Red Stefan (29 page)

She turned from this thread of light and moved soundlessly towards the open mouth of the secret passage. She mustn't hurry, because if she made any noise at all, it might kill Stephen. When the life of the person you love most in the world depends on your not making any noise, it is astonishing how quiet you can be. The strange clarity and calm that had come upon her gave her perfect control of every movement.

She reached the passage, and remembered that it took a circular turn to avoid the chimney. She kept the fingers of her right hand upon the wall and felt before her with her left. After the circular turn there would be steps going up. She felt for the bottom step with her foot and climbed up in the dark. It was very, very dark. The air was heavy with the smell of decay. At any other moment the place would have filled her with horror. To be alone in the dark in these old passages would only an hour ago have brought her to the edge of panic. You might die here and turn to dust before anyone found you. She had thought of that when she passed this way with Stephen. Now she thought only of Stephen, and of the sergeant's voice as he talked about torture.

She came to the top of the steps. Now the passage turned sharply to the left. Her hand moved up and down on the wall as she walked, feeling for a handle. Somewhere here there should be a knob and a bolt. Stephen had shone the candle on them as they passed, and she had remembered them when the sergeant began to talk about torture. Up and down, up and down went her hand. Sometimes the wood it touched was rough, sometimes her fingers slipped on it. Suppose she couldn't find the handle. Suppose she had passed it in the dark. Suppose—

The knob was under her hand.

She faced the wall and felt for the bolt. It moved a little and then stuck. She had to take both hands to it and wrench with all her might before it moved again. It creaked, and her heart thumped. That was stupid, because she was too far from the room for anyone to hear the creaking of a bolt.

It creaked again, and shot back, pinching her finger. She turned the handle, and the door opened outwards. Twilight filled the opening. It was at once a shock and a relief to find that it was not yet dark. It seemed so long since she had asked Stephen whether it was day or night.

The door opened on to the great stair just where it turned. She could see the heavy black line of the gallery above her, and the huge shadowed hall below. The door was like the door of a cupboard. It opened a foot above the floor, so that she had to step out over the panelling.

She was now on the flagged landing from which the stair ran down to the hall. There was dust and rubble everywhere—dust, rubble, and the great broken lumps of masonry which she had seen by the light of Stephen's torch when they had crossed the hall—how long ago?

There had been pillars guarding the stair, and a stone balustrade—thrown down and wrecked by the insensate fury of a drunken mob. One pillar was in fragments, the other leaned drunkenly against the wall with splintered capital and broken base. In the dusk all this ruin had a most terrifying aspect. It seemed as if the tilted pillar were in the very act of falling, as if the wall swayed and at any moment the roof might come crashing down. She really did feel as if the stone were moving under her feet. Perhaps it did move. Perhaps it was only she herself who was shaken by cold, and fear, and strain. It didn't matter. Even if the house fell in, she would do what she had come here to do.

If there was a sudden noise in the hall, the men who were guarding Stephen would surely come to see what it was. If she could make enough noise, they would surely come.…

Just where the stair met the landing there lay a huge rounded lump of stone, part of the capital of the broken pillar. Elizabeth came across the landing and looked down at it. It was so near the edge that if she could move it ever so little, it must overbalance. But could she move it? She went down on her knees in the dust and pushed. She thought the stone moved, but she wasn't sure. She braced her feet against another piece of the pillar and pushed again.

If the broken capital had really been lying on the flat surface of the landing, she might have pushed and strained for ever, but in its fall it had smashed away the lip of the step. It hung there tilted, balanced, ready at the slightest shock to lose its equilibrium. Elizabeth's first push faintly disturbed this balance. Her second set the stone rocking. She put out all her strength, and felt it leap away from her hands as if it were some gigantic ball which she had thrown. It was all she could do not to follow it. She felt herself pitching forward, and just managed to save herself by clutching at the balustrade.

