Chapter 12
"There are just two hours before the Mabinogion sails," said Boynton, looking at his watch. "It will not take us more than twenty minutes to walk to Pendrylas. I have a few preparations to make. Will you come into the sitting room and wait there, Fanshawe?"
Fanshawe nodded. He was very silent now as they helped him to his feet and led him quickly across the corridor into the sitting room. He sat down by the fire, looking white and ill, while Boynton and Winterbotham talked together in a low voice.
"The cylinder, Winterbotham. You didn't liberate much gas, so I know there must be quite a dozen effective charges left."
"Quite that, sir."
"Very well, that's one of our weapons, perhaps the most important. Then we have our revolvers and plenty of spare cartridges."
"There are two electric torches," Winterbotham said, "and I think I'll take this along with me."
The little man's eye had been roving round the room till it reached the sideboard, where there was a large, old-fashioned cruet. He went up to it and emptied the contents of the ordinary pepper and the red pepper pot into a sheet of paper.
"It isn't nice," he said with a grin, "but it's very effective at close quarters, and we're not going to stand on ceremony tonight. A good stout bit of rope wound round both our waists would be a good thing too, and those mountain-climbing sticks." He pointed to two alpenstocks of ash, shod with iron, which leant in a corner.
"I've got a file in my pocket," he said. "I never travel anywhere without a file and a pair of tweezers and a few other tools. We'll just sharpen the points of yon sticks. They may be useful."
It took them a little time to complete their preparations. There was a large packet of milk chocolate upon the sideboard, a delicacy much liked by Mrs. Herbert Wilkins.
"We don't know when we will get anything to eat, and chocolate is sustaining," said Gerald as he put it in his pocket, while Winterbotham filled two flasks with brandy and water.
Fanshawe looked on with a grim smile. "I see you are going to leave nothing to chance," he said. "For my part, I wish you good luck. I wish I could give you more help than I have, but my oath binds me."
They were ready at last.
"Now," Boynton said, "we're ready, Fanshawe. You, however, are supposed to have already left the hotel." And he detailed the ruse which he had practised with Winterbotham a short time before.
Fanshawe laughed.
"You've all your wits about you, I can see," he said. "Well, I suppose what has been done once can be done again. Anyway, it doesn't much matter, since we have made terms with each other and you're going to let me go free."
"The best thing is for me to go downstairs and keep the landlord and the people below in talk for a minute or two," Gerald said. "I shall tell them that I am going out on the mountains myself to look for Miss Milton. You and Winterbotham, Fanshawe, creep downstairs and get on to the Pendrylas road. Walk slowly and I'll catch you up."
The manoeuvre was executed without the slightest hitch. Boynton spent two minutes or so in the lounge. He procured a couple of pieces of rope from Mr. Price, explaining that they would be useful in the search, and with the landlord's good wishes ringing in his ears he hurried out of the hotel and on to the Pendrylas road.
The night was dark, though the sky was star-spangled. The sea made a low, moaning noise to his right, and to his left the mysterious mountains towered into the heavens. His feet, in their nailed climbing boots, rang sharply upon the hard road as he swung forward at a good pace, until he made out two dark and slowly moving figures a few yards ahead.
"I feel deadly sick," Fanshawe muttered as Gerald joined them. "That stuff of yours is terrible, Boynton. As soon as I get on board I'm going to my cabin to sleep like a log. If you can manage to give a dose of it to Lord Llandrylas, you have my heartiest good wishes, though I am taking a fortune of his lordship's money away with me to the West." He shrugged his shoulders and they went onwards without another word.
At last they came to the straggling village of the slate quarrymen, and passing through it past two brightly lit public houses, from each of which a chorus of song was pouring, they stepped over a tangle of railway lines and onto the pier, which was lit at regular intervals by gas lamps.
Soon they made out the riding lights of the Mabinogion, and then the long white shape of the mysterious yacht came into full view. The tide was nearly at the full and the ship's deck was almost on a level with the pier. A sailor stood smoking at the gangway.
"Is the luggage on board?" Fanshawe asked in a sharp, authoritative voice.
"It's all aboard, sir," the sailor answered, "and the other gentleman too. He's asleep in his cabin."
"Very well, then, I will go on board as well, but first of all run up to Plasmawyr Cottage and tell Mr. Lloyd I want to see him at once."
"Mr. Lloyd, the transport manager, sir?"
"Yes, be quick about it."
The man touched his cap and shambled off.
"We'll wait here," Fanshawe said in a low voice, "unless you would like to go aboard and rest in the saloon?"
"I think we'll wait here," Gerald answered dryly, and he heard Fanshawe give a little chuckle in the dark.
