The Trojan Horse (17 page)

‘So you don't know where Schmidt is?' That pleased me a lot, for I felt that if Schmidt were at liberty and no longer wanted by the police, he might be able to do something.

‘No, but I think you may be able to help us there,' he replied.

I had complete control of myself again now. ‘I think it would be best if you took me to Baron Marburg,' I said. I spoke calmly, confidently, and I saw at once that my sudden change of mood puzzled him.
‘Baron Marburg,' I went on, ‘plans to wreck this country and assume the powers of a dictator under the post-war German control. He thinks, I suppose, that because he is Baron Marburg, he is above suspicion. And whilst he is dreaming of power, he is in imminent danger of losing his life.' I felt the thrill I always had when delivering my final address to the jury. ‘You wonder why he is in imminent danger of his life? Well, I can answer that for you, Sedel. It is because of your bungling. My God, man, do you think you can murder men with impunity in this country as you can in Germany? You killed Burston. And the police know it. You were fool enough to send him straight from a party at your house to his death. Did you never pause to think that that might immediately link you with his death? Why did Burston take the Birling Gap road? And why, when he knew the country so well, did he turn left, instead of right, at the foot of the Belle Toute? You might have got away with it, if the British Secret Service had not been on your track. You knew what Evan Llewellin was? You knew he was a secret agent. You know that Schmidt is no longer wanted for his murder? But do you know why? Because a petty thief saw and described the two men who murdered Llewellin. And now will you take me to your chief?'

I looked him full in the face, and his eyes would not meet mine. But his fear made him venomous. ‘What's it matter?' he snapped, half to himself. ‘We have the engine. Soon we shall have Schmidt. As for you,' and he suddenly faced me, his eyes glittering,
‘you will not harm us. The talk of a madman can harm no one. That is what you'll be when I have finished with you. Mad! Do you hear? Mad! Tomorrow you go back to your box.' And he turned on his heel with his laugh like a soft giggle. His henchman followed him, and the door closed behind them with a dull thud. A key grated in the lock. An instant later the light went out and I was in the dark.

Sudden darkness is frightening. Few people ever experience the real horrors of the darkness. I don't mean the darkness of a room when you are fumbling for the light. I mean the darkness that shuts down on you like blindness and you have no power to control. The darkness in that vault was complete and utter. There were no windows or ventilation shafts through which even the faintest glimmer of luminosity could penetrate. It closed in around me, and everything was blank. It was as though my eyes had been walled up. And in that darkness I felt stifled, as though I had been buried alive. The mood of sudden inexplicable confidence in which I had addressed Sedel was gone. I remembered only his final words.

He had said I would go mad. And I knew he was right. The mere thought of that foul box made me clench my teeth to control my hysteria. I knew I could not stand it. As I stood in the impenetrable darkness of that vault, I found I was shaking like a leaf. Then
the blackness all about me seemed to close in and I found my way to the wall to convince myself that I was not bounded by limitless darkness. The feel of those cold smooth stones was almost comforting. I think I am no more of a coward than the next man and darkness did not usually hold any terrors for me. But I had never known darkness such as this. It was black and with no change in shade anywhere. It pressed down relentlessly on my wide, staring eyeballs as I searched it.

And then I suddenly remembered my fountain-pen torch. I kept it in the breast pocket of my jacket for use in the blackout. It was still there, and in an instant its pale light flooded the vault. There was my coffin, shining black against the dungeon grey of the walls. I crossed to the vault door and tried it. It was an old iron-studded affair, and, though I shook it with all my strength, it held as firm as though it were a part of the wall. And then, as I leant against it, I noticed a plate of food lying on the floor. Evidently Sedel had brought it in and in the heat of the moment had forgotten to draw my attention to it. There was a roll and some ham. I seized upon it hungrily.

