Island Gold/Chapter 21
CHAPTER XXI
A LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS AND WHAT CAME OF IT
The slit extended for only a few feet. Then the roof sloped up again. Marjorie found herself in a narrow passage with the fresh breeze blowing on her face. In fact, the draught was so great that the candle went out directly, and she had to put on her shoes and grope her way forward in pitch darkness.
Her great fear was that the passage might lead to others, and that, before she knew it, she would be involved in a maze of subterranean galleries and, if the worst came to the worst, not even be able to rejoin me. She tried to maintain her direction by keeping always close to the right-hand wall and by counting her steps. But the gallery was so dark and it twisted so frequently that she soon lost count. At last she went blindly along, stopping at intervals to satisfy herself that she still felt the wind on her cheek.
She had halted irresolute and was thinking about turning back when, out of the darkness in front of her, a little glow appeared. At first a mere suggestion of light, it grew to a steady yellow radiance that lit up, though but dimly, the rocky roof of the corridor. The light itself appeared to be concealed by a bend in the gallery.
Marjorie remained perfectly still, her heart beating fast. Footsteps were approaching; then the murmur of voices reached her ear. Her first instinct was to turn tail and flee; but then the footsteps stopped and the light stood still.
“Four and twenty hours already are they away,” said a deep rumbling voice in German, “and not back yet! Der Stelze is too confident, Herr Leutnant...”
“Yet the doctor described exactly where he tied up the launch,” answered another voice, hard and metallic, with a more refined enunciation. “Do you know what I think, Schröder? This English nobleman and his orderly have seized the launch...”
“Aber nein, Herr Leutnant?”
“And gone off to fetch their yacht back. She only went to Alcedo, at least so the doctor told us...”
“Then the yacht may be back quite soon, Herr Leutnant?”
“Certainly! That's my conviction. And to think that Grundt had this cursed Engländer in his power and let him go!”
“Bah!” said Schröder, “he grows old, der Stelze! Here three days are gone and not a trace of the treasure. In a little while who knows?—these damned Engländer will be here and our chance of making our fortunes will be gone for ever.”
“You speak true, Schröder! If only I had any support, I would depose Grundt and take charge myself. But with these filthy Spanish monkeys...”
“Speak softly, Herr Leutnant...”
Intent as she was upon this conversation, Marjorie did not notice the light advancing until it was too late. Round the bend in the passage came a big, yellow-bearded German sailor swinging a ship's lantern, the blond young German officer, Ferdinand von Hagel, at his heels. In an instant they were on her and, gripping her by the wrists, dragged her down the gallery in the direction from which they had come. In silence they hustled her along for some hundred paces, then stopped at a bend.
“Wait here!” whispered the officer to Schröder, an evil smile on his face, “I go to reconnoitre. This will be a pleasant surprise for our comrades...”
He tiptoed away. Suddenly, from without, a harsh voice cried loudly:
“You idle rascals, the launch must be there!”
There was a confused murmur, and the voice spoke again:
“Then the English yacht may be back at any time now...”
Von Hagel appeared in the gallery.
“Bring her along!” he ordered softly, beckoning with his hand.
The harsh voice shouted:
“Well, we shall have to fight for it!”
“No, Herr Doktor!” said von Hagel at the mouth of the gallery. “No! There need be no fight!”
They had emerged into a rocky hollow, flooded with brilliant sunshine which almost blinded Marjorie coming from the dank, dark recesses of the cliff. An arm of vivid green tree hung across the opening of the passage, and beyond it there was a glimpse of gorgeous-hued bushes, over which the painted butterflies hovered, of bright blue sky, and, in the distance, sparkling green sea. And across the scene the keen sea-breezes romped, blowing the hair about the girl's eyes, a breath of life after the clammy atmosphere of the cave.
His back to a tree, a ragged blanket cast across his knees, the Man with the Club Foot lay. His face was pallid and his huge body shook with ague. Before him stood two uncouth figures, each with a rifle and blanket slung, poncho-fashion, across him, the centre of an excited, gesticulating group.
“Sir Garth,” the German lieutenant added, bringing Marjorie forward, “will surely listen to reason when he hears that his charming daughter is the guest of Herr Dr. Grundt! And, maybe, even the spy, Okewood, will come to terms...”
“So, so!”
Clubfoot's thick lips bared his yellow teeth in a grim smile.
“Das ist ja höchst interessant! Ja wohl!”
He raised his eyes to the girl, dark eyes that burnt with fever beetling from under the enormously bushy eyebrows, eyes that gleamed hard and menacing.
But now the crowd, which had fallen back at von Hagel's dramatic interruption, surged about him and Marjorie, shouting and gesticulating. The hollow rang with German and Spanish.
“Where is the Englishman?” they yelled. “Grundt, what of the treasure you promised us? The girl knows! Make the girl tell!...”
Grundt raised a great hand, and, for the moment, the hubbub was stilled.
“Old Clubfoot is not at the end of his resources. Kinder, we have a hostage, a hostage we mean to keep. Let the yacht return; as long as the gnädiges Fräulein is our guest, we shall have no trouble from the stupid Englishmen. And as for our clever young friend, Okewood ... Herr Leutnant?”
