Down Under (27 page)

She went to the open door and looked in—Dr Spenlow's empty bedroom.

She went to the other door, and found it fast. This was expected. Her hand went to her pocket for the key of her own room. There was so little hope that it would fit, but there was so little hope in any direction. You had to do what you could, and nurse your hope, and pray to be kept from Philip.

She put the key in the lock with a steady hand, but it wouldn't turn. She went on trying, but it wouldn't, wouldn't turn. She put it away again and looked about her. If Dr Spenlow had locked the door, then Dr Spenlow must have the key.

She crossed to the door which gave upon the gallery and bolted it. Then she came back to Harold Spenlow.

Where would he have put the key? In a pocket? Men had such a confusing number of pockets. She was afraid of touching him, but she had to do it—she had to have the key. She felt in the two pockets she could reach, but it wasn't there. How was she to move the heavy, inert body? She did put a hand on his arm, and under its light touch he made a sound between a groan and a snore, and stretched so that his right hand hung over the table edge. Something fell from it out of her sight. She had to go round the table before she could see what it was.

And it was the key.

When she had it in her hand, when it turned in the lock, when the door opened, she was saying over and over in her heart, “That's the second good thing. I got away, and now Oliver can get away. Oh,
please
let the good things go on.”

The room was very empty and bare. There was a light in it, not very bright. It showed her Oliver asleep on the narrow bed. He had not taken off any of his clothes. He lay with one arm over his head as if he had thrown it up to shield his eyes. The other lay stretched out upon the blanket. Rose Anne sat down on the edge of the bed and took the hand which lay beside him. It comforted her just to stay like that for a moment, quietly, with Oliver's hand to hold. Then she said in her gentle voice,

“Wake up, darling.”

The words came into Oliver's dream of despair and broke it. He had not thought that he would sleep—he had not meant to sleep—but sleep had taken him and cast him into an evil dream full of the torment of a never-ending search for Rose Anne whom he had lost and would not find again. He woke and found her with her hand in his.

They forgot everything for a time. If the world must end, let it end now. If time must cease, let it cease now. If there were no more of life, this was enough—to meet, to hold one another, to be at rest.

Rose Anne stirred first.

“We must go.”

Oliver put her away a little, looked in her face, and said,

“They all say it's certain death.”

“I know—they talk like that. But then, you see, they're drugged—most of them.”

“Spenlow isn't drugged. He says it's suicide. He tried, you know.”

She nodded.

“I don't trust him. He drinks, and he's lost his nerve. I think he could get away if he really wanted to. But I don't think he wants to. He wants to finish his experiments. If he got out he wouldn't have any money or anywhere to go. I don't think he really wants to get out.”

Oliver put her hand to his lips.

“Rose Anne, I don't think there's very much hope. It's a very desperate chance. I don't think I ought to take you.”

She pulled her hand away.

“Do you want me to go alone? If you went without me, I should follow. Oh, don't you see that we must be together? Don't you see that I can't, can't bear to marry Philip?”

Oliver's hand pressed her shoulder for a moment, hard. She shuddered and turned pale.

He sprang up.

“Very well then, come!”

He went to and fro, getting his torch, his spare batteries, wrapping them in the oiled silk. Then he passed through into the other room. Rose Anne followed him. She felt calm and happy now. She had an implicit trust in Oliver, and was quite sure that everything would be all right. She ran to open the door, and as she reached it, Dr Spenlow lifted his head and stared at them with the portentous gravity of a drunken man. The hand from which the key had fallen now held his pistol. It steadied itself upon the table and took aim at Rose Anne.

“My dear Miss Carew—sounds like a letter—but—my dear Miss Carew—if you open that door—I'm going to shoot—”

Rose Anne stopped with her hand on the bolt and said,

“Why?”

He shook his head mournfully.

“You ought to be in bed—asleep—that's what you ought to be—have some more coffee.”

“What's all this nonsense, Spenlow?” said Oliver. “Put down that pistol!”

Harold Spenlow laughed.