I have never eaten a more peculiar meal. I sat cross-legged on the floor of that vault with the plate on my lap. The monogram JL printed on the plate filled my heart with longing for the commonplace humdrum world somewhere above me. Yesterday, maybe, this plate had been used in a Lyon's teashop. Now the last meal of a doomed man was being eaten off it. I have not often enjoyed a meal so much, for I
was hungry. They had provided me with a knife and fork. The only thing I lacked was water. And my need of it grew. It was not until I had swallowed the last mouthful of ham that I realised how salt it had been. And then a new horror dawned on me and I realised just what a fiend Sedel was. Besides the horror of that box, I was to know the agony of thirst. I pushed the empty plate from me and climbing to my feet, searched frantically round the vault. But the walls were blocks of solid stone about a foot high by two feet long and the iron-studded door was quite immovable. I searched the floor and played the light of my torch on the roof, but I knew there was no hope of escape. And then I suddenly had a fear that my torch would give out. I switched it off and found the darkness bearable since, by the pressure of my finger on the pen clip, I could light my cell. And so, in a mood of utter despair, I settled myself against the wall farthest from the box and tried to sleep. Sleep did not come easily. After a while I fancy I dozed off. But almost instantly, it seemed, I was awake. And I knew I was not alone. My nerves were all to pieces and I opened my mouth to scream. But I think I was too petrified to make the necessary effort. Something was moving on the other side of the vault. Then came the sound of metal against crockery. It had touched my plate. And then my fingers closed about the torch.

In the sudden light I found myself staring across the room at the largest rat I think I have ever seen. It was dark and sleek, with eyes that gleamed redly. It bared its teeth at the light. Then suddenly it dived
across the cell and vanished into a corner. I lay for a moment, staring at the empty vault, wondering whether my eyes had played me a trick. But then I remembered that I had heard rats scampering about the floor when I had been inside the tin box. The rat had left behind it a faint unpleasant smell. My mind struggled for a moment to account for the smell. And then I realised suddenly that what I had seen had been a sewer rat. And I almost retched at the thought. There could be no doubt about it. No rat but a sewer rat would be so large and vilely sleek.

Then my mind suddenly remembered a story told me by a City journalist. He had described it as true. The directors of the Bank of England had, some years ago, received an anonymous letter, stating that the writer could gain access to the vaults of the bank at any time. And when they had taken no notice, the fellow had written again, asking them to meet him in the vaults on a given night. And when they went down there, the fellow appeared through the floor from an old sewer. They had paid him the better part of a thousand pounds for his trouble. Supposing the sewers ran close to this vault? The rats came and went. And where the rats could go, perhaps a man could.

I scrambled hurriedly to my feet and crossed over to the corner where the rat had disappeared. Sure enough, there, between two blocks of stone that did not fit very well, was a hole about the size of a Jaffa orange. I went down on my hands and knees and thrust my torch into it. But I could see nothing. Beyond the stone blocks the hole seemed to widen
out. But I could smell. Faintly came a warm fetid stench – the stench of a sewer.

I was really excited now. Perhaps this was more than a rat hole? Perhaps behind the solid-seeming wall was a passage-way leading to the sewers? As I rose to my feet, I brushed against one of the rusty chains and it clinked against the stone. The sight of that chain stirred a chord in my memory. And then suddenly I could have cried aloud in my excitement. For I had remembered that to the right of the entrance door of Marburgs was one of the little blue plaques put up by the City Corporation. I had forgotten the details, but I did remember that it informed a forgetful world that here, on this site, many years ago, stood a prison. And this was one of the old cells. To these chains prisoners had once been fettered. And these deep cells had remained behind the façade of civilisation that Marburgs had raised between Old Broad Street and Threadneedle Street. What more likely than that there had been a passage from the old prison to the ancient sewers of the city? Perhaps it had been used as a convenient method of getting rid of men who had died here? Perhaps it had been a secret means of communication between the prison and the river? I played my torch on the stonework, rubbing away the dirt and feeling the cold blocks with the tips of my fingers. And it seemed to me that the stones here were less rough, as though they had been built in later. I became convinced of this when I noticed that the blocks were shorter on one side, as though they had been specially cut to fit into the space that
had originally been the entrance to a passage. The edges, too, were rougher.

