The End of the Tunnel

by Paul Capon

  Ruth and Jane were sitting on the edge of the flatcar, clutching ground cloths around their shoulders and shivering, and the boys’ news did nothing to raise their spirits.

  “So what do we do now?” asked Ruth forlornly.

  “Well, I don’t suppose any of us feel like going back into the tunnel,” said Tom, “so there’s nothing to do but wait until someone turns up. Sooner or later someone must. The light, I mean, and . . . and . . . oh, I’m sure someone will show up before long.”

  “I’m not,” muttered Ruth gloomily. “We’ll probably be here all night. Mummy’ll be frantic. And we’re freezing!”

  There was a tarpaulin over the gondola, and Tom glanced under it to make sure the car was empty.

  “Look, we’ll make up beds in this gondola,” he said with as much cheerfulness as he could muster. “We can have the ground cloths for blankets and the rucksacks for pillows, and we’ll cover the gondola with the tarpaulin. In no time you’ll be as warm as toast.”

  Tom and Boyd soon had the gondola moderately comfortable. Then each boy helped his sister into the car and tucked a ground cloth around her. The girls were sound asleep before the boys had the tarpaulin in place.

  There was plenty of room in the gondola, and, when they were snugly installed with the tarpaulin above them like a ceiling, Tom volunteered to keep watch while Boyd had a spell of sleep.

  “O.K.,” Boyd agreed, “then wake me up in an hour, and I’ll take a turn at keeping watch.” He yawned, put his head on his rucksack and was asleep almost immediately.

  Tom settled himself with his back to the gondola’s end-board, his arms around his knees and his knees drawn up to his chin. Just enough light came under the tarpaulin for him to see Ruth and Jane, and they were both sleeping like logs. He glanced at his watch. It was almost half past seven; there was still a little time before his mother started to worry seriously. . . .

  It was a struggle to stay awake. He kept his eyes open by sheer will power and stared into the semidarkness, trying not to blink. Even so, his head tended to droop, and the deep regular breathing of the other three almost hypnotized him. Boyd was snoring gently, and every now and then Ruth muttered in her sleep. Tom thought he caught the words treasure and supper, but decided that perhaps he had just imagined it because he knew his sister so well.

  He fought sleep every way he could think of — biting his thumb, hitting his forehead with his fist. He was telling himself that he would have to get out and walk around for a time when he heard a long, drawn-out rumble that might have been distant thunder.

  In an instant he was fully awake, and his first thought was that another train had arrived. He cautiously lifted the edge of the tarpaulin and peered out. There was no sign of another train. The noise was coming from the section of wall that he and Boyd had suspected of being hollow.

  His skin tightened, threatening to stand his hair on end. He reached behind him and tugged at the sleeve of Boyd’s T-shirt.

  “Wake up, Boyd,” he whispered urgently.

  For nearly half a minute the rumbling gradually became louder, then with a clang of metal against metal it stopped. There was a moment’s silence, and with a faint whine the section of wall that Tom was watching started to rise very slowly, sliding up toward the dome.

  Boyd roused. “What’s happening?” he asked sleepily.

  Tom ducked down into the gondola. “Crawl over to the girls and wake them,” he whispered. “Tell them not to make a sound. I’ll explain as soon as I can.”

  “O.K.”

  Tom crept back to the side of the gondola and carefully lifted the tarpaulin again. By now the section of wall had risen high enough for him to see that behind it was a large freight elevator. The rumbling he had heard had been made by the elevator coming down.

  There were two men in the elevator, and Tom did not like the looks of them at all. They were dressed in blue coveralls and they had lean, cruel faces. The older man had a scar running down one cheek. The younger man was trying to undo the rope that bound together three large crates. Suddenly he lost patience, thrust his hand into a pocket of his coveralls and withdrew a short, straight-bladed sword not much larger than a dagger. It looked unbelievably evil, and reminded Tom of the short swords once used by Roman gladiators to fight each other to the death in the arena.

  Tom was conscious of Boyd at his side.

