It was not till next day that Jane missed her handkerchief. When she
reached her room after saying good-bye to Henry she had rolled the serge
dress, the wet felt slippers and the damp stockings into a bundle, and
pushed them right to the back of her cupboard. She was so sleepy that
she hardly knew how she undressed.
The instant her head touched the pillow, she slept, a pleasant,
dreamless sleep, and only woke with the housemaid’s knock.
It was when she was drinking a very welcome cup of tea that she began to
wonder whether she was engaged to Henry or not. On the one hand, Henry
undoubtedly appeared to think that she was; on the other, Jane felt
perfectly satisfied that she had pledged herself to nothing more
formidable than a promise to quarrel. A small but very becoming dimple
appeared in Jane’s cheek as she came to the conclusion that Henry was
possibly engaged to her, but that she was certainly not engaged to
Henry. It seemed to her to be a very pleasant state of affairs. It was,
in fact, with great reluctance that she transferred her thoughts to more
practical matters.
Having dressed, she extracted the bundle of clothes from the cupboard,
and decided that the serge dress might be hung up. There were one or two
damp patches and several green smears, but the former would dry and the
latter when dry would brush off.
“But the slippers are awful,” she said.
They were; the cork soles sopping wet, the felt drenched and slimy. She
made a brown paper parcel of them, and put it at the extreme back of the
cupboard. The stockings she consigned to the clothes basket.
“I can wash them out later on,” she thought.
It was at this point that she missed her handkerchief. She had had a
handkerchief the night before. She was sure of that, because she
remembered drying her eyes with it after she had cried.
A little colour came into her face at the recollection of how vehemently
she had wept on Henry’s shoulder with Henry’s arm round her, but it died
again at the insistently recurring thought:
“I had a handkerchief. I dried my eyes with it. Where is it?”
Not only had she dried her eyes with it, but after that she remembered
scrubbing the finger-tips that had touched the slug. The handkerchief
must be horribly smeared and wet. It was one of Renata’s, of course,
white with a blue check border, and “R. Molloy, 12” in marking-ink
across one corner. Imagine buying twelve horrors like that! Mercifully
Renata must have lost most of them, for Jane had only inherited four.
She brought her thoughts back with a jerk. Where was it? If she had
dropped it in the house it would have been either in the hall, on the
stairs, or in the corridor, and one of the housemaids would have brought
it to her by now. It must have fallen in the cross-passage where she had
stood with Henry, and if it were found....
Jane moved a step or two backwards, and sat down on the edge of the bed.
“Of all the first-class prize _idiots_!” she said, and there words
failed her.
If she had dropped it in the cross-passage, it might lie there until
Sunday night when she could get Henry to retrieve it, or it might not.
Ember—Lady Heritage—Anthony Luttrell, any one of these three people
might have business in that cross-passage, in which case a handkerchief,
even if stained, was just the most unlikely thing in the world to pass
unnoticed. Even if no one went up that passage, it might be seen from
the main tunnel. Of course, if it were Anthony Luttrell who found it, it
would not matter. But it was so very much more likely to be one of the
others.
At intervals during the morning, Jane continued to argue the question,
or rather two questions. First, the probabilities for and against the
handkerchief being discovered; and second, should she, or should she
not, go and look for it herself in defiance of Henry’s prohibition? She
had spoken the truth, but not the whole truth, when she told Henry that
she hated the idea of going into the passages alone. She hated going,
but she wanted to go. Most ardently she desired to find things out
before Henry found them out. It would be nice and safe to sit with her
hands in her lap whilst Henry explored secret subterranean caverns, and
unravelled dangerous conspiracies—safe but hideously dull. When Henry
had finished exploring and unravelling, he would come along frightfully
pleased with himself and want her to be engaged to him, and he would
always, always feel superior and convinced that he had done the whole
thing himself. It was a most intolerable thought, more intolerable than
green slime and being alone in the dark. It was at this point that Jane
made up her mind that she would go and look for her handkerchief herself
without waiting for Henry.
