Chapter Seventeen.
Is Extraordinary
The agony was excruciating. A burning bubbling seethed in my brain, as though my skull were filled with molten metal. My mouth was parched, my neck stiff, and my jaws were fixed when I opened my eyes and found myself in a great chasm of cavernous darkness.
How long I had lain there I have no idea.
The thunder of rolling, roaring waters deafened me, and my lower limbs were so benumbed that at first I was unable to move them. I felt my leg, and then discovered the reason. Wet to the skin, I was lying half in water, my head alone being on some slightly higher ground – a fortunate circumstance that had certainly saved me from being drowned.
Where was I?
For fully ten minutes – minutes that seemed hours, I was utterly unable to move, but presently I managed, by dint of supreme effort, to struggle to my feet and grope about me unsteadily, at last finding a smooth arched wall. I lifted my hand above my head and found that I could touch the roof.
In that pitch darkness, with the roaring torrent at my side, I dare not move two paces lest I might lose my foothold.
I felt frantically in my pocket, and my heart leapt when I found that I still possessed a box of wax vestas. The silver box was water-tight. One of these I struck quickly, but its light was lost in that cavernous blackness.
It only showed me the bricked walls, high to the roof, wet and slimy, and revealed to me that I was in one of the main sewers of London! At my side the great black torrent flowed on towards the outfall with deafening roar in that long, interminable tunnel beneath the Metropolis.
Rats, hundreds of them, grey and scuttling, ran helter-skelter on seeing the fickle light; but I stood motionless leaning against the wall and gazing around at my weird surroundings until the match went out. My head reeled, I feared to walk lest I should stagger into the Stygian stream.
Knowledge of where I was gave me courage, however. My head was very painful with strange fancies dancing through my imagination. I think that the blow had unbalanced my brain.
Which way should I turn? To right or left? Was mortal man ever in such a predicament? I recognised the truth. I remembered one appalling fact. The scoundrels had sent me through into that deadly place, knowing that even if the fall did not kill me outright, I must be drowned when, at regular intervals, the sewer was automatically flushed, and my body washed out to the Thames estuary.
I had seen the walls still wet to the roof from the last flushing, and as I recognised my awful peril, my blood ran cold. At any moment might come that gigantic flood to sweep me away into eternity in an instant. Somewhere, higher up, was that mechanism which at certain hours of day and night automatically let loose the great sweeping wave through the long, black tunnel sweeping to the sea, the cleansing of London.
My only hope was to find safety somewhere, therefore in frantic haste, all forgetful of the pain I was suffering, I turned to the right and groped along the wall by aid of a match, the light of which was not sufficient to show the true dimensions of the sewer.
On, on, I went, how far I have no idea. It seemed to be miles. My matches burned only dimly, so bad was the air. Time after time I came to side channels, small arches belching forth their black stream into the roaring torrent like tributaries of a river, until I suddenly saw something white upon the wall, and, raising my match, discerned the painted words: “Poland Street.”
Then I knew that I was beneath Poland Street, close to Oxford Street.
I was in search of a manhole by which to ascend to the roadway, but, alas! could not discover one. A great terror seized me lest the flush should come before I could gain a place of safety.
I was in the act of striking another match, in order to proceed more quickly, when I felt my head reeling, and in clutching at the wall for support the matchbox fell from my nerveless fingers into the water.
My disaster was thus complete. Without light how could I find a place in which to raise myself above the level of the flood?
My heart stood still. In that moment the recollection of all the sequence of strange and startling events of the past few weeks passed in rapid review before me. My enemies had entrapped me, and I now knew that I was doomed.
Eric’s shout of defiance, followed by that groan and shriek, still rang in my ears, but, most tantalising of all, I had no idea where the house to which I had been enticed was situated. It was somewhere off Regent Street, but further than that I had no knowledge.
I saw how cleverly the whole affair had been arranged; how the man introduced to me as Humphreys had met us by appointment in the vestibule of the Empire, and how, knowing my interest in antiques, the bait had been so cleverly placed.
I had now no doubt that Ellice Winsloe was an adventurer, therefore my eager desire was to reveal to Scarcliff the astounding truth.
And yet this was actually the man who had the audacity to propose marriage to Sybil, and she had contemplated accepting him!
