Charles shook her again and answered Jimmy.
“I don’t mind going as far as that.”
“That’s good!” said Jimmy heartily. “Well then, the way for Miss Vernon to get out of the mess is for her to marry me right here and now. And then, taking into account that you wouldn’t want to hurt her, and that you couldn’t hurt me without hurting her, I’d consider taking your word that you wouldn’t do anything to stir up trouble. And on my side I’d be willing to give an undertaking that I’d retire from business. I’ve seen a lot of men going on too long and getting caught out, and I wouldn’t like that to happen to me, because of the old lady. All I want is to settle down respectable and live quiet. Miss Vernon’ll tell you that’s the proposition I put to her this morning. It’s a good sound proposition, and the more you look at it, the better you’ll like it. You get your life, and as soon as my wife and me have settled down together, and I think it’s safe, you’ll get your liberty. Miss Vernon’ll get a good husband, though I say it as shouldn’t, and there’s no reason why things shouldn’t be pleasant all round.”
“Are you off your head, Halliday?” said Charles.
“Me?” said Jimmy in a tone of offence. “Off my head? Why, I’m offering you a plain business deal! I grant you it couldn’t be done in England where there’s a lot of red tape about getting married, but I’ve got what they call a Scotch domicile here, and that means I can get married by Scotch law—and it’s good Scotch law that if two people stand up and take each other for man and wife in front of witnesses, man and wife they are, and all the lawyers in the world can’t make it any different. I hope you don’t think, Mr. Anstruther, that I’m the sort of man that’d trifle with a young lady like Miss Vernon.”
“I’m quite sure you want to marry Miss Vernon, if that’s what you mean. And I’m quite sure Miss Vernon won’t marry you. Come on, Halliday, talk sense! What will you take in cold cash to get us out of this—we undertaking to keep our mouths shut?”
Jimmy took on a tone of reproof.
“Now, Mr. Anstruther—that’s not the sort of thing I’d have expected from a gentleman like yourself! I put it to you now that when a man makes a young lady an offer of marriage, does he expect an answer or doesn’t he?”
“Ann,” said Charles in a pleasantly detached tone—“Mr. Halliday wants an answer to his proposal of marriage. Perhaps you’d better let him have one.”
In his mind the thoughts raced—“Why does he go on talking? Where are the others? He’s marking time for them. We oughtn’t to have stopped—we ought to have kept right on round the cave. He’s been keeping us here. We ought to have gone on. But if he’s got a revolver, he could have picked us off the ledge as easy as shelling peas. I wonder if he’s armed. I wonder if it’s too late to make a sprint for it now. There’s no more cover after this.”
He heard Ann speaking from behind him clearly and steadily.
“Thank you, Mr. Halliday, but I’m sure you know that I can’t marry you.”
Jimmy took up the electric lamp and held it high above his head. The light lapped round the corner of their boulder. Charles swung Ann back into the shadow. As he did so, she cried out.
“They’re coming—the others! Oh, Charles!”
He said, “Where?” but as he spoke he knew, and cursed himself for a fool. Away to the left where the path had seemed to break, where the cliff wall turned so sharply and the shadows were so heavy, there were two dark figures on the ledge. Plainly, among the shadows there must be an opening. He could have laughed. It was all plain enough. Jimmy was to delay them whilst the others came round and cut off their rear.
The men were only some fifty feet away, but they came slowly, Hector first, with a knife in his teeth, and then Gale Anderson, hugging the rock, for the ledge was broken and for some twenty feet gave only the barest foothold.
Jimmy shouted, and the cavern rang with the echoes. He held the light up high, and it shone on the wet glistening rock, on the steel of Hector’s knife and on the fierce pleased face above it, on Gale Anderson’s slow purposeful advance, and on the black untroubled pool.
