The Secret War

12

In the cistern

The water in the cellar was only rising very gradually but the rhythmic thud, thud, thud, of the electric pump sounded with inexorable regularity. There was no way, other than the trap door, out of that underground cistern and Lovelace knew that, as it filled, he might keep floating until his head was forced against the roof but then he must surely drown.

The negro began to mutter huskily again.

`Oh Lawd, Lawd! Oh Lawd Jesus heah ma prayer! I'se a po' sinner. I knows I done wrong. I knows it. But git me out o' this. Oh Lawd Jesus git me out o' heah ! '

With an impatient shove Lovelace thrust his fellow prisoner aside and stumbled up the steep ladder. In the pitch darkness he misjudged the height and hit his head a stunning crack against the trap door, slipped, slid, and fell into the knee deep water.

For a moment he lay there unconscious; his head resting on one of the slimy steps just above the waterline. When he raised it again he did not realise for a few seconds where he was and in that brief span of time a dozen scenes from his past life flashed through his disordered mind.

He saw again the green lawns of his house in England and the beauty of the well kept gardens as he had known them when a boy. Old Beetle, the butler, was welcoming him home, when he had returned after his father's death, and addressing him for the first time as Sir Anthony. He was the tenth Baronet; and his next of kin was a distant girl cousin whom he scarcely knew.

Fronds would be sold, under his present will, when he died. Suddenly he regretted intensely that he had never married and had a son.

As he moved his head a stabbing pain shot through t and he thought himself back in India, just coming round after a murderous struggle he had had years before with a dacoit. Other memories of his travels flickered before his mental eyes. The poor little Chinese girl who had had both her legs mown off at the knees when he was doing relief work behind the lines in Manchukuo. The human., devil who was selling water by its weight in silver to the refugees dying of thirst in a Bolivian forest when he had turned up there with his ambulance. The drunken crowd of white clad savages who had yelled their heads off with excitement when Haile Salassie was crowned Emperor of Abyssinia in 1930.

Abyssinia! Something clicked in his brain and the reason far his present desperate plight flooded back to him. The fanatical Christopher's association with the Millers of God and their abortive attempt to assassinate Paxito Zirrif in Athens. The Millers were madmen or were they all terribly sane Anyhow, it was murder and he would never have lent them his help unless yes, unless Valerie Lorne had overcome his better judgment and she was Christopher's fiancé,

Now they were in Egypt; the other two half a dozen miles away in Alexandria without the least idea where he was, and he himself at Zarrif’s lonely villa on the fringe of the desert; caught out, captured, and flung down into this underground cistern to die.

At the thought he staggered to his feet, dashed up the steps again; and began to batter on the underside of the trap with his clenched fists. Yet, even as he bruised his knuckles an the unyielding wood until they bled, he realised the childish futility of his effort. It was impossible to break out and, even if he could, Zarrif’s gunmen would promptly throw him back again,

He rested for a moment, panting slightly. Below him the negro's supplications had risen to a more exalted note. `Oh, Lawd, Lawd ... I ain't nobody ... I ain't don' nothin' . . . Oh, Lawd Jesus git me out o' heah git me out o' heah.'

In spite of the heavy darkness which wrapped them round like a black velvet cloak, Lovelace could picture the unfortunate Mr. Jeremiah Green. The smart white linen lounge suite, which had doubtless been the envy and admiration of his Baptist Brotherhood in Gainesville, Fla., now soiled and sodden from his having been flung, head foremost, down into the rat infested water.

Suddenly the white man was filled with a monstrous impatience at the black's sniveling prayers and ordered him to be silent.

Green's voice came again, whimpering now, `Oh, Mister. I ain't harmed nobody an' I wouldn't be heah if yo' hadn't .said yo' was me. Let me pray, Boss let me pray. Dere ain't no hope for us 'cept in de Lawd!'

Instantly Lovelace was smitten with a terrible feeling of guilt and pity. It was true enough. He had said he was Jeremiah Green in order to get into Zarrif’s house. Then, when the rightful owner of the name had turned up so unexpectedly, he had accused the poor wretch of being an impostor. Worse, he had even suggested that the black might be a Miller about to make an attempt on Zarrif’s life. Only to confuse the issue and gain time in which to think, of course, and never imagining for one moment that Zirrif, unable to make certain which of them was the enemy within his gates, might decide to do away with them both.

