to make his demonstration more realistic. Mac’s eyes lowered to watch the pruning shears flash within a few inches of his throat, and he gave a sickly grin. Drake sat back in his chair, pocketed the shears, and lighted a cigarette. “It’s a fine art, boys. Maybe you don’t realize you’re associating with a top-notch artist.”
Krug shrugged uncomfortably. “We don’t doubt your ability. But I’d just as soon see this guy Whitmore get his in the doctor’s mill. He’s stout and wiry, and he’s got a neck like a bull calf.”
Drake snorted with contempt. “Are you guys yellow? Maybe he hypnotized you with his funny stories.”
Then the men had proceeded to talk about their prisoner. In an effort to catch their voices, Archie had made the mistake of touching his forehead to the door-knob. The click was followed by a tense silence. Archie slipped away as softly as he came and was out of sight before the door opened. From then on he had explored the doctor’s laboratories. Somewhere there must be clues to the hiding-place of the prisoner.
The doctor had had a few interruptions in the course of the afternoon. When it was Drake who passed, or Mac or Krug, the scientist had gone on with his monologue uninterrupted.
But once when the pretty Southern usherette, Linda Lee, came that way on an errand, much to Archie’s surprise the doctor paused to explain his work. He was busy grinding lenses. His scientific explanations evidently fascinated her.
This was not the first time that Archie had noted a curious attraction between these two. Perhaps Dr. Silverhead’s appearance reminded Linda Lee of a venerable Southern colonel. Perhaps she was flattered by his talk that she could not possibly understand. At any rate, this was a rare quirk of the doctor’s, that he should come down out of his mystic realm of science to take notice of a human being.
“Mah! It must be wondahful knowing all about these big machines,” Linda Lee had said. “Sometime you all must show me how they work.”
If Dr. Silverhead knew anything about any prisoners concealed within this building, he did not mention it. He talked of nothing but lenses.
Down in one of the basement rooms Archie had found a few tracks in the dust of the planks that formed a walk around the heaps of old boxes. He had dared to call out in a cautious whisper, “Is anyone here? Is anyone here?”
It was when the voices and footsteps of Mac and Krug had descended upon him that Archie slipped into a remote storeroom. His flashlight had shown him the way back, further and further. Presently he had lost the voices, but he had discovered a ladder leading down into a pit in a dark corner of this room. He kept calling in a low voice, descending the ladder into the darkness. Not the faintest sound encouraged him to follow this trail, nor did his flashlight reveal any signs that this rickety old ladder had been used in recent days. It was only that this pit seemed a logical hiding-place.
The last few feet of descending depended upon a ten-foot rope, tied to the bottom rung of the ladder. Archie searched the bottom of the pit with his flashlight. It looked to be solid earth. But he took no chances. He searched his pockets for something to drop.
A gun, a book of cards, a pocket-knife—they were not possessions that he cared to drop in case that dirt floor should prove to be a surface of mud or artificial quicksand.
He fastened the glowing flashlight to his pocket, pointing downward. Then he cautiously climbed down the rope. The light swung about, to reveal a turn of the trail, into a black tunnel leading off from the bottom of the pit.
This gave him more evidence the surface beneath him was probably solid. Nevertheless, when he had reached the knot at the lower end of the rope he hung there trying to touch his toes to the dirt floor beneath him.
Would it be safe to drop?
His question was at once answered. From high overhead came the groaning and crackling of wood. The hanging ladder suddenly gave way and came down, rope, Archie and all.
For a long moment the hollow pit resounded with the crashing of rotten timbers. Archie was quick enough with his flashlight to dodge the splintered section of ladder that came bounding like parallel spears. He rolled into the mouth of the tunnel for safety and hovered there until all was silent.
He threw his light upward through the pit. He was in one devil of a jam now, he thought. The long ladder had broken under its own weight, The longest remaining section extended about two-thirds of the way up to the surface.
It seemed a good time to Archie to divest himself of some profanity. He stomped around, calling himself names. He had had no business coming down here. There had not been one single clue to make him suspect Marcus Drake’s prisoner would be hidden here.
It was the mystery of an unexplored passage that had led Archie Burnette into this trap. The mystery still eluded him. He could think of no use for such a place as this. But perhaps the tunnel held the answer. On hands and knees he crawled into the low, narrow passage. There was no way to guess how many scores of years ago this tunnel may have been dug. Obviously, it had not been used recently. Archie noted that the air was not stale or dank, as he might have expected in a dead-end passage. In fact, there was a draft of air circulating through. Dust from the furnace room had found its way down here. The spade marks in the clay walls were filled.
The tunnel kept circling, and Archie soon lost all sense of direction, not to mention distance.
Soon he was in a state of indecision. Was there any reason that he should go on? Perhaps the tunnel extended for miles, though this seemed unlikely, considering the freshness of the air.
