Ed McBaines 87th Precinct Mystery Magazine. Volume 1, No. 4. April, 1975

Pit of Despair by Arthur Porges

Doctor Waring should have been dead ten seconds after being pushed into the old mine shaft. He expected to die, and wondered why it was taking so long. He could even sense the gradual waning of the light as the blackness below drifted up to meet him.

Oddly, he didn’t think of screaming; instead he told himself calmly, as if speaking of somebody else: I’m done for; this is it.

It was the heavy rains of the last week that saved him. They caused a deep deposit of semi-liquid mud to form at the foot of the shaft; he struck it with a smack that drove all the breath from his body, but the soft mass received his rangy form without breaking a single bone. But he nearly strangled on the ooze before clawing several pounds from his face.

His first thought then was to yell; to call to Rankin for help. He tried it, but produced only a faint wheeze from his battered chest; obviously, his lungs and diaphragm were still briefly out of whack from the fall.

Waring sucked in half a dozen deep breaths, and the dead feeling in his middle diminished. But he didn’t yell, because his brain was working, too. He was now conscious again of the overwhelming fact: Rankin had pushed him. His own colleague, a fellow-surgeon, had tried to kill him. Led him, in fact, like a lamb to the butcher. It had been Rankin’s suggestion that along with a bit of hunting they explore the abandoned mine. He knew very well that Waring couldn’t resist a chance to check out some geology; a mine was a great place for examining strata and hunting fossils.

But why? Why? Why should Dr. Rankin want to kill him?

At that moment, death passed him by for a second time, and just barely. A heavy object hurtled past him, brushing one shoulder, and spanked into the muck at his feet. He could see a little now, even in the gloom, as his pupils expanded, and recognized the shape. It was his gun, a sporterized 30-’06, now stock-deep in the mud. Clearly, Rankin believing him dead or dying, had tossed the thing after him. It was to be a disappearance, or possibly an accident, and the killer didn’t want the gun up there in plain sight.

Well, Rankin was wrong; he wasn’t dead or even hurt. When he got out of this place there would be an accounting. Rankin would be damned surprised. He’d never dream his victim had survived the fall. Unable to see the bottom, he wouldn’t know about the mud. Even as it was, there were jagged fangs of rotten wood and rusty iron all around the soft patch. If Waring had hit one of them...

He looked up at the distant circle of light far above his head. The shaft was a hundred and fifty feet deep; that’s why they’d decided to bring the rope — the rope! Waring pawed around in the mud. He’d had the coil over one shoulder, and now the rope was vital. Ah! Here it was, right on the edge. The worse for Rankin; he should have carried it himself, to play safe.

Waring peered up at the opening again, and a sudden chill drove into his bones. What good was a rope to a man already on the bottom of a hole? He needed the thing up on top, with a husky friend to lower it, not down here.

Waring’s elation at his miraculous survival began to subside. Unless he could climb out of here, Rankin would still win the game. Quick death or slow, what was the difference? Either his body would not be found for years, if ever; or the murderer would pass the killing off as an accident. He could even claim they separated, one to go after deer, the other to explore the shaft; and that Rankin had no way of knowing what did happen to his colleague. It was all too easy; people respected a reputable doctor, and didn’t think of him as a criminal. Rankin could charm a deaf bird out of a tall tree; talk about a bedside manner. He was good, all right; how else did the man acquire a new Lincoln every year — and that estate in Bel Air — and the big cruiser berthed at Newport?

Waring stopped this line of thought; no time for such reflections. He had to get out of here before it got dark. There were difficulties enough in the light, such as it was.

He examined the walls of the shaft, using his cigarette lighter, but as sparingly as possible. What he saw was not encouraging. The sides were sheer rock, damp and slimy. Undoubtedly the miners had gone up and down in some kind of bucket, but there was no sign of whatever vertical rails it had run on; very likely they had been made of wood, and had long since rotted away. Here and there, at different heights, a few snags of wood or corroded metal could be seen, but as for any feasible way to the top, there just wasn’t one.