`All right,' he said. `I'm sorry terribly sorry. Pray if it helps. I only wish I could.'

As he spoke he came down the steps. He felt he could not possibly stay still waiting for death to creep up to him with the rising waters. Instead he splashed through them to make a more thorough examination of their prison.

The darkness was a heavy handicap. His own matches lad been taken when Zirrif 's men had searched his pockets and if Jeremiah Green had any on him they must have been soaked and rendered useless.

For nearly half an hour he searched feverishly among he slimy stone pillars; hoping to find some contraption by which the water was drawn up from the cistern to he rooms above and which might be utilized as a way exit. By the time he had satisfied himself there was nothing of the kind, and that it must be pulled up through the trap door in a bucket to be filtered in the kitchen, the water had risen to his thighs.

Jeremiah's prayers now alternated with psalms. He chanted them in a deep, musical voice which quavered row and then as his faith was nearly overcome by terror.

Lovelace wished fervently that he would stop. That endless monologue made it almost impossible to think; and think he must unless he was prepared to die.

Suddenly it occurred to him that if he could locate he spot where the water was being pumped into the cellar they might be able to stop its rising by plugging he inlet with their clothes. With renewed hope he began another tour of the walls fumbling hastily about below the water line. At last he found the place but, instead of it being a small round hole, as he had hoped, it was a four foot long iron grating through which the flood was filtering at a steady pressure. The space was to big to stop up, even if they had been able to get up the grating, so he had to abandon the idea. When he returned to the steps the water was eddying round its waist.

`I won't drown,' he told himself fiercely. `I can't. I’m not even middle aged yet. I've got years of life to look forward to. I won't choke my life out like a rat in a trap.' Yet, even as he fought to reassure himself, he knew that he would, unless he could think of some way to save himself.

Jeremiah was babbling away quite incoherently. His

muttering was the only sound perceptible in the chill, dank darkness, and as Lovelace listened involuntarily to his ravings he realised that the negro was making his supplication in Bambara or something like it : anyhow a dialect used on the west coast of Africa. Evidently he had deserted the Christian God for Voodoo incantations in the tongue handed down to him by his forebears at a few generations back when they had been shipped as naked slaves to the American plantations.

Lovelace wiped the sweat out of his eyes and went up the steps once more, With his finger tips he made a minute examination of the trap. It was evidently bolted on the upper side since it would not shift a fraction to the utmost pressure of his shoulder. The hinges too were on the upper side, although, even if they had been on the lower, he had no means of unscrewing them. The trap consisted of three solid planks and between them he could just make out faint ribbons of light by applying his eye to the cracks.

Cursing the Negro into silence he held his ear to the wider of the two apertures and listened intently. The murmur of muffled voices came faintly from above. By their tone, more than any actual words which he could catch, he judged them to be those of the Egyptian servants rather than Zarrif’s gunmen.

After a little he abandoned the attempt to hear what was happening in the room above and sat, his head buried in his hands, crouched on the top step of the ladder, his brain whirling wildly.

He tried to think sanely but he couldn't. The unceasing pulsation of the electric pump and the knowledge that with every throb it gave the water below him was creeping upward seemed to blunt his wits and shatter every attempt at concentration.

An hour had passed, or perhaps an hour and a quarter, since they had been flung into the cellar, when he raised himself and again listened at the crack in the planks above, He could hear no voices this time but,

Between the beats of the pump, a steady droning sound after a moment it began to fade but before it ceased entirely he had recognised it as the distant roar of an aeroplane engine.

It must be Zarrif’s plane; no other was likely to be n the neighborhood. That meant he had left the villa then. The blood began to pulse through Lovelace's veins at greater speed. A fierce new hope suddenly animated him to fresh action. If Zirrif had gone, his gunmen would have gone with him. Only the servants would remain and perhaps they, would prove merciful or bribable. He began to shout loudly for help and beat its fists upon the trap once more.

