THE HOLE IN THE WALL
Mackenzie, meanwhile, had been playing a very busy and at the same time
a very discreet part above ground, with timorous but efficient
assistance from Hamid Gul. It was the latter who, at night, when all was
quiet, stole from the kitchen into the passage, and tied the string to a
bar of the golden grating, so cleverly that only the closest scrutiny
could have detected it. Having ascertained by means of this device the
whereabouts of Forrester, and the burrowing in which he and Beresford
were engaged, Mackenzie, in his calm sagacious way, set himself to think
out a plan for turning that work to account.
At first he decided to employ Hamid Gul only as postman. It was of
vital importance that the Old Man should entertain no suspicion of his
cook. There seemed little risk of Hamid's night-work at the grating
being detected. An Indian servant moves more silently than a cat. On
the other hand, if he pried and prowled in the pagoda or its precincts,
for the purpose of discovering the means of access to the rift, or the
other particulars about which Mackenzie was curious, he would almost
certainly attract the notice of the Chinese, and ruin everything. For
the same reason Mackenzie took care that his necessary meetings with
Hamid should take place at different times of the day, at different
spots, and in the utmost secrecy.
His own actions were dictated by shrewd policy. To begin with, he told
Jackson no more, not that he distrusted him, but that he feared the
possibility of his disclosing something if for any reason the priests
should again practise their hypnotic powers on him. Then, he assumed in
public the mien of a slave, utterly cowed, bereft of will power, who
lived only to get through his appointed task, and had no other aim than
to merit his masters' approval. So well did he act his part that after
a few days' observation, the priests concluded that their taming process
had been thoroughly effective, and paid no more attention to him than to
any other of the men who toiled and sighed on the plateau. That the
dejection which Mackenzie feigned was in Jackson's case real confirmed
them in their delusion. Sher Jang, meanwhile, went about his tasks with
philosophic submissiveness; but in his heart of hearts he believed that
the sahibs, whose movements he watched unobtrusively, would some day get
the better of the Chinese dogs, and he was ready instantly to obey the
call which he felt would surely come.
When Mackenzie was satisfied that he was accounted well broken in, he
took to roaming at night about the precincts of the pagoda. He had
already settled in his mind that the way to the rift could lie only
through the pagoda or one of the neighbouring buildings, and his chief
aim must be to discover that. It was also of vital importance to find
as nearly as possible the spot where the chimney would cut through the
earth; one step towards that discovery was the knowledge that its base
was fifty yards from the cleft, and therefore presumably from the
grating in the passage. He had been much puzzled by the almost incessant
knocking that proceeded in day-time from the low building behind the
orchard, but dismissed that matter as of no account so far as he and his
friends were concerned.
The wall enclosing the pagoda and its appurtenances was twelve feet in
height: too high to look over, too smooth to scale. The gate by which
Hamid issued to the fields was unlocked for him by a priest, and locked
after him. Mackenzie meant to get inside the wall. It would not be
difficult, perhaps, to make a ladder, but before taking this in hand he
might as well see if there was a less ostentatious mode of entry.
Strolling at the rear of the orchard late one dark night, he was guided
by the sound of running water to the stream which he and Forrester had
observed on their first day upon the plateau. He followed the course of
this, and discovered that it entered the enclosure on the north side by
a culvert beneath the wall. The darkness rendered it impossible to
measure with the eye the width and depth of the arch, but on stooping
and feeling along the stonework, he found that the stream poured through
an iron grating. Since the water was perfectly clear, the grating must
have been designed, not as a strainer, but as a defence against
intrusion. The Old Man was obviously a stickler for privacy.
Mackenzie pushed and shook the grating, to ascertain whether it was
firmly fixed. It held fast, but slipping his hand under the water, he
discovered that the submerged part was worn thin with long corrosion,
and that there were several gaps in it where the iron had been
completely rusted away. With a little exertion he managed to break off a
considerable portion of the grating below water, leaving a space large
enough for a man to crawl through. It had occurred to him at once that
this was a safer means of getting inside than by a ladder, which would
always make him a conspicuous object to anyone who chanced to be looking
that way from the buildings.
There was no time like the present. Without removing his clothes,
Mackenzie slipped into the stream, spread himself flat, and, taking a
long breath, wriggled under water through the arch. When he stood up,
he found that the top of the grating was considerably higher than his
head, but that his head was higher than the earthen embankments of the
stream on either side. The depth of the water was no more than three
feet; but the embankments were no doubt intended to protect the
buildings from flood in those seasons when the stream, swollen by the
melting snow on the mountains, became a torrent.
Standing in the running water, he peered over the embankment on his
right. The pagoda loomed up black against the sky some distance away.
Between it and him were much lower buildings. No light was to be seen.
All was quiet. He would have liked to push his exploration further, but
felt that in his ignorance of the place the risk of mistake and
detection was too great. Hamid's co-operation would be necessary if he
was to profit by his secret entrance, and he resolved to come to an
arrangement with the cook for the following night.
Returning to his hut by the same route, he stripped off his drenched
clothes, spread them on the ground at the back, out of sight, to dry,
rolled himself in his blanket, and was soon asleep.
"How far are your quarters from the wall?" he asked Hamid next day,
meeting him among the raspberry canes.
"Thirty good paces, sahib," replied the man.
"I wish you to meet me to-night at the wall, where the stream flows
under. Have you a clock?"
"An hour-glass, sahib."