"I'm not so bad as all that, Boynton," Fanshawe said, and indeed to Gerald he seemed a curious mixture of good and evil. "But have it your own way."
In about five minutes a short, thick-set man hurried down the pier with the sailor.
"Good evening, Mr. Flint," he said. "What can I have the pleasure of doing for you?"
"As you know, Lloyd, I am sailing tonight at full tide. His lordship asked me to go and see these two gentlemen at the Pwylog Hotel. They are friends of the young lady that's lost on the mountains."
"Dear, dear," said Mr. Lloyd sympathetically. "A bad business that."
"It is," Fanshawe went on; "and his lordship told me to afford them every possible assistance. They want to go up on the mountains at once, and to save time you must send them up in one of the trucks with a man to show them the way on the moor. You've got steam up, I suppose?
"Oh, yes, Mr. Flint. It is up night and day. I can have them run up within half an hour."
"Very well, then, if you will go to the end of the pier these two gentlemen will join you in a few minutes. I want to have a final word with them."
"Good night, Mr. Flint. See you back soon, I suppose?" the man answered.
"About three days," Fanshawe replied, and then he turned to Gerald.
"Well, goodbye, Boynton," he said. "We shall never meet again. I wish you every possible success. You are going into deadly danger, but I believe you will win through. It is all owing to me that poor Miss Milton is in the position she is -- though I could never have foreseen it, of course. Try and think as kindly of me as you can."
He nodded curtly, did not offer to shake hands, and stepped over the gangway on board the deck of the yacht. In the light which flared up from the roof of the saloon they saw him standing there for a moment, a tall, dark figure, and then he went below.
"Now for it, Winterbotham," Boynton said, "and God help us."
They stood in a kind of rough miniature railway station, upon which a single arc light threw a ghostly radiance. A great truck, capable of holding two tons of slate, glided towards them out of the dark.
"It's rough," said Mr. Lloyd, "but you won't mind that, seeing the business you are on. There will be one change when you get up to the first platform, but David Evans will be with you all the way."
They thanked him and scrambled into the truck, accompanied by a silent Welshman in corduroy. Mr. Lloyd went to a lever at the side of the little platform and pulled it. There was a clang, a light winked upon the mountainside, a bell rang, and then the steel cable tightened and the truck began to move. They sat down on some sacks upon the floor as the fore part began to rise and the whole thing gathered momentum. The lights of the village sank below them.
Two twinkling points of red and green marked where the Mabinogion w
aited at the pier side. Then these dwindled to nothingness and the wind of their passage grew cold, while the noise of their ascent echoed through the deep gully up which they rushed. It was a strange sensation, this fierce storming of the mountain. They could see nothing but the stars above and the vast walls of slate on either side. At last the pace slackened, there was a slight jerk and they rolled along level ground for a few yards.
Evans sot out and motioned them to do likewise. There was a click as an electric standard was turned on, and they found themselves on a little platform surrounded by a high amphitheatre of rock. A low, yawning tunnel slanting upwards, as the light which fell upon the steel rails showed, confronted them. They entered another truck. Again there was the ringing of a bell, the clanging noise and they plunged into the dark. Here the incline was much steeper. It was almost like rolling up a ladder set against a house, as they crouched inside the truck. The noise was deafening, and it seemed to continue for hours.
At last the hot air of the tunnel cleared and they came out into the great central quarry itself, a gigantic, echoing place of unknown extent, forlorn and terrifying. Their guide unlocked the door of a small shed and returned with three lanterns, which he lit.
"If you follow me carefully," he said, "there's no danger, and you'll be up on the moor in ten minutes."
They wound in and out among huge piles of dressed slate, dodging past lines of trucks and innumerable little sheds, until they came to a roughly cut stairway in the side of the artificial precipice before them. On one side was a handrail, on the other the rock itself.
The little man flitted ahead like a monstrous gnome. His lantern made fantastic play of light and shadow as they followed him. Higher and higher they went upon their winding way, until they must have risen nearly three hundred feet, and nothing separated them from the gulf below save the guide rail of dew-drenched rope.
At last it was over. They went through a gate in the fencing which defended the abyss and found their feet among the heather.
"Will you be going to the castle?" the man asked.
"Yes; we want to find out if they have any news," Gerald said.
"Well, it isn't three miles away. The moon will be up soon and you can't miss your way if you keep to this track until you reach the road. Then it's fair going till you get to the castle. You can keep these lanterns."
Gerald thanked him and gave him money, and then he disappeared below the brink of the precipice.