She scrambled to her feet, shaking and catching her breath. The great piece of stone had gone rolling and bounding down the stair. It smashed another step, broke through a fallen length of balustrade, and carrying dust, rubble and debris with it, crashed down upon the echoing flagstones of the hall. The noise in that silent place was overwhelming. The echoes came beating back against her ears and dazed her. She stood for a moment, steadying herself. Then she ran back across the landing to the secret door.

CHAPTER XXXI

In the octagonal room the fire blazed up. The sergeant glanced from his prisoner to the reddening embers and back again.

“Well?” he said.

Stephen was silent.

Irina stared at them both. She did not mean to allow Stephen to be tortured, but the nearer he came to it the more he would have to be grateful for when she stepped in with a flourish of trumpets to save him. There was a smouldering anger in her eyes—anger with Elizabeth, who had escaped; anger with this stupid bully of a sergeant; and deepest anger of all with Stephen, for whom she had lied, and who sat there looking as if he didn't care a fig for any of them. It wouldn't do him any harm to be taken down a peg or two.

Stephen, on his part, had no intention of being tortured. For one thing, he wanted his feet to walk over the frontier with. Burnt soles would be extremely inconvenient. No—the minute things really began to get hot he would have to pitch that tale about the cellars and trust to luck and his wits for a chance of getting away. Meanwhile he kept a still tongue in his head and looked over the sergeant's shoulder.

The panel had not moved again. But it had moved; he could swear to that. It had moved outwards, and it had not moved back again. Therefore it was ajar.

At this point he thought he had better answer the sergeant with becoming politeness.

“You, and your rings and your treasure!” he said. “What's the good of my telling you anything? You don't believe me when I tell the truth. Do you want me to make up lies?”

“Better not, my lad—I can tell you that.”

Stephen changed his tone.

“Look here, sergeant—if I tell you the truth, will you let me go?”

The sergeant swore.

“If you don't tell me the truth, I'll burn the hide off you!”

“No need,” said Stephen. “Now look here, sergeant—what I told you was the truth, but I'm free to admit that it wasn't the whole truth. I did find the ring in that crack under the window, but that wasn't the first time I'd found it.”

Irina set her chin in her hand and scowled. The sergeant swore again.

“Now we're getting at it! Go on.”

“You'll let me off if I tell you? Well, I really found it first down in the cellar.”

And with that the top of the broken pillar overbalanced as Elizabeth thrust at it for the third time. The noise of its crashing fall filled all the house with clamouring echoes. Glinka, nearest the door, ran to it and shouted that the roof was falling in. Irina, the sergeant, and the guard who had been making up the fire followed him, but the men who sat on Stephen's either side held their ground.

Glinka had run out of the room and out of sight. Irina and the sergeant were a little beyond the doorway, still visible as shadows in the dusk. The guard came to a halt a yard or two beyond the threshold. Stephen had his moment, but he also had two guards to reckon with. As they both craned forward, intent upon what was happening in the hall, he slipped his hands free, took them by the scruff of the neck, and brought their heads together with a vigorous bang.

One stride took him clear. The slumped bodies had barely reached the floor before he had his foot in the niche which had held the rose-crowned Flora. A second step, and he had reached the mantelshelf, and even as the guard beyond the threshold turned bewildered, to see two men lying in a tumbled heap instead of three sitting quietly on a bench, the panel had swung out and back again and Stephen was fastening the catch on the inner side.

Elizabeth moved in the darkness of the passage with a beating heart. She had shot the bolt between her and the landing. Now her foot felt for the steps, now she went down them, one hand on the wall and one stretched out before her. She could not see anything at all. She could hot hear anything either except the beating of her own heart.

And then suddenly in the dark her hand touched Stephen's face. She did not cry out, but she gave a very faint gasp, and in a moment his arms were round her and he was whispering in her ear, first her name, and then,

“How clever of you! It did the trick all right! But I don't know whether anyone saw the panel shut. They didn't see it open.” He laughed a little. “Have you got the candle?”