I glanced at my watch. It was nearly midnight. Sedel would not arrive before eight at the very earliest. That gave me eight hours. But I knew it was a long job I had before me and I set to work feverishly. My only implement was the knife with which I had eaten my meal. God! how I blessed that knife! I could almost forgive Sedel his fiendish trick of supplying me salt ham and nothing to drink.

I started on the block of stone to the right of the rat hole. It was hard, back-breaking work. The mortar was only about a quarter of an inch thick between the blocks and much harder than the stuff that builders use now. Moreover, I had to work largely in the dark, for the light from my torch already had a yellow tinge and I knew it would not last much longer. I was in a sweat of fear lest it would give out altogether, for I dreaded the thought of wandering in an ancient sewer in complete darkness.

But I was happy. Heavens, how happy I was to have something to do other than lie and think about that damned tin box and Sedel's sneering look as hysteria took me by the throat! After a time, of course, the blade of the knife snapped, but, except for the fact that I could not work so deep, the broken blade proved the more serviceable implement. I don't think that I ever worked with such a terrible urgency. My back and arm muscles ached until I could have cried out with the pain, and the sweat poured off me. But I did not pause. I dared not pause. The work was
so slow. And all the time I smelt faintly that musty decayed stench of an ancient sewer.

For two hours I sawed and hammered and scraped, until at last I could bury my knife to the handle all round the block of stone. But the blade was now only some four inches long and the depth of these blocks was near on a foot. I lay on my back and battered away at the stone with my feet. I kept on with this until at length I lay flat on the stone floor, exhausted. The stone had not budged a fraction. I glanced at my watch again. Half-past two! I got dazedly to my feet and stood breathing heavily and staring at that wall, as though I would walk through it like Alice through the looking-glass.

Then I knew what I must do, and I set to work on the block of stone immediately above the one I had been working on. I must loosen the mortar as deep as I could round every block, working upwards. It was a Herculean task, and, looking back on it, I cannot understand how I found the strength to do it. Those blocks were not one on top of the other. No, each row interlocked, so that every other row I had to loosen two of them.

It was past seven in the morning before I had finished. And during those last hours I had been working like an automaton. I was dazed with fatigue, and only fear kept me at it. I just had to do it, and so I went dazedly on. And when at last it was done, I leant against the wall and went fast asleep. The next I knew it was five to eight and I was lying in a heap on the floor. I climbed stiffly to my feet. I was
covered with fine mortar dust from head to foot, and my soul cried out for water. But though it had lost me a valuable hour, that short rest had made all the difference in the world. Without it, I doubt whether I should have been able to do what I had to do. I flexed my muscles to get the stiffness out of them. Then I threw my weight against the wall.

I don't know how many times I did this. But I was aching with the force of my contact with the stone before I ceased. It had not yielded an inch. It was then that a horrible doubt began to assail my mind. Suppose there was no passage? Suppose the rat hole just opened out because behind the stone was earth? In a panic I bent down and looked into it again. But there was no sign of earth. In despair I seized upon the deed-box. Having bent the fork round my torch, so that it remained alight without my holding it, I lifted the box endways in my arms and, using it as a battering ram, charged the wall. The din of the metal striking the stone was terrific. But now I had worked myself into a frenzy of fear that was very near to panic. At any moment Sedel might arrive. After having been allowed the hope of escape, I could not bear the thought of that tin coffin.

Again and again I charged that wall, always driving the corner of the box against one particular block of stone. And when I was staggering with weakness, I noted with a leap of joy that the two blocks below it had given about an inch at the point where they met each other. The light of the torch was becoming so feeble that as often as not I had been driving the
corner of the box against these, instead of against the stone above. The discovery gave me strength. A few more charges and I saw that the blocks above and below were caving in. Again and again I charged that wall, making a din like a blacksmith's forge. And after every blow I found the blocks had given ground. At first it was only an inch. Then it was two or three, and at last as much as six, with all the blocks to the floor moved slightly inwards.