  “The girls are awake,” Boyd whispered. “What gives? Has someone turned up?”

  Tom leaned down. “I can’t explain yet,” he whispered back. “Don’t say anything to Ruth and Jane, but it looks as if we may be mixed up with some crooks, smugglers or even murderers!”

  “Wow! What are we going to do?”

  “I don’t know yet. Maybe they’ll go away.”

  He straightened up and for the third time gingerly lifted the tarpaulin. The men were carrying one of the crates off the elevator. Tom could see their faces more clearly now, but the more he saw of them, the less he cared for their looks. They could have been father and son. They both had clipped hair, arched noses, hollow cheeks and thin-lipped mouths, and it was easy to believe that they had never smiled in their lives. Tom felt it would not be pleasant to explain to them how he and the others came to be in the gondola.

  The crate did not seem particularly heavy, and the men carrying it moved quickly, making the cavern ring with their footsteps. They were coming to the train, and Tom prepared to duck. However, he waited until they were only a few yards away, and by then he was able to make out the words stenciled in large letters on one side of the crate. It read:

  To: J F CORNEL ESQ

  RIDGEFIELD MANOR

  STOWBRIDGE

  FROM: SUPERLITE TELEVISION — LONDON

  The address set questions racing through Tom’s mind, but now the men were too near for comfort. He ducked and put a finger to his lips to warn the others. All three gazed at him wonderingly through the semidarkness.

  Tom could guess who J. F. Cornel was. That would be old Squire Cornel, who lived at Ridgefield Manor. How did he happen to be involved with these murderous-looking men? Tom had never heard much about the old gentleman except that he was eccentric and kept to himself, but those were characteristics he shared with all his family and all his ancestors — the Cornels were hermits by nature. And those crates. Did they really contain television sets? Somehow Tom could not associate old Squire Cornel with anything so modern as television.

  The men were beside the train now, so close that Tom fancied he could hear them breathing. They put the crate on the ground, and Tom braced himself for trouble, half expecting the men to whip the tarpaulin from the gondola. One of them said something to the other in an ugly, clipped language that certainly wasn’t English. Tom had taken both French and German at school, but it was neither of those, yet there was something familiar about it.

  The men lifted the crate again, and Tom held his breath. There came a slight thud, the train trembled and rocked, and Tom realized the men had loaded the crate on the flatcar. His relief was so great that he almost laughed and now he felt that quite probably the men would not even look in the gondola. More than likely they would simply load the other crates on the flatcar and go away.

  That, however, proved to be wishful thinking. The men loaded the other two crates on the flatcar and roped them all securely in place, then one of them went to the front of the train and climbed onto the dinkey. Ruth, alarmed and questioning, glanced at Tom, but there was no answer he could give her except a shrug.

  “Vahl!” shouted the man on the dinkey.

  “Vahlyay!” replied the other. This was evidently their way of saying good-by, for the next moment the train shot smoothly forward. Under the tarpaulin the semidarkness became total darkness as they moved away from the lighted cavern, and Tom was glad to find that the train, rattling over the rails, made a lot of noise.

  “O.K.,” he whispered, “we can talk now. He can’t possibly hear us, but keep your voices down.”

  The others started
to speak at once, and Tom checked them sharply.

  “One at a time, for Pete’s sake!” he implored. “Ruth, what were you trying to say?”

  “I’m puzzled, Tom. I mean, when the men showed up, why didn’t you just go to them and say, ‘We’re lost down here and, please, how do we get out?’ They couldn’t have done more than give us a scolding.”

  “You didn’t see the men,” Tom told her. “Rough-looking characters! One of them has a long scar on his face and the other carries a sword — ”

  “You’re kidding,” Boyd interrupted.

  “No, I’m not. A sword. And both look as if they’d cut your throat for what your skin would fetch.”

  The others seemed unconvinced, so Tom recounted what had happened while they were asleep.

