LXI
A hot bath and a meal, though every morsel seemed to choke him, restored Dick Alford to something like himself. There was hope—faint indeed, but still hope. He had despatched his bailiff in search of explosives, but explosives cannot be bought over the counter like cheese and bacon. He had a telephone message from the man to say that he was on his way to London and would return with the necessary apparatus. Dick’s plan was simple; even then a derrick was being rigged over the well; his plan was to dynamite the wall of the well and to get into the gallery.
“For a long time I’ve been suspicious that the rock on which the Abbey was built was honey-combed with passages. My father told me something about it and I’ve seen an old plan that shows an elaborate system of corridors, though the family has always thought this was largely imaginative on the part of the artist.”
“Have you the plan now?” asked Gilder.
Dick shook his head.
“Harry took everything of that nature away with him the night he left the house.”
“It is not amongst the books you found in the underground room?” said Puttler, and a search was made of the library, but without success.
They were on their way to the ruins when Puttler saw the aëroplane in the sky. It circled twice and then began to dip steeply.
“I believe that fellow is coming here,” he said.
And so it proved. The machine roared its progress for a hundred yards or more, and then dropped. Presently they saw a man get down. Though he wore an airman’s helmet, Dick recognized him. It was Arthur Gwyn.
He met Gilder’s scowl with a little laugh.
“I’ve got some money of yours, Gilder,” he said, and dragged with some difficulty a huge packet from the pocket of his leather coat. “That is more or less the amount I owe you, unless the franc has depreciated in value since I left Paris. And now you can do your damnedest!”
Gilder took the packet without a word and Arthur turned to Dick Alford.
“I read about Leslie in the French papers,” he said simply, “and so I came back. Has she been found?”
Dick shook his head.
“Have you any idea where she is?”
Dick told him all that had happened that afternoon and Arthur Gwyn listened in silence. When Dick came to speak of his plan, he shook his head.
“I had my early training as an engineer before I went into the law,” he said surprisingly, “and I tell you, from my elementary knowledge of the science, that you’re likely to blow in the whole well, and if there’s anybody on the other side, God help them!”
He accompanied them to the lower room and was swung down on the derrick to make an inspection. When he returned to the surface his report was not very promising.
“So far as I can see,” he said, “whilst you may enlarge the opening of any of these air holes, you may also bring about a fall of the rock inside. You’re dealing with surfaces which have been exposed to the chemical action of the air.”
He went down and made an inspection of the lower room, which was new to him, and, as they had done, tried to pull the table aside. And then he did what they had not attempted; he pushed at the table at one end and felt it move, at first slowly and then quickly, as though he had set in motion a counterweight. He had just time to swing himself on the table and grip its edge when the aperture appeared under his feet.
Dick saw the broken stair, and, sitting on the edge of the hole, dropped through to the rocky floor just as the table slid into its place. They pushed it back again and propped it, and Arthur and Gilder joined him below carrying lanterns. He saw a piece of something dark on the floor and picked it up. It was a strip of silk.
“This is the way,” he said quietly. “I’ll work to the left; you go to the right, Gilder.”
Arthur made a rapid mental calculation.
“The left passage will lead you to the well, and unless I’m very much mistaken you will find the air holes on your right-hand side. If you don’t mind, I’ll go with you.”
The men ascended the treacherous slope and came to the first of the air holes, continued up until they reached the straight passage down which Leslie had made her fruitless journey. They, too, were brought to a halt by the wall barrier, and returned the way they had come. There was no sign of Leslie or Harry, but when Dick passed the alcove down which he had dropped from the Abbot’s room he found a burnt match stalk.
He ascended again, a long, steady climb.
“We’re near the surface of the ground,” said Arthur.
Ahead of them the star lamp of Gilder showed. He was coming back to meet them.
“This passage ends in a sort of maze,” he reported. “There is a side passage, but that’s entirely blocked by stone.”
They went back with him to the place and Arthur Gwyn examined the débris.
“The roof has fallen in here,” he said. “How long ago, it is impossible to tell. This stone is old, but I should think that the fall has been going on for years.”
They returned dispirited, and accompanied Gilder on his exploration of the maze. Though they tried passage after passage, they invariably found themselves back at the place where they had started. Dick made another inspection of the fallen roof. It had collapsed a few feet from the entrance; and, though he did not know this, there was twenty yards of crumbled rock between him and the little chamber where Leslie Gwyn was waiting for death.
Dick came out into the light of the setting sun, his haggard face white with dust. Arthur sat on a stone, his head in his hands, the picture of despair. Even Gilder was shaken from his habitual calm, could do no more than stare tragically at the ruin which hid so much. The broken arch of the window, red in the light of the setting sun, was more than ever like a query mark. There was something devilish about it, something which epitomized the spirit that leered and mocked at them.
“Come back to the house,” said Dick steadily, and, to the bailiff who approached him: “No, I sha’n’t want the dynamite—yet.”
They walked dispiritedly along the mound, Arthur Gwyn, the most dejected of all, walking in the rear. Suddenly they heard him shout, and turned. He was pointing across the river.
“What is it?” asked Dick, hurrying back to him.
“The wishing well—have you thought of that?” gasped Arthur.
“The wishing well?”
And then Dick remembered that rendezvous of the country swains, the unfathomable crevice in the earth down which, as a boy, he had dropped stones, listening to hear them strike from rock to rock until they grew fainter.
“That reaches somewhere,” said Arthur excitedly. “We can but try it.”
Dick ran down to the bank, plunged into the water and waded through to the other side. The two men followed him, and something whispered in Dick Alford’s heart that this was his last hope.