Waring felt his heartbeat quicken, and knew that panic was not far away. He mustn’t allow that; it was more deadly than the trap itself. With hands that shook, he lit a cigarette, and sat down, his back against the chill wall, to take stock.

What do I have to work with? he asked himself, beginning to search his pockets. He piled the contents on a fairly dry block of wood that rose above the mud. Coins, cigarettes, lighter, handkerchief, pen-knife, a dozen rifle shells; wallet, and in the largest pocket the gun-cleaning kit. And, of course, the coil of rope and the gun.

He studied the heap with growing dismay. There wasn’t a damned thing there of any use. What good was a wallet, for example? You couldn’t buy your way out of a spot like this. As he riffled through the contents, a pencil-stub fell out. He picked it up absently, then his eyes narrowed. At least he could fix Rankin — send him to the gas chamber. He’d leave a note, telling just how his colleague had planned the murder. That would do it — or would it? How about motive?

Waring knew he was frittering away valuable time with all this introspection, but couldn’t help himself. The air was none too good down here; full of carbon dioxide, probably; and he didn’t seem to have much energy. Yet the puzzle of why Rankin wanted him dead seemed more important than the trap itself.

A vagrant memory came to him then. That magnificent scene in “Monte Cristo” where the Abbe Faria explains, using facts from Dantes’ own lips, all the dark motives behind the boy’s burial in the Chateau d’If. Surely Waring could apply a similar technique.

There was only one clue, if it could be called that. Two weeks ago Waring had returned early from a week-end, made an unexpected stop at the office late at night, and found Rankin busy in one room of the suite. Quietly Waring had paused at the door, assuming his partner had been called down for some emergency, and opened it just a crack for a quick peek. He had glimpsed Rankin, surgical mask on his face, working over a sheeted figure on the operating table, and assisted by a nurse Waring didn’t recognize. Immediately he withdrew; it wasn’t tactful to intrude on a fellow surgeon at such a time; besides, Rankin might ask him to assist, and Waring was tired. But just before he closed the door, two things happened: the nurse saw him, and gasped; and the woman on the table cried out, “Dr. Waring, that hurts so bad...”

Thinking about it now, he wondered about his own blindness. By mentioning the matter to Rankin, he had confirmed the nurse’s testimony about his presence at so awkward a moment. His colleague had come up casually with a plausible explanation, and Waring had accepted it without suspicion. Now, after the murderous shove at the mouth of the shaft, he saw the facts in a new light. Clearly, Rankin had been performing an illegal operation — and not the first, to judge from the sequence of Lincolns and the other expensive toys the man owned. Even worse, he kept his face covered, working through a trusted confederate — the nurse — and called himself Waring. No wonder he had to get rid of his partner after being caught in the act. Hell, the man might even claim that Waring had run off to avoid prison; the women would all say they had been treated by him and not Rankin. The doctor boiled with fury at the thought.

Once more he pawed through the pile of stuff from his pockets. There had to be some way out of this trap. After all, he had enough rope to reach the top; he only had to get it there.

He searched the few dry spots beyond the pool of mud, and found a rusty iron bolt that weighed at least four ounces. He tied one end of the rope to it, and made a few tentative upward tosses. Much too light; by the time the bolt had lifted a few feet of the cord — slender though it was — all the velocity was lost.

He found another hunk of corroded metal, bound the two into one mass of half a pound or more, and tried again. But the rope tangled before the weight rose more than twenty feet. This wasn’t going to work.

Waring thought for a few minutes, and hoped he’d found the flaw. The rope had to be coiled in such a way that the rising weight of metal could lift it without causing any tangles. He invented several arrangements, and came up with one of alternate coils — a figure eight pile — that didn’t knot up. But when he took a mighty heave towards the shining circle far overhead, the results were ludicrously inadequate. It is one thing to throw a ball several hundred feet in an arc, but another one altogether to project it straight up from the bottom of a narrow shaft. Not even the best outfielder in both major leagues could have managed it; of that Waring was certain.

