BLACK PABLO MAKES HIS PREPARATIONS
They pushed me into the cool dimness of the cave. An odour of unwashed
humanity, which blended gratefully with a searching smell of garlic,
hung about my unseen captors.
"Herrgott!" cried Grundt, "it's as dark as pitch in this hole. Cut
away this cursed plant, some of you, and let's have some light!"
The creeper fell away. The golden sunlight that flooded the cave
showed me Clubfoot, his black-tufted hands folded across the crutch
handle of his heavy stick, grim and lowering.
Black Pablo and a regular Hercules of a man, a broad-chested,
yellow-bearded giant, a good type of the German bluejacket from the
Frisian seaboard, were holding me. Grundt made a quick gesture of the
hand.
"Take away his gun!" he ordered.
The fair young man I had seen at the graveside stepped forward.
Roughly, vindictively, he ran his hands over me. He found Carstairs'
automatic in my side pocket and transferred it to his own.
"You see these men," said Clubfoot, bending his bushy eyebrows at me.
"Their orders are to shoot to kill in the event of any attempt on your
part to escape. And whatever your private views on suicide may be you
will probably bear in mind that Miss Garth--the charming Miss
Garth--will, in any case, be left to mourn you...."
This allusion to Marjorie frightened me. There was no suavity about
Clubfoot now. He was in his blackest, most menacing mood. His face
was positively baleful; and there was a twitching of his black-bristled
nostrils which warned me that he was on the verge of a paroxysm of fury.
"Leave me alone with him!" he commanded brusquely--his voice was harsh
and snarling--"but remain outside within call!"
I felt the blood rush back into my numbed arms as the men relaxed their
grip and withdrew.
Nervously Grundt's great fist beat a little tattoo on his open palm.
He appeared to be making an effort to control himself.
"You would play a double game with me, would you?" he said. "No man
has ever double-crossed me and got away with it, do you hear? My
master may be in exile, my country fallen from greatness; but _I_ am
king here. Do you understand that?"
His pale lips trembled and he stuttered as he strove to master his
rising passion.
"This cipher message is useless, as well you know. Without the
preliminary indication, it is unintelligible. So Itzig, who in his day
was the greatest cipher expert the Russian Okhrana ever had, has
reported to me. And you knew it, you.... you...."
He pawed the air with his huge hand, the fingers outstretched.
"They have examined his grave again. There are signs that something
was attached to the timber-work. What that was the drunken Englishman
who first visited the grave must have known. And he confided it to
you. 'I know when I'm beaten, Herr Doktor'; and 'I'll give you the
cipher,' say you! You thought you were too clever for old Clubfoot,
the cripple, the beaten Hun. But I'm master here, Herr Major, and you
shall do my bidding!...."
"You are misinformed, Herr Doktor!" I said, trying to speak calmly. My
lips were dry and my heart-beats thumped in my ears. But I was not
thinking of myself. I was tormented with anxiety for
Marjorie--Marjorie in the hands of those men.
"Don't answer hastily!" counselled Grundt changing to a tone of deadly
calm that struck chill on my heart. "Ulrich von Hagel, who wrote that
message, left it for one who should come after him, who would be a
naval officer like himself. He wrote it so that it should be
unintelligible to the casual person into whose hands it might fall, yet
as clear as day to one of his own caste. And you would tell me that
the message as it stands is all he left behind! _Nein, nein, Herr
Major, es geht nicht_! I know that you have this information"--he
crashed his fist into his open hand--"and you are going to give it to
me!"
I shrugged my shoulders. I would not speak yet. Sooner or later, I
knew, they would use Marjorie to break my silence. Then it would be
time to speak. Till then I must await developments. After all, time
was on my side.
My gesture seemed to rekindle all Grundt's rage. Slowly the colour
faded out of his face, leaving it livid save where that hideous scar
beneath the cheek-bone made an angry patch of red. His bushy eyebrows
drew together and his mouth trembled.
"So you'd still play with me, would you, you scum?" he shouted, his
voice rising to a roar. "You'd pit your wits against mine, would you?
_Herrgott_, I have an account to settle with you and that brother of
yours, and, by God! I'm going to settle it! And you shall pay double
for the pair of you! Do you know...."--his voice dropped to a savage
whisper--"that these German seamen of mine would cheerfully abandon all
claim to the treasure for the pleasure of taking vengeance on you for
all your country has made them suffer in these long years, hunted,
degraded, outcast?
"Do you realise that I have but to raise my hand and you're a doomed
man, and not the whole might of the British Empire could save you? But
we shall take our time. You will not die too soon, my friend. First
you shall speak! And if you remain obstinate, there is always the
charming English girl...."
He clapped his hands. On a sudden the cave seemed filled with angry,
shouting men. My head swam for I was worn out with want of sleep and
faint with hunger. Something struck me on the back of the neck a
violent blow. I felt myself falling, falling....
* * * * *
How long I remained unconscious I don't know. When I regained my
senses it was to find myself in semi-darkness in a long, low-roofed
shed. It was dimly lit by a ruddy light which fell through some kind
of grating in the roof. I could see no windows. The atmosphere was
stifling and the floor and walls fairly swarmed with enormous
cockroaches.