To old Lady Scarcliff the fellow had posed as a gentleman of means, and had so ingratiated himself with Jack that the pair had become inseparable. The situation was monstrous.
In sheer desperation I groped forward slowly and carefully, my face to the black, slimy wall, feeling it forward with my hands. If I stumbled the force of the torrent would, I knew, take me off my feet and I should most probably meet with an awful death. Cautiously I crept along, how far I cannot tell. Each moment seemed an hour, and each step a mile, until of a sudden the wall ended!
Only the black swiftly-flowing flood lay before me. I put out my hand in the darkness, but only grasped the air.
Next moment, however, I discovered that the sewer took a sudden turn, almost at right angles, and that I had come to the corner. Yes. The wall continued! So I groped on and on, my hands travelling over bricks worn smooth by the action of the cleansing flood.
I hoped to encounter one of those men whom I had often seen descend from the street in high boots and carrying a miner’s lamp, but I was, alas! alone. The very absence of the workmen told me the terrible truth. It was the time for the automatic flushing!
On I groped in frantic haste, the rats scuttling from my path, the darkness complete; the noise of the black waters deafening. I recollected that as we had driven from the Empire it had commenced to rain, and thus was the torrent accounted for.
Of a sudden, I discerned before me something. What it was I could not distinguish. I crept on, and saw that it was like a small patch of faint grey. Then, approaching nearer, I found that it was a single ray of faint daylight which, penetrating from far above, fell upon the black waters. It was day. I had been in that gruesome place all night.
My heart leapt within me as I went forward to it, finding that above was a round, well-like shaft, which led to the surface, while in the wall were iron footholds.
I gained the bottom, and grasping the small, rusted iron rails commenced a slow and difficult ascent.
Not an instant too soon, however, for ere I had placed my foot upon the first rung of the ladder a noise like thunder sounded from the tunnel, and the black waters rose angrily to meet me, washing about my legs as I climbed higher up, and filling the sewer to its roof.
For a few moments the water remained at that level, and then the torrent slowly receded to its original height as the flushing wave rushed on towards the outfall.
A cold perspiration broke out upon me. I saw how I had been within an ace of death, and shuddered as I glanced below.
Then, ascending as quickly as my shattered nerves and swimming head would allow, I found above me a closed grating, through which I could hear the roar of the London traffic above.
I shouted, but could attract no attention.
To push up the iron was impossible, for I saw that it was locked.
A woman passed close by, and I shouted to her. She turned and looked in an opposite direction, surprised to see no one. She never suspected anyone being beneath the roadway.
An omnibus rumbled over me, and I saw that it was a green “Bayswater,” from which I concluded that I must be beneath Oxford Street.
Again and again I shouted for help, but could attract no notice. My position was far from secure, compelled to cling on to those iron footholds in the brickwork.
At last I saw a newsboy close to me. My shout startled him, but when he discerned my face beneath the bars he came closer, and asked, —
“’Alloa, guv’nor! What’s up?”
“I’m a prisoner here,” I explained. “Go and fetch a policeman.”
“My gum!” exclaimed the urchin in his surprise. “It’s the first time I’ve ever ’eard of a bloke gettin’ locked down the sewer.” And he went off at once to call a constable.
The officer came quickly, and after a brief explanation he sent the lad somewhere to the house of one of the sewermen, I think, for the key.
Meanwhile, a small crowd quickly collected around the grating, and I was subjected to a good deal of good-humoured banter until the man came with the key, and I once again found myself at the surface, a dirty, dishevelled, pitiable-looking object in evening dress. I was in Oxford Street, at the corner of Hart Street, Bloomsbury.
Both constable and sewer-man were curious to know how I got in, whereupon I explained that I had been the victim of a plot in some house, of the exact situation of which I was unaware.
The two men exchanged glances – meaning glances I saw them to be.
“Was it anywhere near Portland Place?” asked the big fellow in blue jersey and sea-boots.
“I don’t know. I saw Poland Street written up. Why?”
“Well, because there’s something mysterious goes on in a house somewhere near here. Only a month ago we found the body of a young woman drowned in the main sewer at the corner of Charing Cross Road, and the affair is a mystery. The police ’ave kept it out of the papers while they make inquiries. We’re trying to find out what house has direct communication with the sewer, but up to the present we’ve not been successful. It’s a good job,” he added, “that you weren’t caught by the flush, for it must just be going down at this time.”