"Then let the time be two hours after lock-up. And bring a blanket with
you."
"I am your servant, sahib, but if I may humbly ask----"
"Ask nothing. You can get out quietly?"
"Truly, sahib, but if bald-head nabbed me----"
"Hech! Are you afraid? Have you ever seen any of them about after
nightfall?"
"Answer to both questions in negative, sahib."
"Where do they sleep?"
"Other side of Old Man's house, sahib; also across garden on left."
"Very well then. You can slip out of your quarters at any time--that's
so?"
"Quite O.K., sahib."
"Very well. Be at yon arch two hours after lock-up, with a dark
blanket, you mind."
"I am your servant, sahib."
But Hamid asked himself with much trouble of mind what notion the Mac
Sahib had in his noddle.
Jackson's curiosity had been awakened by Mackenzie's prolonged absence
on the previous night.
"Where are you off to, Mac?" he asked, seeing his companion prepare to
go out again into the dark.
"I'll bide a wee before I answer you, Bob. You can't help, and if I come
a mucker the less you know about it the better."
On reaching the culvert, he stripped off all his clothes and laid them
beneath a bush. Too many wettings would so alter their appearance, he
thought, as to draw the attention of the priests. Naked he slipped into
the water, crawled through the arch, and on lifting himself slightly,
saw Hamid crouching beneath the shelter of the embankment. He quitted
the stream, flung about him the dark-blue blanket which the Bengali had
brought, and putting his fingers to his lips, motioned to Hamid to lead
him along the watercourse.
[Illustration: On lifting himself, he saw Hamid crouching beneath the
shelter of the embankment.]
Hamid was shivering with amazement and nervousness, but he obeyed in
utter silence. They waded slowly through the stream, whose gurgling
drowned the sound of their own movements. Presently they ducked to
avoid a low bridge that led from one part of the grounds to the other.
The dull thud of footsteps brought them to a sudden halt, and they
crouched under the bridge, listening anxiously as the walker passed over
their heads. They caught a glimmer of light, and as the footsteps
receded, Mackenzie peeped out, and saw a priest, swinging a small
lantern, moving towards a building a good distance on their left. He
entered it, and disappeared.
"Last man out!" whispered Hamid.
After waiting a few minutes, they continued their way along the stream.
It flowed through a wide inner enclosure, in which were scattered a
number of small structures like summer-houses. Two slight bridges
spanned the stream, and here and there were irregular masses which in
the darkness could not be clearly distinguished, but which appeared to
be rockeries. Quaintly shaped bushes outlined their dark forms against
the walls of the distant buildings. Mackenzie concluded that this was
either the Old Man's private garden, or the garden of the priests. Hamid
could not tell him; he had been strictly forbidden to stray in this
direction, or even to look over the low wall that surrounded the
enclosure.
The watercourse was not straight. It turned now to the right, now to
the left; its general course carried it obliquely across the garden,
towards the angle of the wall. Thus the buildings on the right were not
parallel with it. Mackenzie stopped, to take his bearings. Hamid
pointed out his own quarters, the kitchen adjoining, and the wall of the
passage connecting with the dwelling of the Old Man. The pagoda reared
itself high above the other buildings. Beyond it lay the barrack-like
lodgings of the first order of priests; those of the second order were
on the opposite side of the enclosure, and were approached by means of
the bridges.
"How far along the passage is the grating?" Mackenzie asked in a
whisper.
"About half-way, sahib."
"And on which side?"
"Side nearest us, to be sure, sahib."
"Wait here for me, and hold this."
He placed in Hamid's hands the end of a coil of string, climbed over the
embankment, and made his way with stealthy speed towards the middle
point of the passage wall, as nearly as he could judge it, paying out
the string as he went. On reaching the wall, he turned swiftly back,
coiling the string round his finger. When he regained Hamid's side, he
knew that the distance between the wall and this point of the embankment
was a little more than sixty yards. The chimney which his friends were
cutting would reach the surface somewhere on the circumference of a
circle of which the middle of the wall was the centre, and which would
come within about ten yards of his present position. He followed that
imaginary line with his eye. It passed close to one of the
summer-houses, ran across a bed of plants, then over the grass on which
he had walked, touched the embankment some yards to the right, owing to
the oblique course of this, and finally reached a point near the door of
the cook's lean-to. To gauge the position of the chimney more precisely
was impossible, because, though he knew that it was on the near side of
the passage, he knew no more than that it was fifty yards from the
grating.
Making a mental note of the course of the circumference on which lay the
locus of the hole sometime to be pierced, he considered for a few
moments whether to steal towards the door of the pagoda, and try to
discover whether it was guarded. But by this time he was shivering with
cold. His reconnaissance had not been unfruitful, and he decided to
return at once to his hut. He parted from Hamid at the culvert, handed
him the blanket, again entered his cold bath, and picking up his
clothes, ran lightly over the ground to his lodging. Only on those two
night expeditions had he taken off his clothes since his departure from
the village in the forest.
Next morning Hamid handed him a note which he had drawn up in the bone.
It was the longest he had yet received: Forrester had grown bolder, more
reckless, perhaps, with the lapse of time. It read: "Always light
below. Can't tell when it becomes dark outside. Give us a sign."
"Things are moving," he thought. "They are afraid of cutting through in
the daylight. How in the world can I give them a sign? Hamid lets down
the bone at all hours. Ah, well, I must think it out."