/Her/ head in a whirl, Margaret Belman had stepped into the cab that
was waiting at the door of Larmes Keep. The door was immediately
slammed behind her, and the cab moved off. She saw her companion: he
had shrunk into a corner of the landau, and greeted her with a little
embarrassed grin. He did not speak until the cab was some distance
from the house.
“My name’s Gray,” he said. “Mr. Reeder hadn’t a chance of introducing
me. Sergeant Gray, C.I.D.”
“Mr. Gray, what does all this mean? This instrument I am to get…?”
Gray coughed. He knew nothing about the instrument, he explained, but
his instructions were to put her into a car that would be waiting at
the foot of the hill road.
“Mr. Reeder wants you to go up by car. You didn’t see Brill anywhere,
did you?”
“Brill?” she frowned. “Who is Brill?”
He explained that there had been two officers inside the grounds,
himself and the man he had mentioned.
“But what is happening? Is there anything wrong at Larmes Keep?” she
asked.
She had no need to ask the question. That look in J. G. Reeder’s eyes
had told her that something indeed was very wrong.
“I don’t know, miss,” said Gray diplomatically. “All I know is that
the Chief Inspector is down here with a dozen men, and that looks like
business. I suppose Mr. Reeder wanted to get you out of it.”
She didn’t “suppose”--she knew, and her heart beat a little quicker.
What was the mystery of Larmes Keep? Had all this to do with the
disappearance of Ravini? She tried hard to think calmly and logically,
but her thoughts were out of control.
The station fly stopped at the foot of the hill, and Gray jumped out.
A little ahead of him she saw the tail light of a car drawn up by the
side of the roadway.
“You’ve got the letter, miss? The car will take you straight to
Scotland Yard, and Mr. Simpson will look after you.”
He followed her to the car and held open the door for her, and stood
in the roadway watching till the tail light disappeared round a bend
of the road.
It was a big, cosy landaulette, and Margaret made herself comfortable
in the corner, pulled the rug over her knees, and settled down to the
two hours’ journey. The air was a little close: she tried
unsuccessfully to pull down one of the windows, then tried the other.
Not only was there no glass to the windows, but the shutters were
immovable. Something scratched her knuckle. She felt along the frame
of the window.… Screws, recently inserted. It was a splinter of the
raw wood which had cut her.
With growing uneasiness she felt for the inside handle of the door,
but there was none. A search of the second door revealed a like state
of affairs.
Her movements must have attracted the attention of the driver, for the
glass panel was pushed back and a harsh voice greeted her.
“You can sit down and keep quiet! This isn’t Reeder’s car: I’ve sent
it home.”
The voice went into a chuckle that made her blood run cold.
“You’re coming with me… to see life.… Reeder’s going to weep tears of
blood. You know me, eh?… Reeder knows me. I wanted to get him
to-night. But you’ll do, my dear.”
Suddenly the glass panel was shut to. He turned off the main road and
was following a secondary, his object being, she guessed, to avoid the
big towns and villages en route. She put out her hand and felt the
wall of the car. It was an all-weather body with a leather back. If
she had a knife she might cut----
She gasped as a thought struck her, and, reaching up, she felt the
metal fastening that kept the leather hood attached. Exerting all her
strength, she thrust back the flat hook and, bracing her feet against
the front of the machine, dragged at the leather hood. A rush of cold
air came in as the hood began slowly to collapse. The closed car was
now an open car. She could afford to lose no time. The car was making
thirty miles an hour, but she must take the risk of injury. Scrambling
over the back of the hood, she gripped tight at the edge, and let
herself drop into the roadway.
Although she turned a complete somersault, she escaped injury in some
miraculous fashion, and, coming to her feet, cold with fear and
trembling in every limb, she looked round for a way of escape. The
hedge on her left was high and impenetrable. On her right was a low
wooden fence, and over this she climbed as she heard the squeak of
brakes and saw the car come to a standstill.
Even as she fled, she was puzzled to know what kind of land she was
on. It was not cultivated; it was more like common land, for there was
springy down beneath her feet, and clumps of gorse bushes sent out
their spiny fingers to clutch at her dress as she flew past. She
thought she heard the man hailing her, but fled on in the darkness.