  “I tell you,” he said in finishing, “these chaps look hardly human. If you don’t believe me, just ask yourselves a few questions. I mean, what was that place we were in? Why did it have a secret door? What’s the point of this railway, and where does it go?”

  “You tell us,” suggested Boyd. “Have you any ideas?”

  “Yes, I have. I think we’re mixed up in a smuggling racket that’s been going on for years and years. My guess is that this railway runs for miles through natural tunnels and ends up on Snedrock Island — ”

  “What island is that?” asked Jane.

  “It lies about four miles off the coast, east of Stowbridge,” Tom told her, “and it’s a bird sanctuary, which means that no one can go there without special permission. No one lives on it, and it would be just the place for a smugglers’ base. I bet the smugglers use this railway to run stuff out there, then it’s picked up by a motor launch during the night.”

  “Gosh!” whispered Ruth. “And you think that, if the smugglers found out we knew about the railway, they would kill us?”

  “They would have to, wouldn’t they? And I’ll tell you something else. Those crates were addressed to old Squire Cornel.”

  “Who’s he?” asked Boyd.

  “He’s the landowner who lives at Ridgefield Manor,” said Tom. “The quarries belong to him — ”

  “The local people say he’s mad as a hatter,” broke in Ruth excitedly. “All his land is surrounded by high walls, and if he catches anyone trespassing he sets the dogs on them. He has a huge family, and there are always visitors staying in the house, but he won’t have anything to do with the local people. His father was just the same, and his grandfather, and his great-grandfather, and his great-great — ”

  “O.K. I get the idea.”

  “The more I think about it,” said Tom, “the more I feel sure I’m right. Everything fits in: the crates, the foreigners, the secrecy, the train setting out just at evening — everything. Yes, and I expect that’s why the Cornels stopped working the quarries. They discovered that the caves and tunnels ran right out to Snedrock and realized they could make more money as smugglers than as quarry owners.”

  “Yes, they’re enormously rich,” said Ruth, interrupting, “and no one knows where all the money comes from.”

  “How far is this Snedrock Island from Ridgefield?” asked Boyd.

  “Oh, I suppose about twelve miles. A bit more perhaps. Fifteen, say.”

  “Then we should be there pretty soon. This train must be doing thirty at least.”

  It was racing along, and the boys warily peered out from under the tarpaulin. There was nothing to be seen. The only light in the tunnel was that thrown by the dinkey’s single headlight, and, since the boys were directly behind it they could see practically nothing except the black hulk of the driver silhouetted against the glare in front. He was the scar-faced man, and he sat motionless, singing a dirge-like song to himself. It was a grim song, full of guttural noises and harsh, rolling rs.

  The boys drew back, and for some time no one spoke. The excitement caused by their suspicions was ebbing, and now they were all thinking of what might lie ahead. Tom, in particular, was working out a plan for when they got to Snedrock. Presumably the crates would be unloaded and the train left by itself for a while. That would give them a chance to escape. If they could get away from the railhead they might be able to hide in a cave until the smugglers had gone. Almost certainly the island would be deserted during the day and they could attract the attention of a passing yacht or steamship. All four of them knew Morse code and they could take turns flagging S 0 S with a shirt. He realized it might be days before they were picked up, but meanwhile they would manage not to starve. They would keep alive on gulls’ eggs, seaweed, limpets, winkles, and with luck they might catch some fish. To go back to school with a real-life desert-island story would be quite something.

  He was still adding details to his picture of life on Snedrock Island when Boyd nudged him and whispered, “Know something?”

  “What?”

  “We’ve been riding for more than an hour now,” he said, holding his watch so that Tom could see it’s luminous dial, “and that means we can’t be going to this Snedrock place. We’ve traveled farther than that already. Must have.”

  “Oh, golly,” muttered Tom, and he peered again into the murky darkness. Boyd joined him, but they could see nothing more than before, the dim walls of the tunnel and the silhouette of the driver.

  “Tom, let’s chance it,” whispered Boyd as they settled back into the wagon. “Let’s yell to the driver and tell him we’re here. After all, he can’t eat us!”