Ann looked once at Hector’s face and shuddered away from its raw cruelty. She looked at the pool and wondered if he would kill them, and whether it would hurt very much, and whether she would be able to help screaming. She mustn’t scream, because of Charles. It would be much worse for Charles if she screamed. She tried to fix her eyes and her thoughts upon the blackness of the pool, and suddenly there slid into her consciousness the knowledge that the blackness at which she was staring was not quite black any more. It was changing, as the colour of shoaling water changes. She said, “Charles!” in a startled, urgent whisper, and Charles looked down at her for a moment and said, “Ann,” with something in his voice which she never forgot. She had not been aware of any movement on his part, but he must have moved, for he had a big stone in his hand. After that one look his eyes went back to Hector. He must wait till he couldn’t possibly miss and then get him with the stone between the eyes.
Ann’s whisper came again, sharper, more urgent.
“Charles—the pool! What is it?”
He looked then where she was looking, and saw what she had seen—that shoaling colour in the water under the bright light. For a moment they both had the illusion that the water was draining away, and then to both at the same time there came the realization that it was not the water that was sinking, but that something was rising up towards them through the water.
A moment later it was not they alone who realized it. On their right Jimmy stiffened with the lamp in his hand, and to the left Hector, crouching on the narrow ledge, let out a screaming Gaelic oath. The knife dropped from his teeth and went clattering down into the water. It threw up a tiny fountain of spray and was gone. Gale Anderson, clinging to the rock, looked back across his shoulder. Charles saw his face for a moment, white and sweating. And then they were all looking at the pool.
Something was rising up through it. From moment to moment the water changed, black merging into green, and green into livid grey. It was like seeing a fish rise—but it seemed to fill the pool. They stared, and did not know for how long they had been staring. If it was many moments, they ran together and made one moment. If it was one moment, it was a moment endlessly prolonged. Then the livid colour touched the surface of the pool and broke through it. There were folds of wrinkled skin, fold upon wrinkled fold, like rock come alive, scabbed and scarred and humped, with the water washing off it. The humps showed, moved, and sank down again, leaving a curd of foam. They stretched an unbelievable distance. The livid colour of them lay under the surface and stopped the light.
Ann drew in her breath. It was the first movement that any of them had made. She had time to draw it in and to let it out again. And then, between them and the ledge where Hector and Gale Anderson were frozen, there came up a head and neck. Ten feet—fifteen feet—and it went on rising. It was so monstrous as to be unbelievable, yet they all saw it. It was like the mockery which Jimmy had made of it to mask the periscope of the submarine—like, and most dreadfully unlike. For a rigid figure-head, here was a sentient, malignant Thing, swaying and undulating with horrid, eager life. It brought with it an awful musky stench which filled the cave.
As the head swayed to and fro on a level with the ledge, Charles wrenched his eyes away. He caught Ann up under her arms and pushed her up the side of the great boulder where it joined the cliff.
“There’s foothold, and you’ve got to find it! Don’t look round—I’ll see you’re all right. That’s right, get your feet on my shoulders and up you go. Cling—crawl—scramble! You can do it, and you’ve got to!”
Ann’s very mind felt stiff. She did not think that she could move. It is certain that left to herself she would not have moved, but would have gone on staring until the dreadful end. It was the rough vigour of Charles’ words which made her move. And then, when she had got her first foothold and was reaching for another, panic came on her and she climbed
with a desperate strength. She gained a place where she could stand and look down.
Charles was following. He called,
“Don’t stop! Don’t look! Go on!”
But, having looked, she could not turn her eyes away. All across the pool the humped body showed. Over the ledge and the two men the head hung poised, like a snake’s head ready to strike. There was a dark mane that made it most horrible. The water ran dripping down it. And the head began to move, bending on the neck, coming up against the rock, lipping it with a wet snout as if to feel its way.
“Go on!” said Charles. “Don’t look! Go on climbing!”
He had reached the place where she stood. He thrust her on. A series of natural steps led up to the top of the boulder. There was just room for the two of them to stand pressed together with the rocky wall of the cavern at their backs.
Charles put his arm round her, and they looked down.