Having made her decision, she found an unlooked-for opportunity for
carrying it out, for at lunch Lady Heritage announced her intention of
putting in several hours of laboratory work, whilst it transpired that
Ember was going out in the two-seater car which he drove himself, and
that he was quite uncertain when he would be back. Jane at once made up
her mind that, as soon as the coast was quite clear, she would slip down
into the passages. She would wait until lunch had been cleared and the
servants were safely out of the way. No one was likely to come into the
hall, and the whole thing would be so much less terrifying than another
midnight expedition.
Ember excused himself before lunch was over, and she heard him drive
away a few minutes later; but Lady Heritage sat on, her untasted coffee
beside her. She sat with her chin in her hand, looking out of the
window, and it was obvious enough that her thoughts were far away. She
was probably unconscious of Jane’s presence, certainly undesirous of it,
and yet, for the life of her, Jane could not have risen or asked if she
might go. Once or twice she looked from under her lashes at Raymond’s
still white face. There was a new look upon it since yesterday. She was
sadder and yet softer. She looked as if she had not slept at all.
After a very long half-hour she turned her eyes on Jane. There was a
flash of surprise and then a frown.
“You needn’t have waited,” she said in a cold voice, and then got up and
went out without another word.
Jane took a book into the hall and sat there.
Presently she caught a glimpse of Raymond’s white overall in the upper
corridor, and heard the clang with which the steel gate closed behind
her. She sat quite still and went on reading until all sounds from the
direction of the dining-room had ceased. Silence settled upon the house,
and she told herself that this was her opportunity.
She ran up to her room, changed into the serge dress, and put on a pair
of outdoor shoes. She did not possess an electric torch, and the
question of a light had exercised her a good deal. The best she could do
was to pocket a box of matches and one of the bedroom candles which was
half burnt down. She then went downstairs, and, after listening
anxiously for some moments, she once more moved the heavy chair and,
climbing on it, began to feel for the knots on the panelling. As her
fingers found and pressed them, she heard, simultaneously with the click
of the released spring, a faint thudding noise. With a spasm of horror
she knew that some one had passed through the baize door that shut off
the servants’ wing. The sound she had heard was the sound of the door
falling back into place, and at any other moment it would have gone
unnoticed.
Fortunately for herself Jane was accustomed to a rapid transition from
thought to action. She was off the chair, across the hall, and sitting
with a book on her lap when the butler made his usual rather slow
entrance.
She had recognised at once that it would be impossible for her to
replace the chair and escape discovery. It stood in the shadow, and she
hoped for the best.
Blotson crossed the hall and disappeared into Sir William’s study.
Jane gazed at a printed page upon which the letters of the alphabet were
playing “General post.” After some interminable minutes Blotson
reappeared. He shut the study door, approached Jane, and in a low and
confidential voice inquired would she have tea in the hall, the
drawing-room, or the library.
“Oh, the library,” said Jane, “the library, Blotson.” And with a
majestic, “Very good, miss,” Blotson withdrew.
Blotson’s “Very good” always reminded Jane of the Royal Assent to an Act
of Parliament. It was doubtless a form, but how stately, how dignified a
form.
When the chill superinduced by the presence of Blotson had yielded to a
more natural temperature, Jane went on tiptoe across the hall and
replaced the chair. It was a comfort to reflect that it had escaped
Blotson’s all-embracing eye. With a hasty glance she swung the panel
inwards, slipped through, and closed it again.
She descended all the steps before she ventured to light her candle, and
she was careful to put the spent match into her pocket. Renata’s dress
really did have a pocket, which, of course, made the dropping of the
handkerchief quite inexcusable.
The passage was much less terrifying when one had a light of one’s own
instead of the distant glimmer of somebody else’s and the horrid
possibility of being left at any moment in total darkness, with no idea
of one’s whereabouts or of how to get out.
Jane’s spirits rose brightly. To dread a thing and then to find it easy
provides one with a pleasant sense of difficulty overcome. In great
cheerfulness of spirit Jane walked along until she came to the
cross-passage on her right. She turned up it, walked a few steps holding
her candle high, and there, a couple of yards from the entrance, lay the
handkerchief rolled into a wet and very dirty ball. She picked it up
gingerly, and put it into her convenient pocket.