I explained how narrowly I had escaped death, and then in reply to the constable described the dastardly plot of which I had been the victim.
“Of course, sir, you won’t mind making a full statement at the police station, will you?” the officer said. “The discovery of the poor woman in the sewer the other day has shown that there is some house in which people mysteriously disappear. It is evidently to that house you were invited. You will be able to assist us to identify it.”
I shook my head, saying: “I fear that I’ll never be able to recognise it again, for I really took no notice of its exterior. It lies somewhere east of Regent Street, that is all I know.”
“Depend upon it that more than one person has been swept down by the flush,” declared the sewer-man. “A man’s body was found down at the outfall at Beckton about three months ago. He was in evening dress, and evidently a gentleman, our foreman said, but where he came from was a complete mystery. My own idea is that the house has no direct communication with the sewer, for if it had, we should have discovered it. You say, sir, that you fell through a hole in the stairs?”
I replied in the affirmative.
“Exactly. You dropped down into a cellar or somewhere in the basement, and then, while you were insensible, they put you into the sewer – through some manhole, perhaps, of which they have a duplicate key. The house must be near a manhole. That’s my belief.”
“Then you don’t think that I fell plumb into the sewer?”
“Certainly not. You were thrown into the sewer while insensible down a manhole, without a doubt. It’s lucky you just escaped the flush. The villain evidently knew that the flush is at eight o’clock in the morning, and that we don’t go down till afterwards. And when we go, well, the victim has, of course, disappeared. By Jove! sir,” added the big muscular man, standing astride in his big, high boots, “you’ve had a narrow shave, and no mistake.”
I admitted I had. I was forced to repeat my explanation to a brown-bearded, good-humoured inspector who came up, and who afterwards gave me his name as Pickering. The officer was most interested, therefore promising to call at the Tottenham Court Road police station later I gave him a card and took a hansom back to Bolton Street.
Chapter Eighteen.
Arouses Suspicions Regarding Sybil
Ellice Winsloe believed me dead.
There was no doubt about that. And knowing what I now did, I intended that he should remain secure in that belief.
Domville had not returned, a fact which caused me the gravest apprehensions. I recollected that defiant voice in the night. Had he also fallen a victim?
Budd called in my doctor, who dressed the wound in my head and carefully bandaged it. He was curious to know the cause, but I merely explained that I had sustained a rather bad fall. Perhaps he attributed it to too much wine on the previous night – probably he did.
“You’ll have to rest for a day or two,” he said, “you had a nasty blow.”
But I was uncommunicative, therefore he soon afterwards left.
Budd was, of course, inquisitive, but my explanation was that I had had an accident, and had fallen in the mud. My clothes were, of course, ruined, my hands grazed and torn, and across my eye was a nasty gash where I must have struck a sharp stone.
My brain was awhirl, and after the doctor’s departure I swallowed some brandy and lay down on the bed awaiting Eric.
Had he shared the same fate? If so, to try and find him in the sewer was useless. The flush had passed, and would sweep him away to his death.
Of course, I had no real proof that he had been in that house other than overhearing his voice. I recalled every word, and now more than ever was I convinced that he had been behind that closed door, held by enemies.
From Budd I learned that my friend had gone out about two o’clock, and had not returned. He had, however, left me a message to say that I was not to be alarmed by his absence. He was still making inquiries, I supposed. What I had related regarding the strange affair at Sydenham Hill had puzzled him greatly. Perhaps he had gone down there.
I gave my man strict instructions to say to everyone that I too was absent from home.
“Tell everybody that I went out to dinner last night and have not yet returned,” I said. “Express surprise and anxiety. I want to pretend to be missing – you understand, Budd?”
“Yes, sir,” was the man’s prompt response. “You expect somebody will call and inquire, and to everyone I am to know nothing.”
“I went out to the club last night and haven’t been seen since.”
“I quite understand, sir. But what about the doctor?”
“He doesn’t matter. The person whom I wish to believe in my absence does not know the doctor. I shall remain indoors for a day or two. Mind nobody knows I’m here.”
“I shall take good care of that, sir,” was the man’s reply; and I knew that I could trust him.
I scribbled a line to Inspector Pickering explaining my inability to make the statement on account of my injured head, but promising to call in a few days. I urged him not to send to me, as my chambers were probably watched. This note I sent by express messenger.