Filled with despair, the doctor sat down again. He looked at his watch. About three more hours of daylight. After that, only the cigarette lighter for illumination, and it wouldn’t last long. More sun tomorrow — if the promised storm didn’t move in, maybe drowning him down here like a rat — but also a day without food. A man needed all his strength to climb a rope one hundred and fifty feet high. No, it had to be now, in these three hours, or never. Of course, he could yell, now that Rankin was gone, but visitors to the old mine were bound to be scarce, especially at this time of year.

Gloomily, Waring pulled his rifle out of the mud, and used his handkerchief to clean the stock. The action, he noted, was still clean and bright with oil.

Suddenly he felt a surge of hope. The gun was power. Could that power be used to save him?

He thought of stuffing a foot of rope into the muzzle, and then winced at his own folly. Fill the barrel and fire a bullet; sure; blow up the gun and your own silly face. A billet was out. How the devil did they use rifles to launch grenades, and why didn’t those guns blow up? He racked his brain trying to remember. Korea, but that was a long way back, and he hadn’t been a combat soldier; a medico didn’t become an arms expert. Still, he’d always been curious and observant.

One idea came back. A hole in the middle of the grenade to let the bullet through; then the blast did the actual tossing. Or was that the old, obsolete method?

Waring groaned at his own fallible memory. Hell, he should be able to figure it out for himself, anyhow. You couldn’t fire a slug, not with anything in the barrel, but maybe in the last quarter inch... But he knew that wouldn’t work. No way to get enough weight from that small a bit of rope, or from anything else. You had to have something sticking well down the muzzle — those rifle grenades had a shaft several inches long; yes, they did; he remembered, now.

Then the solution came, like a flashbulb in the brain. A blank. A good, strong blank — that’s what it took. He snatched a shell from the wooden block where he had piled them, took the penknife, and got busy. It was easy to remove the soft-nosed bullet, and replace it with a small wad of paper — a torn credit card from his wallet.

But that was only part of the answer. What did you tie the rope to? He searched the ground again. A few rusty bolts, but much too thick for the muzzle. Surely he wasn’t going to fail now, with so much figured out.

Then his eyes fell on the little cleaning kit. Of course, The jointed brass rod: a perfect fit, naturally. He took out the sections, joining just the first two, to make a shaft seven inches long. He tied one end firmly to the rope, arranged the figure eight piles again, and chambered his blank.

Waring pressed the stock firmly against the wooden block, pointed the muzzle towards the mouth of the shaft, and with a silent prayer, fired.

The sound was ear-splitting in that confined space. He saw the bit of rod sail up perhaps thirty feet, pulling the cord with it, then the thing wobbled, hesitated, and fell back.

Waring swore grittily, biting the words off between his teeth with a viciousness that would have startled his patients. What the devil was wrong now? Time was getting short. He tried to make a calm analysis. First of all, the rod probably wasn’t heavy enough. To carry that much rope, a heavier weight was needed. All right; I’ll tie a couple of bolts to it, he thought. And maybe — just maybe — the blank wasn’t powerful enough, either. How should that be remedied?

Waring thought he knew. He opened two shells, and used a double charge of powder. Then with the new weight, he tried again. This time he almost made it; the rope soared gracefully to a point just below the mouth of the pit. Waring knew that victory was near.

Assuming the weight was about right, that meant more powder. This time he used three loads. The roar was incredibly loud, and he realized that even the marvelous 30-’06 action had its limit of strength, and would never fire again.

But then he saw with joy that it wouldn’t have to. The weighted rod had sailed far over the rim, and when he tugged at the foot of the rope, it slid down only a few yards before tightening. Somewhere, outside the mouth of the shaft, the mass of metal was safely snagged. All that was left now was the climb itself. And then the reckoning with Rankin. Waring began the long, tiring ascent. He topped the rim just as the sun sank.