“And I suppose I ought to go back at once; but what a waste, when every
one is safely out of the way, and I’ve got through the really horrid
part, which is opening that abominable spring.”
Jane hesitated, weighing the duty of a swift return against the pleasure
of exploring and perhaps getting ahead of Henry. The recollection that
Henry had forbidden her to explore turned the scale—towards pleasure.
She had four inches of candle and a whole box of matches. She had at
least two hours of liberty, and, most important of all, she felt herself
to be in a frame of mind which invited success. The question was where
to begin.
On the right-hand side there was only this single passage. Jane did not
feel attracted by it. She was almost sure that it must lead to the
potting-shed, and to descend from conspiracies to garden lumber would
indeed be an anti-climax.
On the left there were four passages. Jane walked back along the way she
had come. The first passage left the main tunnel at an acute angle which
obviously carried it back under the main block of the house. Jane
decided to explore it. She held her candle high in one hand and her
skirts close with the other. The passage was low, and she had to bend a
little. After half a dozen yards she came to a flight of steps. They
were wet, slippery, and very steep. Jane stood on the top step and
looked down.
The walls oozed moisture, the candlelight showed her a pale slug about
five inches long—Jane said six to start with, but, under pressure from
Henry, retreated as far as five and would not yield another half-inch;
she also said that the slug waved its horns at her and was crawling in
her direction. Right there, as the Americans say, she made up her mind
that this would be a good passage to explore with Henry, later on. She
caught a glimpse of another slug on a level with the fifth step, whisked
round, and ran.
“The _one_ point about slugs is that they can’t run,” she said as she
came back into the main corridor.
Without giving herself time to think, she plunged into the next opening
on the left. It ran at right angles to the central passage, and was
comparatively dry. It kept on the same level too, and Jane, trying to
make a mental plan, thought that it must run under the house, cutting
across the north wing. It occurred to her that there might be vaults of
some kind under the terrace, and that this passage would perhaps lead to
them. If this were so, it must soon either curve gradually to the left
or take a sudden sharp turn. She wished she had thought of counting her
steps, but it was difficult to pace regularly on a slippery floor and in
such a poor light.
Just as she had begun to think that the passage must run out to sea, she
came to the sharp turn which she had expected. A wall of black rock
faced her, to her right a tunnel ran in at a sharp angle, and to her
left there was a dark stone arch, a few feet of a new sort of tunnel
built of brick, and then a steel gate exactly like the gates which shut
off the laboratories in the house above.
Jane stared at the gate as if she expected it to dissolve into the
surrounding darkness. The candle-light danced on the steel. It was
rusty, but not so very rusty, and therefore it could not have been for
very long in its present position. She came closer and touched it. It
was real.
Her amazing good fortune almost overcame her. What a thing to tell
Henry! What a justification for flouting his orders!! _What a score!!!_
Jane transferred the candle to her left hand, put out a right hand which
trembled with excitement, and tried the gate. It was open. For a moment
she drew back. Like the child who sits looking at a birthday parcel, the
mere sight of which provides it with so many thrills that it cannot
bring itself to cut the string and unwrap the paper, Jane stood and
looked at her gate, her discovery—hers, not Henry’s.
As she looked, her eyes were caught by a small knob on the right-hand
wall. It was about four feet above the floor and quite close to the
steel bars. It was made of some dull metal and looked exactly like an
electric-light switch. By going quite close to the gate and looking
through she could see that a cased wire ran along the bricks on the same
level, and she remembered that Henry had said the passages were wired.
Had Henry been first on the field after all? She turned, held her light
high, and looked back. The wire went up to the roof and ran along until
she lost it in the darkness. She reflected hopefully that Henry might
have seen the wire much farther along, and turned back again.
Her fingers were on the switch when a really dreadful thought pricked
her. Suppose the switch controlled some horrible explosive! It might
turn on a light, most likely it did; but, on the other hand, it might
let loose a raging demon of destruction that would blow the whole place
to smithereens. It was an unreasonable thought, the sort of thought that
one dismisses instantly in the daylight, but which by candlelight in an
underground tunnel assumes a certain degree of credibility.