“Nice little pistol,” he said, the words running one into the other. “Very nice little pistol indeed—very humane death—nice and swift—and I'm a very good shot.”

“Then I should suggest your shooting Philip.”

Harold Spenlow laughed again.

“Philip's my—very dear friend. You don't shoot your—very dear friends.”

Rose Anne pulled back the bolt, and instantly the pistol cracked. The noise was horrid in the little room. The bullet flattened itself against the rock a couple of inches beyond her shoulder. Oliver caught the table by its front edge and drove back with it. The pistol went off again and Dr Spenlow came down with a crash. The table, the chair, and the whisky bottles were all involved.

Oliver got the pistol, and felt better,

“We'll have to tie him up,” he said, frowning. “Get me a sheet, darling.”

They tied his hands and feet with strips of linen, and he lay passive, staring up at them with a dazed expression.

When they had laid him on the bed and Oliver was tearing off another bit of the sheet to make a gag, he said suddenly,

“You won't pull it off, you know. Not—one—earthly—chance.”

Rose Anne went down on her knees beside him.

“Oh, Dr Spenlow, tell us the way!”

He wagged his head on the pillow.

“No way—my dear Miss Carew—suicide—my dear Miss Carew—”

“Tell me,” said Rose Anne.

He laughed.

“Like asking a policeman the way—in Piccadilly Circus—none of us—will—ever—see Piccadilly Circus—again.”

“Tell me,” said Rose Anne. “Please, please tell me.”

“First to the right—second to the left—and straight on—until you come to Tottenham Court Road. Oh, my hat—Tottenham Court Road! But this is—a one-way street—and—no thoroughfare. My dear Miss Carew—how can I tell you the way—if he puts a gag in my mouth?”

“Oh,
please
,” said Rose Anne in a despairing voice.

He turned his head and looked at her as a man looks who has been suddenly awakened.

“You're leaving me to Philip. He'll kill me.”

“Then your best chance is for us to get away and come back in time to save you,” said Oliver.

“Touching interest in my welfare,” said Harold Spenlow. “Most kind I'm sure, Loddon. Well, it makes no odds, because we're all as good as dead—so I'll tell you. Come a bit closer.”

Oliver stooped. The mocking voice dropped to a whisper.

“Behind the waterfall—there's a crack—I don't know if you can—get through—one doesn't put on flesh down here—and so—you may—very bad going—more caves—I don't know how many—I don't know—if there's any way out—”

Oliver stood looking down at him for a moment.

“Is that true?”

Dr Spenlow's lips drew sideways in a twisting smile.

“
In vino veritas
—I don't know the Latin—for whisky. It's true enough—as far as it goes—I meant to have—a shot myself—when I'd finished—the job I'm on. That's why I pinched—Philip's pistol. You didn't really think—he'd trust me with one—did you?”

Oliver said, frowning, “Do you want to come with us—now?” He was thinking, “Philip will kill him if we leave him here.”

“Well, well,” said Harold Spenlow—“very sporting offer—but—the answer is in—the negative. The whisky is willing—but the legs are weak. That's always been the trouble—my dear Miss Carew. When I'm sober I haven't got the nerve—and when I'm drunk I haven't got the legs. Very good legs—absolutely necessary. I say—I'd rather you didn't gag me—”

“Better for you,” said Oliver, and gagged him as thoroughly as he knew how.

They locked him in and took the key—anything to delay discovery. And then they were out in the gallery and making for the pool.

CHAPTER XXXII

They went quickly and in silence. The lights watched them. If anyone heard, if anyone came, their adventure would be over before it had begun. They came down the steps which Oliver had climbed that morning with Harold Spenlow and out into the cave where the cataract fell roaring to the black lake which was Philip's swimming-pool. Harold Spenlow had said, “Behind the fall.” Perhaps he had spoken the truth, and perhaps he had lied.

They approached the fall by a path which was sometimes wide enough for two, and sometimes offered only a bare foothold. The spray made it slippery and blinded them. The roar of the water was so loud that their senses shook with it and the very rock itself seemed shaken.