Gale Anderson was gone. The humps of the monster’s body were gone. The head was rising. It was nearer. Jimmy Halliday still stood with the lamp in his hand and an expression of stony terror on his face. Charles called sharply down to him.
“For the Lord’s sake, Halliday, put out that light! It’s attracting it. Haven’t you ever poached salmon with a flare? Put out that light, I say!”
Jimmy turned irresolutely towards the voice. He seemed quite stupid with terror. The monstrous head rose high over the ledge and hung above Hector, who crouched there motionless. Charles’ hand came down hard over Ann’s eyes. She felt his heart beat against her own. There was an awful scream, and after that a gurgling splash. She heard Charles call again.
“Halliday! Wake up, man! Run for it—back to the rift! You’ve a sporting chance! But hurry, man—hurry! And put out that damned lamp!”
The pool lay empty under the light. And then the surface broke again and the head came up not half a dozen yards from where Jimmy stood at the edge of the water. It rose up and hung there swaying as it had done before, and for the first time they saw the eyes—not the green glass eyes of Jimmy’s make-believe, but the eyes of a reptile, horn-lidded, bright, and blank—blind bright eyes, staring at the light which blinded them.
“Halliday!” cried Charles. And with that Jimmy dropped the lantern and ran, not up the ledge to the rift, but towards the voice which had called to him.
He came slipping and plunging over the slimy rocks, his head thrown back, his eyes straining upwards, his breath coming in great thumping jerks. It wasn’t like seeing a live man run. It was as if his body was galvanized into an unnatural energy by sheer terror. He did not seem to look where he was going, but though he slipped, he did not fall. With a final bound he reached the deep shadow where Charles and Ann had crouched. They could hear him below them, labouring for breath and clawing at the rock. Charles called down to him.
“Right in the corner against the cliff, Halliday! There’s foothold all the way up Hurry, man—hurry!”
The monstrous head was rising. The humped outline of the body broke the water. Ann gazed with wide, horrified eyes. The humped protuberances moved under the watery film that covered them, as a muscle moves under the skin, knotting and flexing with an easy strength. The water from the mane ran down the neck. The skin was a livid grey shading into yellowish brown. It was all seamed and corrugated. In these seams and corrugations the water ran and glistened, and whilst the head swayed to and fro the blank blind eyes watched the light.
Jimmy Halliday was about half-way up the great boulder, when without the slightest warning the head struck downwards at the lamp. It struck as a snake strikes, with a darting swiftness that the eye could not follow. Ann cried our faintly, and felt Charles hold her close. The lamp rolled over and fell amongst the wet rocks with a clatter that waked all the cavern echoes. The light still burned, but it no longer illumined the cave. It lay half in and half out of a pool whose steep sides shut it in. There was a half light with heavy shadows, and one white beam shining up from between the rocks like a searchlight. The head was poised about ten feet above the water. They could see it—a black shadow hanging over the black pool, a featureless, eyeless thing, the more horrible because only half seen.
Ann went on staring, and had a double image in her mind—this shadowy, hovering blackness, and behind it a picture of the dripping mane, the darting head, the bright blank eyes. Gale Anderson was gone, and Hector was gone, and the lamp was gone, and Jimmy Halliday had climbed his frantic way to where she could feel his clutching hands against her foot. He called in a hoarse, choked voice.
“Let me come up, Mr. Anstruther! Let me come up!”
“There’s no room.”
Ann’s head was on his breast, but Charles’ voice sounded to her as if it came from a very long way off. Perhaps that was because it had the sound of the world they had left behind—a sane, ordered world where the sun shone. Charles spoke as if he was still in that world, quietly and plainly.
“Can’t you hold on there, Halliday?”
Jimmy looked back over his shoulder and saw the Shadow move. It seemed to rise. It seemed to sway towards them. His voice broke from him in the extreme of fear.
“It’s coming—take me up—Mr. Anstruther, for the Lord’s sake!” He beat and tore at the rock with his hands. “Let me up—I saved her life! It’ll have me!”