“The question is, am I going on or not?”
The silence having failed to supply her with an answer, she said
viciously, “You’re a worse rabbit than Renata,” shut her eyes, held her
breath, and jerked the switch down.
Through her closed lids came a red flash. She clung to the switch and
waited. A drop of boiling wax guttered down upon her left forefinger.
She opened her eyes and saw the steel gate like a black tracery against
a lighted space beyond. With a quickly drawn breath of relief she pushed
the steel gate, took one step forward, and then stood rigid, listening
to the muffled yet insistent whir of an alarm bell. After one horrified
moment she pulled the door towards her again. The sound ceased. Jane
considered.
As a result of her consideration she turned out the electric light,
opened the gate, slipped through, and closed it again so quickly that
the bell was hardly heard. She did not allow it to latch, and, stooping,
set a piece of broken brick to hold it ajar. The candlelight seemed very
inadequate, but she decided that she must make it do, and holding it
well up in front of her, she came through a brick arch into a long
chamber with walls of stone.
Jane looked about her with ignorant, widely opened eyes. She had never
been in a laboratory, but she knew that this must be one. The printed
page does not exist for nothing. The vague yellow light flickered on
strange cylindrical shapes and was flung back by glass jars and odd
twisted retorts. A great many appliances, for which she could find no
name, emerged from dense shadow into the uncertain dusk.
“It’s like a mediæval torture chamber—only worse, colder—more
calculating! It’s a sort of torture chamber. I _hate_ it. It gives me
the grues,” said Jane.
She moved slowly down the room. It was quite dry in here. There was no
slime, and there were no slugs.
“I hate it a thousand times more than the passages,” she said.
Her feet moved slowly and unwillingly. In the far corner there were two
more arches. She thought she would just see what lay beyond them and
then return. She took the one on the right hand first. It ran along a
little way and then terminated in a small round chamber which was full
of packing-cases. She returned and went down the second passage. She was
just inside it when with startling suddenness she found herself looking
at her own shadow. It lay clear and black on the brick floor in front of
her. Some one had turned on the electric light.
Jane’s candle tilted and the wax dropped. Her horrified eyes looked
about wildly for a place of refuge. The light showed her one. Within a
yard of the entrance there was an arched hollow. With a sort of gasp she
blew her candle out and bolted for the shelter. The whir of the electric
bell sounded as she gained it, sounded and then ceased. She heard Ember
say, “Quite a good run, wasn’t it?” and a voice which she did not expect
answer, “Well enough.” The voice puzzled her. It was a pleasant voice,
deep and rich. It had something of a brogue and something of a twang.
A most unpleasant light broke upon Jane. It was the voice of the
Anarchist Uncle. It was the voice of Mr. Molloy.
Jane got as far back into her hollow as she could. It was not very far.
There had evidently been a tunnel here, but the roof had fallen in, and
the floor was rough and uneven with the débris.
She heard the two men moving in the room beyond, and she experienced a
most sincere repentance for not having attended to the counsels of
Henry.
“And now we can talk,” said Ember. “You’ve got the cash?”
“Not with me,” said Mr. Molloy.
“Why not?”
“Oh, just in case....”—a not unmelodious whistle completed the sentence.
“They paid the higher figure?”
“They did,” said Mr. Molloy. “Belcovitch was for taking their second
bid, but I told him ‘No.’ Belcovitch has his points, but he’s not the
bold bargainer. I told him ‘No.’ I told him ‘It’s this way—if they want
it they’ll pay our price.’ And pay it they did. I don’t know that I ever
handled that much money before, and all for a sheet or two of paper.
Well, well——”
“You should have brought the money with you. Why didn’t you?”
In the now brightly lighted laboratory Molloy sat negligently on the end
of a bench and lifted his eyebrows a little.
“Well, I didn’t,” he said.
“Where is it?”
“In a place of safety.”
Ember shrugged his shoulders.
