THE TUNNEL
Dorothy walked slowly back to Will-o’-the-Wisp and climbed into the
cockpit. From the pilot’s seat she had an unobstructed view of the field
and the two other airplanes. Overhead, fluffy wind clouds began to
appear from out of the northwest. Near the stone wall, three small
rabbits sported in the sunshine; and presently a groundhog waddled
across the field.
She glanced at her watch. The hands marked five past five. Bill had been
gone twenty minutes.
“And he told me not to get nervous,” she thought indignantly. “This
waiting around is enough to set anybody off—I’ll give him just ten
minutes more!”
Dorothy counted those ten minutes quite the longest she had ever
experienced. Fifteen minutes past five and still no Bill. He had told
her to wait half an hour and then to fly home for help! But she was not
the sort of girl who permits herself to be quietly wiped off the picture
by an order from a boy friend! She just wasn’t made that way. Bill might
be worried about the safety of the planes; it was his safety that
worried her.
Determinedly she transferred the small revolver from its holster to a
pocket of the jodhpurs she was wearing. Should she pack a flash light,
too? No need of that, she decided. Figuring on daylight saving time, it
wouldn’t be dark until after eight o’clock. Without more ado, she got
out of the plane and crossed the field toward the wood.
After she had climbed the wall at the spot where she had seen Bill
disappear on the trail of the bearded aviator, she came upon a path.
Narrow it was, and overgrown, yet certainly a path, leading through the
trees at a diagonal from the stone fence. Without hesitation, Dorothy
followed it.
She was soon certain that her idea of the wood from the air was correct,
and that it covered no great acreage. Hurrying along the winding
footpath, she began to catch glimpses of blue sky between the tree
trunks, and less than three hundred yards from the wall she came into
the open.
The trees ended at the edge of a broad gully, apparently the bed of a
shallow stream in the spring or after a shower; but now, except for a
puddle or two, it was dry. On the farther side, cows were grazing in a
meadow.
“Nice pastoral landscape,” she said aloud. “Doesn’t look like much of a
spot for mischief—”
In spite of her bravado, Dorothy felt a lump in her throat. If Bill were
missing, too, and she could not find him....
The pasture sloped gently upward over a hill, perhaps a quarter of a
mile away. And on the horizon above the hilltop, the Castle reared its
pointed turrets skyward. For a little while she watched the huge, grey
pile of stone, whose narrow leaded windows reflecting the late afternoon
sun, winked at her with many mocking eyes. What a dreary-looking place
it was, she thought. Ugly and forbidding, it was entirely out of place
in this New England countryside. The Castle seemed utterly deserted. It
probably was. At least the path ended at the gully; there was no sign of
it across the meadow.
Where was the bearded aviator—and above all, where was Bill?
“Bill distinctly said he would not snoop around the Castle,” she
thought. “I wonder if he really came this far?”
So eager had she been to reach the edge of the wood that she had paid
very little attention to the ground she was covering. As this new
thought struck her, she turned and gazed back over the way she had come.
There were her own footprints clearly defined in the damp earth—but
there was no sign that either Bill or the smuggler had passed that way.
Back along the path she trudged, walking slowly this time.
“I’m a pretty poor woodsman,” she told herself. “They must have turned
off somewhere.”
Her eyes searched the soft earth of the narrow trail and the thick
bushes through which it wandered. But it was not until she had gone half
way back to the stone wall that she discovered traces of footprints. And
where the prints left the path, a ragged remnant of a handkerchief swung
from a twig near the ground.
“There!” she pounced upon it joyfully. “How could I have been so stupid
as to miss it—I might have known!”
The initials, “W. B.” embroidered in one corner of the dirty fragment of
linen banished any doubt she may have had as to its ownership. Leaving
it tied to the bush, she struck into the wood.
Now that she was intent upon her stalking, there was no mistaking the
trail left by the other two. A broken twig, heel marks on the soft mold,
a trampled patch of moss; all these signs bespoke a hasty passage
through the brush.
She had not gone far, when suddenly in a clearing she came upon the end
of the trail. The earth here was bare of undergrowth and sloped sharply
down into a marshy ravine. In the center of the little clearing a pile
of brush was heaped with dead grass and rubbish,—tin cans, old shoes,
automobile fenders, rusty bed-springs, boxes and weathered newspapers.
For a moment Dorothy stared at the rubbish dump. Then she noticed
footprints circling the heap and followed them down to the ravine. Here,
as if to bulwark the miscellaneous junk and to keep it from sliding, was
a buttress of boxes and barrels.
Dorothy got down on her knees and examined these carefully. At the very
bottom, almost on a level with the tussocky surface of the marsh, a
barrel lay on its side, its depth leading inward. A sudden inspiration
made her pull a long stick from the pile and run it into the barrel. She
gave a little gurgle of astonishment. The barrel had no bottom.