Then thoroughly exhausted I dropped off to sleep.
It was evening when I awoke, but Eric had not made his appearance. I was now thoroughly alarmed. Who were the men whom he had defied in that house of mystery?
He always carried a revolver, and was a dead shot; but what is a weapon against such black treachery as that to which I had been subjected? He was fearless, and would fight to the last; yet after my experience in that house I was apprehensive lest he should, like myself, have fallen a victim.
Many a man and woman disappears in this roaring metropolis of ours and is never again heard of; many an undiscovered crime takes place within a stone’s-throw of the great London thoroughfares; and many a death-cry is unheard in the hum of traffic and unheeded in the bustle of our everyday life. The London sewers hold many a secret, and the London chimneys have smoked with the cremated remains of many an innocent victim.
I wrote to Tibbie an affectionate letter explaining that my absence was due to the fact that I had fallen and met with a slight accident to the head, and signed it “Willie” in order that, if necessary, she might show it to her landlady. It was strange to write to her with so much affection when inwardly I was aware of her terrible secret. Yet had I not promised to save her? Had I not given her that foolish pledge which had been the cause of all my exciting adventures and my narrow escape from death?
Night came. I sat alone in the armchair before the fire listening for my old friend’s footstep, but all in vain. Something had happened, but what the something was I feared to contemplate.
I unlocked a drawer in my old-fashioned bureau, a quaint old piece of Queen Anne furniture from Netherdene, and took out the paper with the cabalistic jumble of figures and letters which I had found on the body of the dead man in Charlton Wood.
For a long while I sat and studied the cipher and its key, finding it very ingeniously contrived – evidently a secret code established for some evil purpose, a code that had been given to the dead man to enable him to have secret communication with some persons who desired to remain unseen and unknown.
My curiosity aroused, my eye chanced to fall upon the morning’s paper and I took it up and turned to the “agony column,” where I saw several cipher advertisements. One of them I endeavoured to read by the aid of the dead man’s key, but was unable. Therefore I tried the second, and afterwards the third. The latter only consisted of two lines of a meaningless jumble of letters and numerals, but taking a pencil I commenced to write down the equivalent of the cipher in plain English.
In a few moments my heart gave a bound.
I had deciphered the first word of the message, namely, “White.”
Very carefully, and after considerable search and calculation, I presently transcribed the secret message thus: —
“White Feather reports W.H. gone home. Nothing to fear.”
That was all. But was it not very significant? The initials were my own, and did not the announcement that I had “gone home” mean that I had gone to my death. There was nothing to fear, it was plainly stated.
They therefore had feared us, and that was the motive of their ingenious crime.
For whose eyes was that curious advertisement intended, I wondered. Who was “White Feather?”
Ah! If I could only discover, then I should obtain a clue to the mystery that was now puzzling me and driving me to despair.
At two o’clock Eric was still absent, therefore I turned in. My head troubled me. It was very painful, and the horrors of that past night ever rose before me, while my unbalanced brain was distracted by wonder at the reason of that desperate attempt upon my life. Man of the world that I was, I knew well enough that there was some deep motive. They feared me – but why?
Next morning, there being no word from Eric, my anxiety was greatly increased. My friend might have shared the same fate as myself and remained unconscious till the flood had overwhelmed him. If so, then all trace of him might have disappeared and his body was now floating slowly out to sea.
Those hard defiant words of his still rang in my ears. What did he mean? Who were the persons who held him in their power?
To remain inactive was impossible. Every moment I remained increased the danger of my discovery by Winsloe and his companions. I could, of course, have gone forth to King Street with a constable and given him in charge for the attempt upon me. Indeed, that was my first impulse, yet on reflection I saw that by adopting such a course I might imperil Sybil. Without a doubt the fellow knew her secret, and for that reason was in such active search of her.
Therefore I decided to remain patient and watchful. Winsloe believed that I was dead, and perhaps it was as well, for I should now be afforded an opportunity of watching his movements.
For three whole days I was compelled to remain a prisoner on account of my annoying bandages, which were too conspicuous to allow me to go forth. I had several callers, including Jack and Lord Wydcombe, but to everyone Budd replied that both his master and Mr Domville were absent, where, he had no idea.
My anxiety for Eric increased hourly, yet what could I do?