Soon he heard voices overhead. Those of the Egyptian servants undoubtedly. If he could hear them they must be able to hear him. He redoubled the strength of his cries before pausing to listen. To his unutterable dismay he distinctly heard them laughing. Of course! they were Zarrif’s men, highly paid, keepers of his secrets for fear of their lives, and utterly dependable. They would have had their orders to wait until the cistern was full, remove the drowned bodies, carry them down to the river and throw them in under the cover of night. Very probably they had been privy to other such slayings and regarded their part in this only as a matter of routine.

Lovelace sank down again and rocked from side to side; a prey now to the fearful imaginings about the coming moments of his death and compelled at last to .acknowledge the utter hopelessness of his situation.

Jeremiah had crept close up beside him and now burst into renewed supplications : `Oh Lawd, who did deliver Daniel from de lions' den ! Who did lead Moses by de hand when he were in de Wilderness hearken to ma prayer.'

Almost instinctively Lovelace found himself praying too. `Please God let me get out. Help me. Help me think of something. Or if I've got to die give me the strength to die courageously.'

He tried to pull himself together and stretched down his leg to test the height of the water with the toe of his shoe. It had risen a lot since he was standing in it and he judged its depth now to be about five feet.

There was nothing to be done. Nothing but wait in the grim darkness and fight to keep control of his nerves up to the last horrible moment.

Dully he wondered where Christopher and Valerie were. It must be eight o'clock or later. They were probably dining quietly at their hotel in Alexandria. Perhaps they were even speculating when they would hear from him, but they would not be worried. He had told them that it might prove difficult for him to keep in touch with them while he was with Zirrif but that he would get a message through somehow. The arrangement was that they should remain in Alexandria for another three days unless they received instructions from him to the contrary. They would go to bed confidently expecting to hear from him tomorrow or the day after; but by the time they were asleep tonight he would be dead.

Jeremiah had fallen silent at last and, as Lovelace realised it, he remembered what a missionary had once told him of the African negro's fundamental attitude towards God. 'It seems strange,' he had said, `that they should worship sticks and stones since they all believe in the Great Creator; but this is what they tell you, “God made the forests and rivers. We pray to them because when God had finished his work he went away and left us. How could anyone expect the Great God, who has other worlds to make and the Sun and the Stars and the Moon to care for, to remain here, just to listen to the prayers of insignificant people like ourselves?” '

At the time Lovelace had felt how well that had explained the patient humility of the negro races and that many white people might be better for considering their little personal woes less important in the sight of Almighty God.

Now, he understood Jeremiah's silence. The Negro’s thin veneer of Christianity had fallen from him and he had even abandoned as useless the deeper rooted Bambara incantations to the old familiar spirits of his tribe. He had reverted to that philosophic belief basic in his people and crouched there silent, like a trapped animal, waiting for the end,

Lovelace envied him his new found calm. His own more agile brain was still racked with regrets over the things that he must lose by death. Valerie came again and again into his mind. She was Christopher's of course, had been apparently from childhood up: still, that did not matter now and the image of her gave him more satisfaction than that of any human being he had ever dwelt upon. He wished desperately that she had not made such a mystery of their first ever meeting. He was more certain than ever that he had met her somewhere years ago and he would have liked to have known where before he went out.

The water crept over their feet and up to their ankles as they perched huddled together on the upper steps of the ladder with their heads pressed against the trapdoor. A rat scuttled past below them yet they hardly noticed it. Both were sunk in a heavy torpor; only the steady rhythmic beat of the engine now penetrated to their dulled senses.

Suddenly the crack of a pistol sounded in the house above. It was followed by another and another, dull but distinct, then came a muffled cry of pain.

They both roused instantly. Lovelace began to batter upon the trap door again and to yell for help with all the strength of his lungs.

He heard shouting, another fusillade of shots, trampling feet, a scream as somebody was hit; but he never ceased his frantic cries for help and violent pounding on the wooden trap.

Next moment it was drawn up. Gasping for breath he staggered out and turned to pull up the half fainting Jeremiah.

After the darkness of the cellar he was temporarily blinded by the light but, in a moment, he saw that Valerie was helping him with the black and that Christopher stood behind her, his pale face tense, his black eyes gleaming as he clutched a smoking automatic in each of his hands, covering their escape.