They walked on briskly for two or three hundred yards until they struck a beaten road which led from the castle to another part of the quarries, from which all supplies were brought. Then they blew out the lanterns and hid them in a clump of heather.
Boynton said, "I've got the plan of the castle thoroughly in my mind. I can't make a mistake. When once we're inside we must be guided entirely by circumstances. Personally I shall stick at nothing."
"Nor I, sir," Winterbotham answered, and the other heard his teeth grate together in the dark.
"There's another thing I want to say. Our first plan is to rescue Miss Milton. That's agreed upon?"
"Of course, Mister Boynton."
"Very well, then. The mysterious horror at which Mr. Fanshawe hinted is only a secondary thing. Now it's quite possible in getting Miss Milton away -- if we can do it at all -- that one of us will have to go under. I want you to promise, Winterbotham, as I promise you, that whoever sees a chance of getting her away, even if he has to abandon the other, he will do it. It's a lot to ask from you. My position is different."
"I'm with ye, sir," the little man answered simply. "I've no one dependent upon me. I've had a good life, and, well, I'd just die for that young lady, same as you would."
Their hands gripped hard in a sacrament of chivalry and mutual faith.
"The moon will be up in about an hour," said Gerald when they had progressed a few yards on their way. "At this rate we shall make the castle in another five and twenty minutes. Don't you agree that it will be a thousand times better to try and get inside while it is still dark?"
"I'll follow ye in everything," Winterbotham rejoined, and they began a quick and steady march on the turf at the side of the faintly gleaming road.
Ten minutes, twenty minutes passed and then Winterbotham touched Gerald's arm. "Yonder!" he whispered.
They strained their eyes through the dark, and an immense pile of goblin masonry seemed to heave itself before them, blacker than night and silent as a tomb. Gerald sank upon his knees, produced Fanshawe's map and placed an illuminated compass upon it.
"This is the side," he whispered, after half a minute's scrutiny. "We must follow the wall to the right for two hundred yards. Ah!"
Two things happened simultaneously. A twinkle of yellow light showed high up in the air, and the deep, musical bay of a distant hound came to them through the silence.
"It's t'other side of t'castle," Winterbotham murmured. "But what are them lights?"
"Come with me and we'll see."
The road wound away to the left. They crossed it without a sound, pushed their way through the heather to the right, which Fanshawe had told them went up to the very edge of the moat. Instant by instant the vast pile grew more distinct to their straining eyes. Battlemented wall and tower detached themselves from the star-spangled background, and above all hung the huge central mass of the keep. It was from there that the lights came -- a row of narrow windows.
Gerald heard a sound like someone running. For a moment his hand gripped the butt of his revolver. Then he realized that it was the drumming of his own heart. She was there, up in that grim tower, three hundred feet high! He plunged forward.
"Go easy, Mister Boynton, go easy! We're very close there now."
Winterbotham was right. A few more steps and the towering outer walls of the castle seemed about to fall upon them. They were not fifty yards from the castle.
Gerald dropped upon his hands and knees. The heather had almost ceased. They felt nothing but smooth turf as they crawled onwards, dragging their alpenstocks behind them.
Suddenly Gerald stopped. He saw faint glimmers like scattered glow-worms a yard or two ahead. They did not seem to be quite on his own level, but down a depression of some feet -- the stars were reflected in the broad, dark waters of the moat.
He touched Winterbotham upon the arm. Without a sound they crawled on their stomachs to the very edge of the water.
Six yards wide, Fanshawe had said. It seemed a hundred, like an enchanted lake washing the feet of a high precipice. Again, but unmistakably from the other side of the castle, and so perhaps a quarter of a mile away, came the musical baying of the hound.
On this side of the castle there was not a sound, not a light of any sort.
"There's no one watching, at any rate," Gerald whispered, after they had crouched there for several minutes. "I'm going to risk it."
He took a powerful electric torch from his pocket and sent a level ray skimming over the water, moving it this way and that. Finding no break in the huge moss-grown blocks of stone yonder, he shut it off, and without a word began to crawl parallel with the moat, Winterbotham following him. When they had gone some sixty yards, and remained silent for at least a minute, he tried again.
They had hit the spot exactly. The beam shone across the water. Six yards away was a low pointed archway in the wall, closed by a heavy nail-studded door. Three steps descended from it into the water. Then they saw something else. Moored to a nail in the wall by the side of the steps was a small boat.
"Thank God!" Gerald whispered. "That's our way back!" He shut off the light as he spoke.
Winterbotham did not answer, but he seemed to be scuffling oddly at Gerald's side.
"What are you doing?" he asked.
"Taking the things out of my pocket," the other answered quietly. "Catch hold of the cylinder, Mister Boynton. I'm a proper fish in t'watcr."