The doctor, at my request, removed the bandages so that my wound was hidden when I wore a golf-cap, and about eleven o’clock that same night, dressed in my working clothes, I crept forth into Bolton Street unseen, and in Piccadilly mingled with the crowd homeward bound from the theatre.
I went into Regent Street confident in my excellent disguise, and taking one of the streets to the right, wandered on and on in search of the house with the fatal stairs. On that disastrous night the villainous pair had engaged me deeply in conversation as we drove along, in order to take my attention off the route we were traversing, therefore I own that I was absolutely without any landmark. All I knew was that we had turned off Regent Street about half-way up and that the house was situated in a quiet, rather dark street, an old-fashioned house of three storeys.
Eagerly in search of the place from which I had so narrowly escaped with my life I wandered in the night up and down those narrow thoroughfares, that puzzling maze of streets that lie between Regent Street and Soho Square – Brewer Street, Bridle Lane, Lexington Street, Poland Street and Berwick Street. I could not, however, find any house answering to the very vague impression I retained of it, though I went on and on until far into the night.
Fearing to return to Bolton Street, I took a bed at an obscure hotel in the Euston Road, and next morning went over to Camberwell, where Tibbie warmly welcomed me. I attributed the cut on my head to a fall on the kerb, and when we sat together I saw how thoroughly resigned she had become to her strange surroundings.
With womanly enthusiasm she told me of the kindness of the landlady, who would not allow her to mope there alone. She had taken her out to see her friends, wives of working-men like herself, and they had gossiped, had high tea and discussed the affairs of the neighbourhood.
“Tibbie,” I said, presently, after we had been chatting some time, “I am compelled to leave London, and I confess I am very apprehensive on your behalf.”
“Leave London!” she exclaimed. “Why?”
“It is imperative. Winsloe is watching me, and is doing all he can to discover you. Every time I come here I run a great risk.”
“I know,” she said, frowning. “His spies are no doubt dogging your footsteps everywhere.”
“Then your position here is unsafe. You would do better to escape from London now, and hide in the country – say in one of the larger towns in the north.”
“Yes; but the police are in search of me, remember. The mater and Jack have raised a hue and cry. They think I’ve met with foul play.”
“Then all the more reason why you should slip out of London. The country police are slower, and you will stand less chance of recognition.”
She sighed, exclaiming, —
“Ah, Wilfrid! It is cruel – cruel of them to hunt me down as they are now doing. Where shall I go? Where do you intend going?”
“Anywhere – out of London. What about Leeds? Neither of us know anyone there.”
She was silent a moment. Then said, “I am in your hands entirely, Wilfrid, and will go to Leeds if you think I can travel without being recognised.”
“If I anticipated any risk I would not allow you to undertake it,” I said. “We will go this evening by the 5:45 from King’s Cross – ‘Oswin’s train,’ as they call it, because he is the caterer for the dining-car.”
“Very well,” she answered. “As you wish. But before we go will you do me a favour? Go to the Daily Telegraph office and put in an advertisement for me.”
“An advertisement!” I exclaimed, in surprise.
“Yes,” she laughed, rather nervously. “I want to – I mean it is necessary that I should communicate with a friend.”
I said nothing, but stood watching her as she took out half a sheet of notepaper and commenced to print three lines of jumbled capitals and numerals – an advertisement apparently in the cipher which I had taken from the dead unknown.
Her action astounded me, but I managed to remain as though interested but ignorant.
“Why in this cipher?” I asked, when she handed it to me, requesting me to go to Fleet Street after our midday dinner.
“Because – well, because I don’t wish it to be read by other people. It is for the eye of one person only.”
I placed it in my pocket without further comment, and after we had eaten together I went out to do her bidding.
While seated in the tram-car in the Old Kent Road I took out the mystic message she had written, and with the key which I had fortunately carried away with me from Bolton Street I deciphered the words she had penned.
They read, —
“To Nello. – Will make appointment when safe for us to meet. Note that Eric is in Paris. I still trust you. – S.”
I sat staring at the paper like a man in a dream.
Was Tibbie, the woman I had promised to save and for whose sake I was sacrificing everything, reputation, honour, even my life, actually playing me false?
How did she know that Eric was in Paris? Was that really true?
And who was Nello to whom she sent that message of trust?