Somewhere near at hand was the sea. She could smell the fragrance of
it. Once when she stopped to take breath she could hear the distant
thunder of the waves as they rolled up some unseen beach. She
listened, almost deafened by the beating of her heart.
“Where are you? Come back, you fool…”
The voice was near at hand. Not a dozen yards away she saw a black
figure moving, and had all her work to stifle the scream that rose in
her throat. She crouched down behind a bush and waited, and then to
her horror she saw a beam of light spring from the darkness. He had an
electric lamp and was fanning it across the ground.
Detection was inevitable, and, springing to her feet, she ran,
doubling from side to side in the hope of outwitting her pursuer. Now
she found the ground sloping under her feet, and that gave her
additional speed. She had need of it, for he saw her against the
skyline, and came on after her, a babbling, shrieking fury of a man.
And now capture seemed inevitable. She made one wild leap to escape
his outstretched hands, and her feet suddenly trod on nothing. Before
she could recover, she was falling, falling. She struck a bush, and
the shock and pain of the impact almost made her faint. She was
falling down a steep slope, and her wild hands clutched tree and sand
and grass, and then, just as she had given up all hope, she found
herself rolling over and over on a level plateau, and came to rest
with one leg hanging over a sheer drop of two hundred feet. Happily,
it was dark.
Margaret Belman did not realise how near to death she had been till
the dawn came up.
Below her was the sea and a slither of yellow sand. She was looking
into a little bay that held no human dwelling so far as she could see.
This was not astonishing, for the beach was only approachable from the
water. Somewhere on the other side of the northern bluff, she guessed,
was Siltbury. Beneath her a sheer fall over the chalky face of the
cliff; above her, a terribly steep slope, but which might be
negotiated, she thought hopefully.
She had lost one shoe in her fall, and after a little search found
this, so near to the edge of the cliff that she grew dizzy as she
stooped to pick it up.
The plateau was about fifty yards long, in the shape of a half-moon,
and was almost entirely covered with gorse bushes. The fact that she
found dozens of nests was sufficient proof that this spot was not
visited even by the most daring of cliff-climbers. She understood now
the significance of the low rail on the side of the road, which
evidently followed the sea-coast westwards for some miles. How far was
she from Larmes Keep? she wondered--until the absurdity of considering
such a matter occurred to her. How near was she to starvation and
death was a more present problem.
Her task was to escape from the plateau. There was a chance that she
might be observed from the sea, but it was a remote one. The few
pleasure-boats that went out from Siltbury did not go westward; the
fishing fleet invariably tacked south. Lying face downward, she looked
over the edge, in the vain hope that she would find an easy descent,
but none was visible. She was hungry, but, though she searched the
nests, there were no eggs to be found.
There was nothing to be done but to make a complete exploration of the
plateau. Westward it yielded nothing, but on the eastern side she
discovered a scrub-covered slope which apparently led to yet another
plateau, not so broad as the one she was on.
To slide down was an easy matter; to check herself so that she did not
go beyond the plateau offered greater difficulty. With infinite labour
she broke off two stout branches of a thick furze bush, and, using
these as a skier uses her stick to check her progress, she began to
shuffle down, feet first. She could move slowly enough when the face
of the declivity was composed of sand or loam, or when there were
friendly bushes to hold, but there were broad stretches of weatherworn
rock to slide across, and on these the stick made no impression and
her velocity increased at an alarming rate.
And then, to her horror, she discovered that she was not keeping
direction; that, try as she did, she was slipping to the left of the
plateau, and though she strove desperately to move further to the
right, she made no progress. The bushes that littered the upper slope
were more infrequent here. There was indication of a recent landslide,
which might continue down to the sea-level or might end abruptly and
disastrously over the edge of some steep cliff. Slipping, sometimes on
her back, sometimes sideways, sometimes on her face, she felt her
momentum increase with every yard she covered. The ends of the
ski-sticks were frayed to feathery splinters, and already the desired
plateau was above her. Turning her head, she saw the white face of it
dropping to the unseen deeps.
Now she knew the worst. The slope twisted round a huge rock and
dropped at an acute angle into the sea. Almost before she could
realise the danger ahead, she was slipping faster and faster through
the loam and sand, the centre of a new landslide she had created.
Boulders of a terrifying size accompanied her--by a hair’s-breadth she
escaped being crushed under one.