Before Gerald could say another word the little man had writhed to the brink of the moat and let himself down into
the water without a sound. There was a tiny splash or two and then Gerald cautiously switched on the torch. He saw Winterbotham climbing over the stern of the boat, and in a few seconds more he leant over the edge and caught it by the nose.
"Steady," Winterbotham whispered, as Gerald let himself down. "There are no oars, but there's a boathook."
Even as he spoke he shoved off, and the impetus sent them shooting over the moat, until the little craft grated against the steps. They waited in silence while Gerald returned the cylinder, spare torch and other things to Winterbotham. Then, mooring the boat, they crept out upon the slippery steps up to the heavy door.
The key was in Gerald's waistcoat pocket. He felt for the lock, inserted the key and turned it. The bolt shot back with the faintest of clicks and the door swung open without a sound. The two men entered and closed the door behind them.
They found themselves in a narrow passage between two walls of immense height. There was hardly room for two people to walk abreast. They knew from the map that this passage went on for a few yards, then went sharply to the left and finally came out to the great central courtyard. They crept along it, Boynton leading with his revolver in one hand and torch in the other. Winterbotham followed with the gas cylinder.
Suddenly Boynton stopped. A square band of light shot across the passage at a height of five or six feet and some two yards in front. It came from a small barred window upon the left. Almost immediately he heard voices talking in low tones and a smell of shag tobacco met his nostrils. Putting his hand behind him to stop Winterbotham, he crept up and stood in the darkness, with the light shooting out an inch above his head.
The window was open, and putting his hand upon the sill and standing on tip-toe he peered cautiously in. He saw a small octagonal room of stone, formerly an ancient guard-room. In one corner a fire burned, and there was a massive table of old oak in the centre. On the table a bottle of whisky, two glasses and other objects which he could not for a moment distinguish.
Two men were in the room, both smoking short pipes. One, who was standing by the fire, was a tall man of a military carriage. His iron-grey hair was cut short, his moustache was waxed and his face coarse and dissipated. The other seemed but a second edition of the first.
"Well," said the man by the fire with a foul barrack room oath, "everything -- well fixed up. When are you going to shave off your moustache, Blinker? ''
"Fore I turns in, Sergeant."
"Good, and I'll do the same." The man lurched to the table and poured himself a generous measure of whisky. "It's touch and go," he said, "but they can't put it on to us. 'Cause why? We've never been out of this ... prison since we come a month ago. No one has seen us except old Bogie's blooming Welsh retainers. We do the work tomorrow just 'fore it's light. It'll take twenty minutes -- not more, with this new Austrian breech screw and hydraulic mechanism. We'll be dressed in them tourists' togs by then. All we've got to do when it's over is to catch up them knapsacks and get over the mountains as fast as we can, until we get down to Bangor, like unknown gents on a walking tour. It's been timed very well for us. We catch the Holyhead boat for Ireland and get on board the American liner at Queensland. Made for life, cully, made for life!
The other man helped himself to drink. Gerald saw his hand was shaking. "Well, here's luck to us," he said thickly. "But it's an awful thing we're going to do."
The big ruffian swore again. "D'ye think I'd have a hand in it if it weren't for that little affair at Aldershot nigh six months ago? Old Bogie's job come quite providential. You know where we'd be now if we hadn't run across that obliging gent, Conway Flint? You and me'd be hanged and lying in quicklime, after a 'melancholy procession' at eight o'clock in the morning."
Again the other man shuddered and stretched out his hand for the whisky. "Stow it, Blinker, you've had enough. Remember we've got to be in the shed in half an hour."
"'Ave we? What for?"
"A message come from old Bogie, and the bloke that brings it tells me that he's got a bit of skirt with him and he wants to show her Billy Buster."
"Never seen a gal in this Gawd-forsaken place before."
"I suppose a pal of his lordship come over for the fireworks tomorrow. Another twenty minutes and we'll go and light up. You've got the key of the side door, 'aven't you?"
"No, I ain't. The door's open, and I left the key in it."
"Against strict orders, Blinker. Not that it matters now. Just unfold them quiet, gentlemanly togs we 'as to wear to get away, and let's have another look at 'em."
Gerald crouched low and passed on under the band of light into the dark. A faint snap of the fingers summoned Winterbotham to follow him. When he had gone three yards he straightened himself again and leant against the stone wall. There was a rush and swirl as of deep waters in his ears. His heart leapt up and fell down, down as into a deep hollow. He stretched out his hand and tried to grip the rough stones, while the stones beneath his feet rocked, swayed, tilted, and the sense of solid things seemed to sink away from under him.