Still on her knees she peered inside. Just beyond the rim lay a scrap of
paper. She picked it up and scrawled upon it were the words “This
way”....
“Another message!” she whispered jubilantly.
She tried to move the barrel but found that it was securely nailed to
the bulwark of packing-cases. The soft earth about its mouth was heavily
marked with footprints.
“Well, there’s no doubt about it now—‘this way’—” she murmured and
without further waste of time wormed her way into the barrel.
As she crawled through the other end, she found herself in a narrow
tunnel. The daylight appearing through its ingenious entrance was strong
enough to show her that the rubbish had been built over a frame of
two-by-fours and chickenwire, which formed the roof and sides of the
tunnel under the dump.
Dorothy got to her feet. A short distance ahead the tunnel led straight
into the high ground over which she had come from the wood path. Here
the sides were timbered with stout posts, and ceiled with cross beams to
prevent the earthen roof from falling.
“Gee, if this isn’t like Alice in Wonderland! Why, I might meet the
White Rabbit any minute now.” She giggled, then shivered as she
remembered why she was there.
For a moment she considered returning to the plane for her flash light,
but decided it would take too much precious time, and passed on
cautiously, stopping now and then to listen. She could hear nothing but
the squashy sound of her footsteps on the marshy floor of the tunnel.
After proceeding about fifteen feet, the dark passage turned slightly in
its course. Just beyond the turn, as Dorothy was groping to find which
way it led, her hands touched a wooden surface. This proved to be a
heavy door, standing partly open. As she shoved it back with her
shoulder, she tripped over a heavy object which lay across the sill.
Dorothy reached down in the darkness and picked up a crowbar.
She advanced, dragging the crowbar after her. The floor of the passage
at this point began to slope up hill. But after a few paces ahead, she
found it went abruptly downward at a considerable angle, took a sharp
turn to the right, then began to slope gently upward again.
By this time she had lost all sense of direction. She progressed slowly,
feeling along the wall with her left hand, resting it on one timber
until she had advanced half way to where she supposed the next would be.
In this manner she crept on for nearly a quarter of a mile without
meeting any obstruction. The air, though cold and lifeless, was
breathable; but the darkness and the horrid feeling of being shut in
began to get on her nerves. Once more she stopped to listen. Absolute
stillness. Dorothy could hear nothing but the beating of her heart as
she strained her eyes to pierce the black passage. She seemed completely
shut off from everything on earth.
Feeling that inaction was even more unbearable than running head-on into
danger, she recommenced her slow advance. Presently, she came to a place
where the tunnel widened out. Here, even with outstretched arms, she
could not reach both walls at once.
As she swung to follow the left hand wall, her right arm struck a free
timber which seemed to have no connection with either side of the
passage. From this she deduced that she was now in a sort of
subterranean chamber, and that this free post was one of the supports of
its roof. Continuing along the left wall, with her right arm
outstretched, she soon reached another post. The heavy crowbar which she
was endeavoring to carry at arm’s length, struck against the base of the
upright and made a loud, cavernous sound.
“Bloomp!”
Dorothy was prepared for the next timber, some three feet farther on.
She took the crowbar in her left hand and extended her right to grasp
the post, with the intention to discover the size of the chamber.
Suddenly she recoiled in horror. She could feel a chill rush up and down
her spine. For she had touched, not the splintered wood of the post,
but, unmistakably, human flesh.
Dodging quickly to one side, she dropped the crowbar and drew her
revolver. Holding it straight before her, ready to fire at the first
sign of a hostile advance, she listened breathlessly.
To her amazement, there was no sound; not the slightest indication of
movement in the awful darkness. She supposed the enemy must be
maneuvering to take her from some unexpected quarter. But she could not
understand how it could be managed in that inky blackness without giving
her some audible sign.
Feeling that she must have something firmer than mere space behind her,
Dorothy retreated, keeping her pistol leveled. With her left hand she
groped behind her and when she felt the solid timber, she leaned back
against it, waiting.
Seconds dragged like hours and still there was no sound. Gradually,
Dorothy’s nerves were beginning to quiet down.
“Well, this is darned queer,” she thought, “maybe that person is making
tracks out of here. I can’t just stand still and do nothing, anyway.”
She began to move forward very cautiously. When she had covered ten
short paces, she stopped and listened again. Absolute stillness
everywhere, stillness pervaded by the strange, dank smell of unsunned
earth and the musty rot of roots and wood.
But this time Dorothy fancied she could hear a faint, very faint sound
of breathing. At first she thought it was her own, reechoing from the
walls of the dark cavern. Then she held her breath and listened once
more. _There_ was some one else in this subterranean chamber.