And then without warning she was shot into the air as from a catapult.
She had a swift vision of tumbling green below, and in another second
the water had closed over her and she was striking out with all her
strength.…
It seemed almost an eternity before she came to the surface.
Fortunately, she was a good swimmer, and, looking round, she saw that
the yellow beach was less than fifty yards away. But it was fifty
yards against a falling tide, and she was utterly exhausted when she
dragged herself ashore and fell on the sand.
She ached from head to foot; her hands and limbs were lacerated. She
felt that her body was one huge bruise. As she lay recovering her
breath she heard one comforting sound, the splash of falling water.
Half-way down the cliff face was a spring, and, staggering across the
beach, she drank eagerly from her cupped hands. She was parched; her
throat was so dry that she could hardly articulate. Hunger she might
bear, but thirst was unendurable. She might remain alive for days,
supposing she were not discovered before that time.
There was now no need for her to make a long reconnaissance of the
beach: the way of escape lay open to her. A water-hollowed tunnel led
through the bluff and showed her yet another beach beyond. Siltbury
was not in sight. She had no idea how far she was from that desirable
habitation of human people, and did not trouble to think. After she
had satisfied her thirst she took off her shoes and stockings and made
for the tunnel.
The second bay was larger and the beach longer. There were, she found,
small masses of rocks jutting far into the sea that had to be
negotiated with bare feet. The beach was longer than she had thought,
and so far as she could see there was no outlet, nor did the cliff
diminish in height. She had expected to find a cliff path, and this
hope was strengthened when she discovered the rotting hull of a boat
drawn high and dry on the beach. It was, she judged, about eight
o’clock in the morning. She had started wet through, but the warm
September sun dried her rags--for rags they were. She had all the
sensations of a shipwrecked mariner on a desert island, and after a
while the loneliness and absence of all kinds of human society began
to get on her nerves.
Before she reached the end of the beach she saw that the only way into
the next bay was by swimming to where the rocky barrier was low enough
to be climbed. She could with great comfort to herself have discarded
what remained of her clothes, but beyond these rocks might lie
civilisation, and, tying her wet shoes and stockings together, she
made fast her shoes, and, knotting them about her waist, waded into
the sea and swam steadily, looking for a likely place to land. This
she found--a step-shaped pyramid of rocks that looked easier to
negotiate than in fact they were. By dint of hard climbing she came to
the summit.
The beach here was shorter, the cliff considerably higher. Across the
shoulder of rock running to the sea she saw the white houses of
Siltbury, and the sight gave her courage. Descending from the rocky
ridge was even more difficult than climbing, and she was grateful when
at last she sat upon a flat ledge and dangled her bruised feet in the
water.
Swimming back to the land taxed her strength to the full. It was
nearly an hour before her feet touched firm sand and she staggered up
the beach. Here she rested, until the pangs of hunger drove her
towards the last visible obstacle.
There was one which was not visible. After a quarter of an hour’s walk
she found her way barred by a deep sea river which ran under the
overhung cliff. She had seen this place before: where was it? And then
she remembered, with an exclamation.
This was the cave that Olga had told her about, the cave that ran
under Larmes Keep. Shading her eyes, she looked up. Yes, there was the
little landslide; part of the wall that had been carried away
projected from a heap of rubble on the cliff side.
Suddenly Margaret saw something which made her breath come faster. On
the edge of the deep channel which the water had cut in the sand was
the print of a boot, a large, square-toed boot with a rubber heel. It
had been recently made. She looked farther along the channel and saw
another: it led to the mouth of the cave. On either side of the rugged
entrance was a billow of firm sand left by the retreating waters, and
again she saw the footprint. A visitor to the cave, perhaps, she
thought. Presently he would come out and she would explain her plight,
though her appearance left little need for explanation.
She waited, but there was no sign of the man. Stooping, she tried to
peer into its dark depths. Perhaps, if she were inside out of the
light, she could see better. She walked gingerly along the sand ledge,
but as yet her eyes, unaccustomed to the darkness, revealed nothing.
She took another step, passed into the entrance of the cave; and then,
from somewhere behind, a bare arm was flung round her shoulder, a big
hand closed over her mouth. In terror she struggled madly, but the man
held her in a grip of iron, and then her senses left her and she sank
limply into his arms.