“Well, we’ve pulled it off,” he said. “By the way, the fact of the sale
is known. We’ve had an interfering young jack-in-office down here making
inquiries, and Sir William has gone up to town in a very considerable
state of nerves.”
“The Anarchist Uncle,” said Jane to herself, “has been selling the
Government Formula ‘A.’ He doesn’t trust Mr. Ember enough to hand the
money over. Pleasant relations I’ve got!”
Molloy whistled again, a long-drawn note with a hint of dismay in it.
“I wonder who let the cat out of the bag,” he said.
“These things always leak out. It doesn’t really signify. With this
money at our command we can complete our arrangements at once, and be
ready to strike within the next few weeks. You and Belcovitch had better
keep out of the way until the time comes. He should be here in four
days’ time, travelling by the route we settled; then you’ll have
company. You must both lie close here.”
“That’s the devil of a plan now, Ember,” said Molloy. “We’ll be no
better than rats in a drain.”
“Well, it’s for your safety,” said Ember. “They’re out for blood over
this business of Formula ‘A,’ I can tell you, and there’s nowhere you’d
be half so safe.”
Jane was listening with all her ears. She decided that Mr. Ember’s
solicitude was not all on Molloy’s account. “He thinks that if Molloy
and Belcovitch are arrested, they’ll give him away over the big thing in
order to save themselves. I expect they’d be able to make a pretty good
bargain for themselves, really.” She heard Molloy give a sulky assent.
Then Ember was speaking again:
“I want to check the lists with you. Not the continental ones—I’ll keep
those for Belcovitch—but those for the States and here. I’ve got them
complete now, but I’m not very sure about all the names. Hennessey now,
he’s down for Chicago, but I don’t know that I altogether trust
Hennessey.”
“It’s late in the day to say that,” said Molloy.
“Well, what about Hayling Taylor?”
Jane listened, and heard name follow name. Ember appeared to be reading
from a list. He would name a large town and follow it with a list of
persons who apparently acted as agents there. Sometimes these names were
passed with an assenting grunt by Molloy, sometimes there was a
discussion.
There are a great many large towns in the United States of America. Jane
became stiffer and stiffer. At last she could bear her constrained
half-crouching position no longer. Very gingerly, moving half an inch at
a time, she let herself down until she was sitting on the pile of broken
bricks which blocked the tunnel. The names went on. It was dull and
monotonous to a degree, but behind the dullness and the monotony there
was a sense of lurking horror.
“It’s like being in a fog,” said Jane—“the sort you can’t see through at
all, and knowing that there’s a tiger loose somewhere.”
One thing became clearer and clearer to her. Those lists that sounded
like geography lessons must be got hold of somehow. Henry must have
them.
After what seemed like a long time Ember folded up one paper and
produced another. If Jane had been able to watch Mr. Molloy’s face, she
would have noticed that, every now and then, it was crossed by a look of
hesitation. He seemed constantly about to speak and yet held his peace.
“I’d like you to check the names for Ireland too,” said Ember. “Grogan
sent me the completed list two days ago. You’d better look at it.”
Molloy took the paper and ran his finger down the names, mumbling them
only half audibly. His finger travelled more and more slowly. All at
once he stopped, and threw the paper from him along the bench.
“What is it?” said Ember, in his cool tones.
Molloy frowned, got up, walked to the end of the room, and came back
again. He appeared to have something to say, and to experience extreme
difficulty in saying it. His words, when he did speak, seemed
irrelevant:
“That’s a big sum they paid us for Formula ‘A,’” he said. “Did you ever
handle as much money as that, Ember?”
“No,” said Jeffrey Ember, short and sharp.
“Nor I. It’s a queer thing the feeling it gives you. I tell you I came
across with fear upon me, not knowing for sure whether I’d get away with
it; but there was a lot besides fear in it. There was power, Ember, I
tell you—power. Whilst I’d be sitting in the train, or walking down the
street, or lying in my bed at an hotel, I’d be thinking to myself, I’ve
got as much as would buy you up, and then there would be leavings.”
“What are you driving at, Molloy?” said Ember.
Molloy’s florid colour deepened. He narrowed his lids and looked through
them at Ember.