Ann saw the shadowy neck bend. She saw the head sway down until it seemed to touch the boulder on which they stood. They were looking right down upon it now, and as they looked, they could hear it lipping the stone as it had lipped the ledge to which Hector and Gale had clung. It must be at least fifteen feet below them—but the neck was bent in a curve. Charles edged Ann back until she was pressed against the cliff wall. The top of the boulder on which they stood was not much more than a couple of feet across. If it had not touched the cliff, they could not have kept their footing.
Charles spoke.
“We’ve got to take him up. Lean back and shut your eyes. I’ll have to give him a hand.”
That moment when Charles let go of her was the worst of all for Ann. If Charles were to fall—if Jimmy pulled him over—if she were left here alone.… She began to pray that she might not be left alone. Then she heard Charles say in that quiet, steady voice,
“I’m going to help you up, Halliday. Pull yourself together and do as I tell you!”
And then after a long intolerable minute there were three of them on the place that had been narrow for two, and she and Jimmy and Charles were standing pressed together, such desperate hunted things that it no longer mattered to any of them that Jimmy’s arm should be round her. The sickening musky smell came up to them in waves. No more than a tall man’s height below them the Thing was lipping the stone on which they stood.
And it was then that the light went out. The battery may have been injured by its fall, or the water may have reached it, but suddenly it failed and the dark came down on them.
It was as if they were buried alive. It was like the darkness of a place where no light has ever been or ever will be. And in the darkness, coming nearer, was that soft sucking sound against the rock.
For a dreadful minute it was the only sound. Breath had stopped. The thudding pulses of terror were frozen. And then Jimmy Halliday broke into a half choked mutter, his head bowed down upon Ann’s shoulder and his tongue stumbling over words learned long ago at his mother’s knee. It was a little boy’s prayers gasped out in broken phrases by lips that had used none since. “Make me a good boy—forgive us our trespasses—bless Mother and Dad—f’r ever and ever amen.” Even at that moment it came to Ann how pitiful it was—the hot convulsed face against her shoulder; the strong clutching hands; and the words which a little boy had learned half a century ago. At least the sound of them drowned that other horrible sound.
She looked down and saw staring out of the dark two fixed, unwavering eyes. They were luminous, not with the jewel glint of a cat’s eyes or a wolf’s, but with a pale phosphorescent shining. She could see nothing but the eyes. And
they were quite near—and they were coming nearer.
“Stop that noise, Halliday!” said Charles very low and stern, and at the sound of his voice Ann was able to move, to drag her eyes from those pale shining eyes and hide them against him. She pressed her face into the cloth of his coat and said his name over, and over, and over again:
“Charles—Charles—Charles!”
And another minute went by.
Charles held her and braced himself against the sheer cliff. How long would it last? Would Halliday pull them both over? Could the Thing reach them where they were? He had the faintest hope in the world that it could not, because if it could, why did it still delay? And the stare of the eyes was upwards. He had seen it strike three times. It had reared above the two men and dashed them from the ledge with a blow like that of a striking snake. It had hung poised over the lamp and then darted down on it. But now the eyes looked upwards.… They were very faintly green. They were pale and yet they dazzled him. He began to see a faint movement in their phosphorescence, as if its multitudinous atoms were in a state of flux, and all at once he felt the strangest prompting to loose his hold of Ann and lean forward—over the edge of the stone.
And Ann, with her face against his breast, said, “Charles—Charles—Charles!”
With a most violent effort Charles bent his head. It took every bit of his strength to do it. He could no longer see the eyes. He looked at the darkness which hid Ann’s hair and set his lips against the hidden curls.
Jimmy Halliday still gasped and muttered his broken prayers.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Time had stopped. And then, strangely and giddily, it began again.
“F’r ever and ever amen,” said Jimmy Halliday.
And Charles said, “Dry up, Halliday! I want to listen.”
They all listened then. Jimmy Halliday caught his breath with a gulp. He raised his working face from Ann’s shoulder. They strained against the silence and listened.
Fear by Night: A Golden Age Mystery Page 24