“No—I don't know—I think I dropped it.”

“It doesn't matter—they left me my torch. We'd better run for it.”

Without more ado they ran—up the steps, past the door on the landing—down more steps, and through the lowest, narrowest part of the passage, with stone on one side and wooden panelling on the other. The ray of the torch flickered and danced before them. They came to the ruinous wooden stair which led to the cellar level.

Stephen stood still to listen for a moment. Then he said, “Quick, Elizabeth!” and took her down the stair as he had brought her up, trying each tread before he put his weight on it and swinging her over the gaps.

As they ran down the incline beyond, the first sound that was not of their own making reached them—the confused and hollow sound of following feet.

“All right,” said Stephen—“we've got them beat.” And with that their feet were on the earth they had dug out.

They came into the main passage and ran down it. Stephen focussed his torch on the rough tunnel which pierced the fall of earth.

“Quick!” he said again, “you first! There's just room!” And Elizabeth found herself on her hands and knees crawling into a thick, clammy darkness.

It was the worse moment of all. Her body filled the hole, so that the light could not help her. The loose stuff gritted and slid beneath her as she crawled. The roof let down a continual shower of pebbles and earth upon her hair, her face, her neck. She did not know how long the tunnel might be. If it fell in upon her, she would be buried alive. It might fall in and crush her, in an instant. That would not be so bad. But if it were to pin her here alive—or come down ton upon ton between her and Stephen … A terror such as she had never known swept over her at the thought. She felt, or imagined, a tremor that shook the whole earthy mass.

Then, as she crawled, Stephen's hand touched her foot. The nightmare lifted a little. She blinked the earth out of her eyes and suddenly found her head and shoulders free. Next moment she was out of the tunnel and scrambling to her feet in the passage beyond. She leaned against the wall, pushing back her hair, and drawing a long sweet breath of relief.

Stephen followed her.

“Lord—what a tight squeeze!” he said.

Then his torch went on and the ray swept to and fro overhead. She heard him give a whistle between his teeth and, looking up, she saw how the roof of the passage sagged and bulged. Great cracks showed black in the ray. She thought she saw them tremble. Was it the light that shook, or was it she herself? She thought the wall shook too. She thought it moved when she leaned against it. This all in one flash of fear. In another flash the fear had become a certainty of terror. The wall bulged, and the cracks were widening. And then Stephen had her by the arm, and they were running faster than she had ever run in her life. His arm came round her, sweeping her along. She stumbled on the uneven floor and he held her up. She gasped and strained for breath, but he urged her on.

And then it came—the shaking and heaving of the earth, the horrible dull boom, the rush of driven dusty air, overtaking and half choking them. It came with its stunning noise, its merciless reverberations, its terror. It came, and passed. The sound of it died away. The earth was steady under them again. The walls stood, and the roof covered them.

Stephen stopped running and sent the ray exploring once again. There were no cracks here, no bowing of the arch, no horrible gradual slipping out of the true.

“That's all right,” he said cheerfully. “A near shave—wasn't it? But nobody will follow us now. It's the west wing of the house coming down that's done it—too much weight on the roof of the passage. Well, there goes a very convenient back door.”

They walked on in silence. Elizabeth felt dazed and weak. She walked on because Stephen expected her to walk on. If she had stopped, she would not have been able to start again. The passage went on, and on, and on. The air was heavy and cold. She went on walking.

Then they stopped. Stephen stopped, and as soon as he stopped, Elizabeth stopped too. The passage had come to an end. The torch showed old broken steps rising steeply upwards. Elizabeth looked at them and roused a little from the daze that hung about her like a fog.

“Are we over the frontier?” she said.

Stephen nodded.

“Yes, we're in Poland. The steps come out in the ruin of the chapel I told you about. The opening's very well hidden.”

Elizabeth put her hand against the wall to steady herself.

“And then?” she said.

“There's a farm-house about a quarter of a mile away where the people know me. You won't find that too far to walk.”