“Well, here goes,” she said with closed lips. “It’s now or never. I
can’t stand this much longer!”
But she had only taken a single step when the same chill of horror and
fright raced over her again. Her revolver muzzle had touched something
apparently alive and yielding, the clothed body of someone who stood
motionless as before.
“Hold it! hold it!” she cried, her teeth chattering. “Don’t move or I’ll
plug you!”
With her gun firmly pressed against the body, she raised her other arm
to ward off any blow that might be directed against her. As she did so,
it became evident that the body still had not moved, that the breath was
coming regularly and faintly, but there was no stir of limbs, no shift
of muscle or of weight.
Such mysterious behavior filled Dorothy with terror. She bit her lips
and dug the mouth of her Colt forward into the body.
“Stick ’em up—do you hear? Over your head!” she said viciously between
her teeth.
The figure remained motionless and as silent as before. Dorothy felt her
heart beats mount to a violent thunder. She felt she could stand the
strain no longer.
Still holding her pistol against the flesh of this mysterious being, she
lowered her arm from her forehead and reached slowly forward. She
touched something. Her whole body was convulsed with horror, anguish and
surprise.
Her trembling fingers had descended upon the smooth, cool softness of a
leather helmet. They slipped, cold and damp, from the helmet to the face
and over the warm cheek.
In that moment everything was changed. Now Dorothy understood why the
figure was motionless and quiet. She touched a fold of cloth that bound
the mouth and slipping her hand to the shoulder, she felt a twist of
thin rope.
She slipped the pistol into her belt without hesitation. Bill always
carried several packets of matches in his pockets. She found one and
struck a light.
When the little puff of smoke and the obscuring haze of the first flash
settled down to a fitful flame, Dorothy got a glimpse of her friend. He
was gagged and bound to one of the upright supports. His eyes were
closed and his head drooped to one side.
In less than a second Dorothy had flung away the match and was cutting
the young fellow’s bonds with her knife, groping for them in the dark
and supporting his released body against her own as she worked. At last
she was able to lift him out of the loosened loop that had held his feet
and stepping back, laid him on the earthen floor.
Then she knelt beside him, rubbing his wrists and cheeks with her grimy
palms. For some minutes her ministrations seemed of no avail. But
presently, under her fingers she felt his head move. At first she could
only catch groans and sighs. Then, as consciousness began to assert
itself, Bill raised his head a little and said faintly:
“Who’s that?”
“It’s me—Dorothy.”
She lifted his head into her lap. As she did so Bill gave a start and
struggled feebly.
“Let me go!” he muttered. “Let me alone!”
“Just keep quiet, Bill,” she soothed. “You’ll be better soon.”
Bill lay back in her arms and was still.
“Who are you?” he asked again and this time in a firmer voice.
“It’s Dorothy, your pardner!”
“Dorothy? Thank Heaven for that.” He caught at her hand and squeezed it.
“We’re in the tunnel, aren’t we?”
“Yes—where it widens out into a kind of room.”
“I remember now—that guy slugged me when I was making for the candle on
the table over there.”
“Who slugged you? The bearded aviator?”
“That’s right. I was coming along, lighting matches to see by when he
stepped from behind one of the uprights—and that’s all I remember.
Knocked me out, I guess.”
“He certainly did! You’ve a bump on your head like an egg. The helmet
probably saved your life. Feel pretty rotten, don’t you?”
“You said it! Dizzy as blazes—and my head’s as sore as a boil. But I
guess I’ll be all right in a minute if I can just lie still. Do you
mind?”
“Of course not, silly. Take your time. I suppose you followed the
footprints to the barrel, like I did.”
“Yep. But how come you went after me?” he chuckled. “I thought the idea
was to beat it home in the plane.”
“Oh, Bill, I just couldn’t!”
Bill sat up. “Well, I suppose I was crazy to ever think you would—but I
honestly didn’t think I’d get into such close quarters with that fellow.
As it is, I’m mighty glad you didn’t take my fool suggestion,” he
admitted. “Where would I be now, if you hadn’t shown up? By the taste in
my mouth and the feel of my wrists, that galoot must have tied me up and
gagged me!”
“He did that. You were bound to an upright. Have you any idea where this
tunnel comes out?”
“Ten dollars to counterfeit two-cent piece, your Castle is the answer to
that question,” he said, and lit a match. “Oh, there’s the table,
Dorothy. Do you mind lighting that candle? I’m too dizzy to stand up yet
or—”
He stopped short and Dorothy saw his eyes widen in startled surprise.
“_Look out!_” he yelled and the match went out.
Dorothy felt a hand grip the back of her neck and immediately afterward
its fellow clutched her throat. In a fierce frenzy of terror, she shot
to her feet, gasping and choking and flinging her arms wildly backwards
as she rose.