Eventually he came to a passage so narrow that he could barely squeeze through on his hands and knees. His clothing seemed much too bulky. He was tempted to store his pocket things in his coat and leave them behind. But presently he made it through this narrows and had smooth sailing again.
He glanced at his watch. Perhaps he could gauge the length of this tunnel by the time required to traverse it. The watch said 6:15. It was earlier than he thought. No matter if he missed dinner; but he must be there to go back and see Craig by eight.
A little farther on he came to the tunnel’s end. Abruptly it opened into another pit. His flashlight revealed a curved brick wall. It proved to be a cylindrical shaft about six feet in diameter.
It was the garden well.
Ten feet below the opening of the tunnel, into this brick-walled shaft was the surface of the water. Slowly Archie combed the walls with an upward spiral of the beam of light. About thirty feet above him was the stone railing, enclosing a patch of dark blue sky.
In Archie’s excitement over his discovery, he overlooked the discrepancy between the darkened sky and the time indicated by his watch. At once his curiosity was bounding outward in all directions.
Why should there be a tunnel leading into this well? Could it be a crude means of piping water into the other pit?
What awful mysteries lay buried beneath the surface of that black water? Could Archie explore those mysteries?
Why
had this tunnel opening not been visible from overhead?
The latter question was easily answered. The flash beam revealed a projecting ring of brick just above the mouth of the tunnel. That narrow ring must have been just sufficient to cut off the view from above.
A scheme was going through Archie’s brain. Perhaps he would not get back to the office by eight. But Opportunity was knocking. He had better answer.
During the next hour he made the long trip back through the tunnel to the other pit. He returned with the rope and a hook which he had contrived to make out of a piece of wire with which the ladder had once been repaired.
With this crude equipment Archie went fishing in the well.
He was working without his flashlight now. He needed to save what little battery there was left. He had reduced the searching process to a set of routine motions. He could hear the hook strike the water. A double arm’s length of rope would let it down to the bottom. Then his arm would describe a wide circle and mark across it with slow crisscrossing motions.
The hook caught nothing. Archie could not understand it. Had that moonlight murder been only a dream after all?
Archie had not exhausted his resources. Now he considered a new course of action. If he could fasten the end of the rope securely, he might let himself down, dive into the water and make a thoroughgoing search.
Suddenly he was interrupted by the sound of a low, plaintive voice echoing through the tunnel. It was a girl’s voice, a childish whimpering.
Archie groped with the flashlight, turning the sickly yellow beam back into the tunnel.
“Who is it? What are you doing down here?” His words melted together as they echoed through the passage. The girl’s cry . . . Archie recognized the voice of Grace. A moment later he found her. She was staring at the flashlight in utter terror. Archie turned the beam on himself.
“Don’t be afraid. There’s nothing to cry about. You’re not hurt, are you?”
For a few moments the girl refused to talk. Archie found it difficult to soothe her. He kept repeating the same statements over and over.
“Book lost out of my pocket. But don’t worry, I’ll get you out of here in a few minutes.”
When Grace began to get a grip on herself, her morality complex was quick to come to the fore. How could she ever explain a situation like this? What would people say if they knew that Archie had brought her down to this hidden passage?
Archie almost lost his temper. “Act your age. Is it my fault you came awake at a time like this?”
Then, as he picked up the address book, he was much relieved to find another card in it. He tossed the card into the air.
“Maybe this will stop your blubbering.”
That card he knew was Hetty. A moment later she was with them in person, and Archie’s bad humor vanished. There was something to a girl like Hetty—
“Well, what a cozy little threesome,” she said smiling. “I don’t know where we are or what this is all about, Archie, but lead on! We’re with you!”
CHAPTER XVI
Two Camera Flashes
“Maybe you two can figure an answer to this puzzle,” said Archie. “I can’t. I got in here by mistake. I was looking for someone and I lost the trail. Now we are 30 or 35 feet down in the earth. This tunnel leads into the side of the old well in the court. Here. I’ll show you.”
Archie beckoned to them with his flashlight. Hetty saw there was nothing to do but crawl along after him on her hands and knees. At first Grace would not go. The party stalled while she began her complaints.
“Sorry I can’t furnish hiking outfits,” said Archie. “You’ll have to make the best of it.”
“This is revolting,” said Grace. “It is absolutely against my principles.”
Archie wished there were some convenient way to put Grace back into the book. “Come along. I’ll have two witnesses to what I have seen here.”
“You had no right to bring me down here this time of night,” Grace whined.
“It is always night in a tunnel,” said Archie. “What difference does it make?”
Grace demanded to know what time it was. Archie glanced at his watch. The hands pointed to a quarter after six. That was no help. His watch had gone dead hours ago.
Grace declared she would go back alone. She started off in the darkness, after Archie assured her that that was the direction he had come from. He and Hetty crept on toward the wail.
“How many flash bulbs do you have?”