They had laid me down on a pile of sail-cloth in a corner. My head was
splitting and I had a raging thirst. My pockets had been rifled and my
brandy-flask was gone. I leaned back on my hard couch, my head against
the rough wall of planks, and idly watched the flickering reddish light
that filtered through the grating. I was vaguely aware of some
unpleasant news that lurked, like a robber in ambush, in some
unfrequented corner of my brain ready to pounce out upon my first
conscious thought....
Somewhere outside a guitar was thrumming random passages of Spanish
dances, punctuated, now and then, by a little burst of castanets. The
soft murmur of voices became audible every time the guitar stopped,
with here a laugh and there an exclamation. Presently a voice called
"Pablo!": the lilting rhythm of a dance theme stopped--suddenly in the
middle of a bar--and the click of the castanets was stilled. Then, to
soft, plaintive chords heavily stressed, an exquisite liquid tenor
voice began to sing.
"Se murio, y sobre su cara"
"Un panuelito le heche...."
"Por que no toque la tierra...."
"Esa bocca que yo bese!...."
The chords broke off abruptly on a single string that sung
reverberatingly. There was laughter, applause, the confusion of men
speaking together. Then a voice said distinctly in German:
"He hadn't come round when I looked in ten minutes ago. Karl knows how
to send them to sleep with that blow of his...."
"He'll come out of dreamland quick enough when _der Stelze_ gives Black
Pablo the word!" another voice replied.
"O Pablo," cried one in Spanish, "O Pablo! You shall try your little
persuasions on the Señor!"
"_Si, si_," came from many throats.
"_Madre de Dios_," answered a voice in guttural Spanish. "He shall
speak for me, _muchachos_! And if he will not speak, then, _caramba_!
maybe he'll sing for us and for the lovely _Señorita_ as well!"
Then followed a roar of acclamation. Then Black Pablo said:
"Patience a little while, _amigos_, until the chief comes. I go to
make ready the fire!...."
I sprang to my feet. I heard no more of the talk outside, the cries,
the laughter, the chaff. The time had come for action. I must decide
at once between complete capitulation to Grundt or one last bid for
liberty.
But what guarantees had I that Grundt, with the heliograph in his
possession, would respect any promise he might give me as the price of
surrender? None. I could not trust him and, as he had told me, he had
an old score to pay off. And if anything should happen to me before
the yacht returned what would become of Marjorie? Free I might help
her; therefore any risk was justifiable to secure my escape.
Escape? But how?
The shed was solidly built of heavy logs, the door the only visible
means of egress. The grating which admitted the air was a steel-bound
frame too narrow, as I could see at a glance, to admit the passage of
my body. I scrutinised the floor. It was of planking, well-made and
seemingly in good condition. It struck hollow to the foot and I
surmised that, as is generally the case with sheds of this kind, the
structure was laid on a concrete foundation.
In the course of my examination of the boarding I moved the pile of
sail-cloth. Beneath it was a plank in which an iron ring was sunk.
The sheer unexpectedness of my discovery, the prospect of escape it
opened to me, left me with brain numbed, irresolute. The talk and
laughter had died down outside, but, from time to time, my ear caught a
measured foot-tread as though a guard were walking up and down before
the shed....
The plank came up easily enough. My heart sank within me. It revealed
merely a shallow trough about three feet deep going down to the
foundations of the shed which, as I had guessed, were set in concrete.
I got down into the hole and crawled in under the floor. It was
pitch-dark and abominably hot down there under the boards with a strong
smell of rats. Face downwards, my head frequently scraping the planks
above me, I crawled along the concrete bed, hoping against hope that I
might find some hole, where the outer wall of the shed rested on the
concrete base, which would enable me to scramble through to freedom.
But I was doomed to disappointment. Here and there I found a cranny
wide enough for the flat of my hand to pass. But nowhere was there an
opening large enough to take anything bigger than a cat. I could only
conclude that the trap I had found was made for the purpose of allowing
repairs to be effected to the lower woodwork of the shed.
Half-suffocated with the heat and almost blinded with dust, I was
painfully crawling back to my trap when my head hit a plank along the
wall with more than usual violence. The beam, seemingly rotten
underneath, eaten perhaps by ants, splintered like touch-wood and my
head came up through the floor. I found myself looking into the shed.
Then germinated in my mind the seed of a great idea. The next best
thing to escaping is to give the appearance of having escaped, a theory
which many of our war prisoners in Germany turned to good account. If
my captors were not acquainted with the construction of the shed, if,
as I calculated, they would, from the discovery of a large hole in the
floor, jump to the conclusion, without further investigation, that I
had burrowed my way out under the floor, the guard over the shed would
be relaxed and I should, at any rate, have a little breathing-space in
which to think out the next move. There were a lot of "ifs" about my
plan. But it was the only one I could think of for the moment and I
set about putting it into operation at once.
Where the rotten plank had given way I enlarged the hole as much as
possible. Then I climbed back through it into the shed, replaced the
plank with the ring and covered it up again with the pile of
sail-cloth, and without further delay dived down again through the hole
I had made under the floor. I crawled away among the beams and joists
as far as I could go in the direction of the other side of the shed and
then lay still.