An infamy, a horror such as he had not imagined in his wildest dreams seemed unfolding before him. Even now he did not fully realize, but a half-knowledge of what was to come racked him through and through.
There was a hoarse whisper in his ear. "You've heard summat, sir. Here."
He felt the nozzle of a flask at his lips. He drank, and the brandy gave him a new strength. He made a superhuman effort and regained his calm. "Thanks," he murmured. "Follow me. It is worse than I expected."
Noiseless as cats they continued their way down the narrow passage. It was like walking at the bottom of a well, until suddenly they came out into an immense, ghostly space where the cool air circled round them.
They had arrived at the open courtyard of the castle.
On all sides the vast buildings towered into the sky. Here and there, at considerable distances, there were lights. In a far corner a door was open and shadows passed before it. To the left rose the square tower of the keep, and they saw now that many windows upon every floor glowed brightly. But where they stood they were in deepest shadow and there was not a soul about.
One word rang in Gerald's mind -- "The Shed." Where was that? What was it?
He was soon to know. It was lighter here than it had been on the moor. Second by second, as his eyes became adjusted, he saw, not twenty yards away, a long, low building which was apparently set right in the centre of the courtyard. He recalled Fanshawe's map. There was an unexplained oblong upon it. Gerald frowned. First of all, the building was obviously out of place among its surroundings, and obviously modern. In shape it was like a factory building -- a weaving shed or something of that sort, and even as the thought came to him he saw that the roof was glass.
He touched Winterbotham and began to glide over the gravel to the courtyard at a rapid pace. They came up to the erection. He touched it. It was a temporary structure of corrugated iron, high, long and narrow. They had struck it on one side. With the utmost care they walked towards the end and found that it consisted of huge wooden doors, like the doors of a great barn. These were closed.
"The entrance door I want to find must be round the other side"
Crash! Gerald had caught his foot in something that ran upon the ground. He just managed to stifle a cry, and Winterbotham helped him to his feet in a moment.
"It's a sunken rail. Heavy steel, too," he whispered.
"Be careful, here's another, Winterbotham. They can run some big thing out of this shed. Quick!"
He was in deadly fear that the noise of his fall might have been heard, and the two men whipped round towards the other side of the building, straining their ears in an agony of apprehension.
But there was no sound. Halfway down the opposite side they felt a wooden door. Gerald found the handle and turned it. The door opened easily, as he expected it would. This was the door of which one of the ex-soldiers -- for he had recognized them for what they were -- had spoken.
They crept inside th
e great shed.
It was pitch dark where they stood, but up above the first faint beams of the rising moon fell through the glass roof, fell upon something stark, gaunt and of inconceivable size and length, which seemed to mount towards it.
In a few brief sentences Gerald told Winterbotham all that he had heard in the passage.
"It is as Sir Ramsey said. What they have got here is a great gun, bigger than any gun has ever been before."
As he spoke he switched on his torch.
In that vast place the beam was too feeble and restricted in focus to show them much. But as it hovered here and there, tremulous and uncertain, a cry of astonishment and almost of terror burst from both of them.
Winterbotham fell against Gerald. "Put it out! Put it out, Mister Boynton!" he gasped. "I can't bear to look at such a thing."
The light went out. Gerald staggered back at the impact of the other's body and stumbled against something tall and hard, like a great steel pillar. He turned and felt with his hands. His arms encircled something hard and deadly cold. He moved a step. His arm slithered round a half-circle until his hand knocked between it and another which stretched beyond.
"Good God!" he said, "this is a forest of steel pillars!" And snatching the torch from his pocket he once more turned on the light.
The two men were standing by what seemed like a row of immense steel cones each one of them nearly nine feet high and towering above their heads. The light gleamed upon the polished surfaces, and as it travelled upwards it shone upon a network of hanging chains and pulleys above them.
The monsters stood in two battalions. Between them was a passage wide enough for a man to pass.
"What are they?" Winterbotham whispered in the same terror-stricken voice. "What are these things?
"Shells! The greatest shells the world has ever seen." Boynton raised a finger. "Listen!" There was a sound of heavy footsteps outside. "Quick, down here!" he whispered, and bolted between the steel pillars like a rabbit.
Winterbotham followed him, feeling his way, for the torch had dropped upon the floor and was extinguished.
They found a gap upon the left and squeezed through it, until they stood in a space some five feet square, walled round with steel.
Then the door beyond opened, gruff voices spoke, there was the click of a switch snapped down and the whole building flashed into a brilliancy bright as day.
Through the spaces between the tall steel columns, though hidden themselves in the shadow, the two men could see the whole expanse beyond.