“Several,” said Hetty. “I’ll keep the camera ready . . . Oh, so this is the garden well.”
The hollow shafts echoed below wisps of sound from somewhere overhead. The rustle of leaves, the voices at a little distance. The weird blend was worth listening to, and Hetty was fascinated. Some persons were in the garden, but their conversation was indistinct.
Presently these sounds were drowned by the wail of Grace. Archie turned the flashlight around. The frightened girl was coming back, brushing the sides of the tunnel, heedless of her clothes.
“I thought she wouldn’t go far alone,” Hetty whispered, “but we’d better get her back right away.”
“As soon as we get a picture or two,” said Archie.
Grace did not bother to explain her sudden return, but she was in a troublesome mood. “You’ve got to take me back. You’ve no right to keep me down here.”
“If you will just be patient—”
“Is that the garden well?” Grace’s eyes lost some of their fright as an idea dawned. “Then it’s easy. All we have to do is call. Someone will let a ladder down for us.”
Without any hesitation Grace acted upon this •‘inspiration. She started to cry out. Instantly Archie dropped his flashlight and cupped his hands over her mouth.
“No! That won’t do. There’s someone up there—”
Grace tried to fight out of his grip. She mumbled, “Keep your hands off me or I’ll scream.”
It took Hetty’s tact to quiet her. “She doesn’t understand, Archie. If it’s dangerous for us to call to someone, then we won’t call. All you have to do is explain. We’re ready to help you.”
Then the two girls sat quietly, waiting for Archie to make something of his mysterious caution.
“Take my word for it, those voices up there mean trouble. Listen to them.
“. . . One of them is Marcus Drake.”
“Marcus Drake—” Hetty’s tone conveyed a great deal.
The name meant nothing to Grace.
But at least she was ready to be impressed. As Archie talked he turned off the flashlight. The voices overhead were coming closer. Archie’s narrative—the strange dream of a few nights before—came forth in slow, broken phrases. Through the spaces of silence he could hear the echoing voice of Marcus Drake, a fitting accompaniment to his story.
“I’d better not tell you the last of it,” said Archie, “but I am convinced of this: Drake has been hurling his victims into this well. I’m sure of it. And yet I can’t prove it. For an hour I have tried to fish a body out of that black water. It’s only about 5 feet deep. But I couldn’t find a thing.”
“It must have been a dream,” said Grace.
“But I’ve seen Marcus Drake at work,” said Hetty. “I’m ready to believe—”
The overhead voices were coming down in larger, more distinct tones. Marcus Drake’s guest was telling a funny story.
By bending through the opening and resting his shoulders on the edge of the brick wall, Archie could look up at the dark sky and see silhouetted there within the circle the two black knobs which were the heads of Drake and his guest. Hetty wanted to see, too.
Perhaps the eagerness of a candid camera expert becomes great enough to outweigh even the instinct of self-preservation. Perhaps Hetty’s habits functioned against her will. The camera clicked and flashed.
Archie never knew what he uttered. In that second of surprise he was not sure whether it was a camera or a gun. He only knew he must jerk Hetty back into the tunnel
before she fell headlong into the well. This he did, wasting no tenderness in the action.
He jerked her back before she could be struck by the falling body.
At the very split second of the flash, it seemed, the overhead talk had been broken off by a choking, grating sound, as of blades cutting into cartilage. A body was falling.
“Get back!” Archie snapped. “Get back out of my way!”
He barely touched the flashlight switch. The brief glow showed him the location of the hook he had used. At the same time he saw the water splashing high. The body had struck like a crack of close thunder. And now the echoes of the splash were rolling away through the hollow spaces.
Archie gathered the rope in his left hand, caught the wire hook in his right.
This time he could not miss. He hadn’t actually seen the murdered man fall, but he knew the body was there in the slushing water a few feet below him. Now there would be time—
Why did that water keep splashing? “Hetty! The flash!”
Hetty obeyed the order in her own way. All Archie wanted was a flashlight beam to direct him as he threw the hook. What he got was another flash of the camera. What he saw almost paralyzed him.
The bottom of the well, it seemed, was suddenly rising. It was a wide metal disc with a beveled edge, and some system of levers was pushing it upward from the under side, like a piston in a cylinder. The water was spilling down on all sides of it. On its surface lay the immersed and bloody mass of clothes and flesh that was Marcus Drake’s latest victim.
Even in the brief flash of the camera Archie saw that the false bottom of the well being thrust upward was turning on the vertical arm that supported it from the under side. It was turning to dump its load into the unknown depth of the shaft.
CHAPTER XVII
A Ghost in a Jam
Archie lashed out with the hook and it caught. The falling weight threw him forward, but he flattened against the floor of the tunnel and held on for dear life. The prize was his and he pulled it in, hand over hand.
“The flashlight, Hetty. It’s under my feet. Give me a light here, but don’t turn it toward the well.”