“Behind the fall.…” Oliver, going ahead, perceived with a lift of the heart that this, at least, was possible, and not a mere mockery of Harold Spenlow's mocking tongue. The fall dropped clear of the rock, and the path went on behind it. There was a blackness of overhanging cliff, and a brightness that shone through the descending flood, the brightness of the great arc-lights in the cave beyond. They burned green through the veil of the water and painted strange rainbows on the shuddering air.

Rose Anne slipped once, and the voice with which she cried out was beaten back between her parted lips. Horrible to be voiceless, to go down into the boiling pool without a cry. Oliver's hand caught her, held her for a dizzy moment, and brought her back to safety.

There was no safety of course, but it felt like safety to be in the narrow cave which the water had cut for itself a long, long time ago. The shimmer and the roar of the fall hung like a curtain between them and the world of Down Under.

The cave ran back a couple of yards and no more. The stone was smooth and water-worn. There was no crack in it anywhere. Oliver got out his torch and sent the beam travelling. It showed the drip of the spray from the roof, and the trickle of the spray on the walls, and the wet black floor under their feet, but it showed no way of escape.

“There isn't any crack,” said Rose Anne. “He wasn't telling the truth.” And then, with a quick remorse, “We must go on looking. Perhaps it's farther on.”

“I'll go and have a look. You'd better stay here.”

“No—
please
, Oliver.”

“You'd be in the way. I'll be as quick as I can.”

Rose Anne leaned against the wet wall and watched him go out of the cave and out of sight. He was quite right, people who slip are no use when it comes to a climb over slimy rocks—only she wondered whether Oliver had any idea of how dreadful it was to be left here alone. Suppose he didn't come back. Suppose she never saw him again. Suppose Philip came. She put one hand over the other and held fast. There was something in her that could endure. She called upon it, and endured.

It seemed like a long time before Oliver came back. He pulled her close and shouted with his lips at her ear, “There's another cave higher up—a very rough climb—I'll have to rope you.” Even so the roar of the water made it difficult to hear.

He was pulling strips of linen from his pocket and knotting them. They had torn up a sheet for Harold Spenlow, and here was what was left of it.

“He said, ‘bad going,'” shouted Oliver, “so I brought it along. There's quite a good path for a bit.”

They went out again into that bewildering roar and glare. The path ran on for two or three yards and then began to narrow to a cleft. Rose Anne followed the path, and followed Oliver because she must. She tried to look at the dark rock and not at the fall of the water, but whatever she looked at seemed to dazzle and shake before her eyes.

Where the cleft broke the rock, Oliver stopped and began to climb. He had to shout to her to tell her what to do. Sometimes the words reached her, and sometimes they were lost. She slipped again, lost her hand-hold, and swung against the slimy rock like a spider on its thread. In an anguish of terror she thought of Oliver, because how could he bear her weight. She would drag him down. She prayed for the sheet to break quickly—but it held. Oliver's voice came to her with hard insistence.

“Lift your left foot a little. Feel against the rock. Reach up your right hand to me.”

Her foot found a crevice, and her hand found Oliver's hand. He pulled her up, and they were on a ledge not more than a yard wide. They moved along the ledge. It followed the cliff and pierced it. There was a wall on either side of them, and a low roof overhead. The walls closed in and the roof came down. Oliver stopped and spoke over his shoulder.

“This might be the place. There's a crack all right. I don't know if we can get through.”

She could hear him better now that the rock screened them from the full roar of the fall. She said,

“Let me look. Is there room?”

Oliver said, “Just,” and she came up beside him and looked over his shoulder, and along his arm, and along the beam of the torch. What she saw was really the crack that Dr Spenlow had called it. If it had been just a straight crack, there would have been no chance for them, but at the bottom end it gaped as if the sides had been pushed apart. This gap made it barely possible that they might squeeze through. Rose Anne's spine crept at the thought, the palms of her hands tingled, and her throat went dry. Where they were now they could kneel in an upright position, but the gap would give them no more than two foot to crawl in. She drew in her breath and said,