“Maybe I was thinking,” he said, “that there’s a proverb we might take
note of.”
“Well?”
“It’s just a proverb,” said Mr. Molloy. “It’s been in my mind since I
had the handling of the money—‘A bird in the hand is worth two in the
bush.’”
Ember’s eyes lost their dull film. They brightened until Mr. Molloy was
unable to sustain their glance. He shifted his gaze, and Ember said very
quietly:
“Are you thinking of selling us?”
Molloy broke into an oath. “And that’s a thing no one shall say of me,”
he said, with a violence that sent his voice echoing along through the
open arches.
“Then may I ask you what you meant?”
“Why, just this.” Molloy dropped to an ingratiating tone. “There’s the
money safe—certain—in our hands now. What’s the need of all this?”
He came forward with two or three great strides, picked up the list from
where he had thrown it, and beat with it upon his open hand.
“All this,” he repeated—“this and what it stands for. You may say
there’s no risk, but there’s a big risk. It’s a gamble, and what’s the
need to be gambling when we’ve got the money safe?”
“In plain English, you want to back out at the last moment?”
“I do not, and I defy you to say that I do.”
“Then what’s come to you?”
“Here’s the thing that’s come to me. It came to me when I ran me eye
down this list. See there, and that’ll tell ye what has come to me.”
He thrust the list in front of Ember.
“It’s Galway you’ve got set down there.”
“Well, and what of it?” said Ember.
“What of it?” said Mr. Molloy. “I was born in Galway, and the only
sister I ever had is married there. Four sons she has, decent young men
by all the accounts I’ve had of them. If I haven’t been in Galway for
thirty years, that’s not to say that I’ve no feeling for my own flesh
and blood. Why, the first girl I ever courted lived out Barna way.
Many’s the time I’ve met her in the dusk on the seashore, and she half
crying for fear of what her father would do. Katie Blake her name was.
They married her to old Timmy Dolan before I’d been six months out of
the country. A fistful of gold he had, and a hard fist it was. I heard
tell he beat her, poor Katie. But ye see now, Ember, it’s the same way
with your native place and your first love, ye can’t get quit of them.
Now I hadn’t been a month in Chicago before I was courting another girl,
but to save my neck I couldn’t tell ye what her name was, and ye may
blow Chicago to hell to-morrow and I’ll not say a word.”
“But not Galway?” Mr. Ember’s tone was very dry indeed.
“You’ve said it. Not Galway. I’ll not stand for it.”
Ember laughed. It was a laugh without merriment, cool, sarcastic.
“Molloy, the man of sentiment!” he said. “Now doesn’t it strike you that
it’s just a little late in the day for this display of feeling? May I
ask why you never raised the interesting subject of your birthplace
before?”
“Is it sentiment that you’re sarcastic about?” said Molloy. “If it is,
I’d have you remember that I’ve never let it interfere with business
yet, and I wouldn’t now. Many’s the time I’ve put my feelings on one
side when I was up against a business proposition. But I tell you right
here that when I see my way to good money and to keeping what I call my
sentiment too it looks pretty good to me, and I say to myself what I say
to you, ‘What’s the sense of going looking for trouble?’”
Ember laughed again.
“I will translate,” he said. “From the sale of the Government formula
you see your way to deriving a competency. You become, in a mild way, a
capitalist. Luxuries before undreamed of are within your grasp—romantic
sentiment, childhood’s memories, the finer feelings in fact. As a poor
man you could not dream of affording them, though I dare say you’d have
enjoyed them well enough. Is it a correct translation?”
“It is,” said Molloy.
“Molloy the capitalist!” Ember’s voice dropped just a little lower.
“Molloy the man of sentiment! Molloy the traitor! No you don’t, Molloy,
I’ve got you covered. Why, you fool, you don’t suppose I meet a man
twice my own size in a place that no one knows of without taking the
obvious precautions?”
Molloy had first started violently, and next made a sort of plunge in
Ember’s direction. At the sight of the small automatic pistol he checked
himself, backed a pace or two, and said:
“You’ll take that word back. It’s a damned lie.”