  “If you’d seen his face, you wouldn’t be so sure of that,” said Tom gloomily. “Boyd, we’d be mad to let him know we’re here. Put yourself in his place. If he’s a criminal — as I think he is — he’s up to his neck in some crooked business that would put him in jail for the rest of his life if it got discovered. He learns that we’re here, alone with him in a dark tunnel thousands of feet underground, and nobody knows where we are. So what does he do?”

  “O.K. You’re right, I guess. I’m scared, and I don’t mind admitting it.”

  From the darkness came Ruth’s voice, and Tom could tell that she was near to tears. “What are you two talking about?” she asked. “We can’t hear a word.”

  “Nothing,” said Tom. “Just chattering.”

  “Tom, where are we going?” she asked, and Tom would gladly have given his right arm to be able to tell her.

  That was the whole question. Where were they going? Boyd said, “Maybe this tunnel runs under the sea to France or someplace. What do you think, Tom?”

  “I don’t know,” said Tom morosely. “I don’t know what to think. I’ve had it.”

  All four felt at the end of their tether. They were hungry, thirsty, frightened and tired — tired more than anything else — and presently the girls dropped off to sleep again.

  For a while Tom and Boyd kept awake, but in the end the rhythm of the train added to their weariness was too much for them, and they gradually slid down to the floor and slept as if they hadn’t a care in the world.

  CHAPTER 6

  Hours later Tom was awakened by voices speaking the same harsh language he had heard at the railhead. Then he realized that the train had stopped and that a strange, violet glow, pale and weak, was creeping under the tarpaulin and softening the darkness.

  For a moment he dared not raise the tarpaulin to peer out. The speakers sounded too close. There were two of them, both men, and one almost certainly was the man with the scar. His voice was loud and bullying, and the other answered meekly and briefly. In fact, his remarks were limited almost entirely to “Beany. Beany, domnee.”

  The train trembled a little as the driver climbed from his seat and trembled again as the other man took his place. So that was it; a change of drivers.

  Suddenly Ruth started mumbling in her sleep, and Tom’s blood turned to ice water. There was nothing he could do. If he touched her, she would probably wake up shouting — he knew that from past experience — whereas at present she was talking only in a soft whisper. Tom held his breath and sweated. So far the man with the scar was talking too
much to hear Ruth, but Tom was terrified of what would happen when he stopped.

  To Tom’s relief the train started. It crept slowly forward, the man with the scar came to the end of his sentence, the new driver gave a final beany, domnee and the train gathered speed just as Ruth’s monologue changed from a mutter to a normal conversational tone. She was arguing with a school friend about which phonograph record they should play.

  Tom whispered, “Boyd, are you awake?”

  There was no answer. Tom knelt and lifted the tarpaulin; he couldn’t see much. He couldn’t even tell whether they were still in the tunnel, for it was misty outside. Through the mist came the strange, violet light that seemed to have its source somewhere ahead. The train’s headlight was no longer lighted, and the new driver was only a shadowy form. He was wearing a jersey and trousers, and even in that half-light, Tom could see the heavy muscles standing out on his shoulders and arms. He had dark, shaggy hair and a beard so broad that even from behind Tom could see its sides. He was one of the biggest men Tom had ever seen.

  Boyd was stirring. He yawned noisily, and Tom quickly ducked and implored him to keep quiet. “We’re still on the train,” Tom whispered. “Remember?”

  “Where? What do you . . . oh!”

  “Look, I think it’s morning. Let’s have a look at your watch. Mine’s not luminous.”

  “Has anything happened?” asked Boyd.

  “Yes, I’ll tell you, but first let’s have the time.”

  It was twenty past five. If the violet light outside was the dawn, they were no longer in the tunnel. That thought cheered Tom considerably, and he felt their chances of escape had much improved.

  “We have a new driver,” he told Boyd. “Take a look at him while I wake the girls.”

  Tom crawled to the other end of the gondola and was greeted by a whisper from Ruth.