He breathed hard and stared at the pistol in Ember’s hand.
“Is it?” said Ember coolly. “I hope it is, for your sake. I’d remind
you, Molloy, that no one would move heaven and earth to find you if you
disappeared, and that it would be hard to find a handier place for the
disposal of a superfluous corpse. Now listen to me.”
He set his left hand open on the lists.
“This is going through. It’s going through in every detail. It’s going
through just as we planned it.” He spoke in level, expressionless tones.
He looked at Molloy with a level, expressionless gaze. A little of the
colour went out of the big Irishman’s face. He drew a long breath, and
came to heel like a dog whose master calls him.
“Have it your own way,” he said. “It was just talk, and to see what you
thought of it. If you’re set on the plan, why the plan it is.”
“We’re all committed to the plan,” said Ember. “You were talking a while
ago as if you and I could do a deal and leave the rest of the Council
out. Setting Belcovitch on one side, weren’t you forgetting to reckon
with Number One?”
“Maybe I was,” said Molloy. “And come to that, Ember, when are we to
have the full Council meeting you’ve been talking of for months past?
Belcovitch and I had a word about it, and he agrees with me. We want a
full meeting and Number One in the chair instead of getting all our
instructions through you. It’s reasonable.”
“Yes, it’s reasonable.” Ember paused, and then added, “You shall have
the full Council when Belcovitch comes.”
Jane on her pile of débris leaned forward to catch the words. Ember’s
voice had dropped very low. She was shaking with excitement. Her
movement was not quite a steady one. A small piece of rubble slid under
the pressure she placed on it. Something slipped and rolled.
“What’s that?” said Ember sharply.
“Some more of the passage falling in,” said Molloy, “by the sound of
it.”
“Just take a light and see.”
“It might have been a rat,” said Molloy carelessly.
There was a pause. Jane remained absolutely motionless. If they thought
it was a rat perhaps they would not come and look. She stiffened
herself, wondering how long she could keep this cramped position. Then,
with a spasm of terror, she heard Molloy say, “I’ll have a look round.
We don’t want rats in here,” heard his heavy footfall, and saw a
brilliant beam of light stream past the entrance of her hiding-place.
Before she had time to do more than experience a stab of fear, Molloy
walked straight past. She heard him go up the passage, heard him call
out, “There’s nothing here.” Then he turned. He was coming back. Would
he pass her again? It was just possible. She tried to think he would,
and then she knew that he would not. The light flashed into the broken
tunnel mouth. It flashed on the sagging roof, the damp walls and the
broken rubble. It flashed on to Jane.
Jane saw only a white glare. She knew exactly what a beetle must feel
like when it is pinned out as a specimen. The light went through and
through her. It seemed to deprive her of thought, volition, power to
move. She just stared at it.
Mr. Molloy using his flashlight cheerfully, and much relieved at a break
in his conversation with Ember, received one of the severest shocks of
his not unadventurous life. One is not a Terrorist for thirty years
without learning a little elementary self-control in moments of
emergency. He did not therefore exclaim. He merely stared. He saw a
sagging roof and damp walls. He saw a muddled heap of broken bricks
unnaturally clear cut and distinct. He saw the shadows which they cast,
unnaturally black and hard. He saw Jane, whom he took to be his daughter
Renata. His brain boggled at it. He passed his hand across his eyes, and
looked again. His daughter Renata was still there. She was half sitting,
half crouching on the pile of rubble. Her body was bent forward, her
elbows resting on her knees, her hands one on either side of her
colourless cheeks. Her face was tilted a little looking up at him. Her
mouth was a little open. Her eyes stared into the light.
Jane stared, and Mr. Molloy stared. Then, with a sudden turn he swung
round and passed back into the laboratory. As he went he whistled the
air of “The Cruiskeen Lawn.”
Jane remained rigid. The beetle was unpinned. The light was gone. But
the darkness was full of rockets and Catherine-wheels. Her ears were
buzzing. From a long way off she heard Ember speak and Molloy answer.
The rockets and the Catherine-wheels died away. She put her head down on
her knees, and the darkness came back restfully.