“Herr Doktor?”
“The Engländer was last seen in company with the girl. Take two men and search the gallery!”
Von Hagel coloured up at the brusqueness of Grundt's tone.
“Schröder here,” he said, without a shred of respect in his manner, “has explored the gallery. It leads to a small air-hole through which he believes the girl crawled. No man, he says, could possibly get through...”
“Then,” said Clubfoot, “the Engländer will be in one of the caves on the topmost terrace. Unless he has escaped?”
And he shot a quick glance at the officer.
“Impossible,” replied the other. “There is only the one practicable descent and it is guarded...”
Clubfoot nodded. Then he raised his hand.
“Go now!” he said, “and leave me with the girl!”
On that von Hagel bent down and spoke softly in his ear. He seemed to be urging something with great insistence. Suddenly one of the Spaniards—a short man with a fat grey face, covered with blue stubble, and little pig eyes—danced to the front of the group. He burst into a torrent of voluble Spanish, shaking his fist repeatedly at Clubfoot. The latter did not move a muscle, but looked at the speaker with contempt in every line of his face.
It was not until some of the Germans broke in that Marjorie could understand what the scene was about.
“We're sick of being fooled,” cried the big seaman they called Schröder. “The Kaiser's deposed, d'ye hear, and we're all equal! You've bungled things long enough, Grundt. You let the cursed English spy slip through your fingers with the hiding-place of the treasure in his head! You're past your work, Grundt! You've botched our business long enough!”
“Ganz recht!” ejaculated another German. “And poor Neque got a bullet in the guts for saying as much to you in the woods yesterday!”
This explained the single shot we had heard in the forest when we were on the rock.
“And the doctor murdered by this verdammt Engländer!” shouted a voice from the rear.
“Three days we've wasted here and not a sign of the treasure,” said von Hagel, looking round the group. “What have you to say to that, Grundt?”
Clubfoot, who had remained impassive under all this abuse, now staggered to his feet. No man lent a hand to help him. He stood and faced them, towering above them all. Ill though he was, his personality dominated every man in that place. A flame of colour mounted in his haggard face; two veins stood out like knots in his temples and his eyes blazed. His two hands, crossed on the crutch of his stick, shook.
“Are you a candidate for my succession, Herr Leutnant?”
He addressed himself to von Hagel alone, and his voice was calm and steady. But then his feelings seemed to overcome him, and with a roar he shouted:
“You insubordinate rascal! I can afford to let these curs yelp, but when the whipper-in joins them, it's time for the Master to use the lash!”
With that he raised his heavy stick and struck the other full across the face. With a scarlet weal barring his pink-and-white cheek, von Hagel sprang at his assailant, but a big automatic which Grundt had plucked from his pocket brought him up short.
“I used only one bullet on Neque,” Clubfoot warned him in a quiet, grim voice. “There's one left for you, Herr Leutnant, aye, and more to spare for other mutinous blackguards like you.”
Von Hagel stepped back, broken, cowed. And Clubfoot cried:
“While this puppy wastes our time, the man we want, the man who can lead us to the five hundred thousand dollars in gold, is skulking trapped in a cave, not a thousand yards away. Fools that you are, don't you understand that you have but to let him know that the English girl is in our hands and he will throw up the sponge? Otherwise...”
He paused deliberately and looked at Marjorie from under his heavy brows. The crowd shouted back at him in German the word on which he had rested.
“Sonst?”
“Otherwise he must know that I shall hand this delicate English lady to the tender mercies of any of our brave companions who has fallen a victim to her beauty—Black Pablo, for instance, or our handsome steward, Pizarro...”
At that the crowd roared approval. Black Pablo, his guitar slung across his back, a squat, toadlike creature, obese and disgusting, slouched over to the girl. He contrived to summon up from the depths of his single dull and fishlike eye an expression which made her shrink back in horror. Then, amid a burst of laughter, “handsome” Pizarro, the stunted mulatto cook, was pushed out of the press. He shambled towards Marjorie, his eyeballs flashing white in his yellow pockmarked face.
“Go, children!” cried Clubfoot. “Drag this spy from his hole and bring him to me. This time he shall speak, by God!—or we shall finish with it once and for all!”
Again he looked at Marjorie. The gold in his teeth flashed as he smiled with cruel malice. Then, as though overcome by the demand he had made upon his strength, he dropped back on his blankets once more.
The hollow was all astir as the men set out. They had camped at the foot of the terraced rock on the high ground overlooking the clearing with the grave, beyond it the broad sweep of Horseshoe Bay between the curved arms of land enclosing the lagoon.
“Take ropes!” counselled Clubfoot from his bed beneath the trees. “You may have to descend into the caves...”
The seaman, Schröder, brought out some lengths of rope and hurried after the string of men, who, in Indian file, streamed out of the hollow, talking and laughing like a pack of school-boys. Not a man remained behind. Even Pizarro, the coloured cook, went along. Black Pablo, the leader of the party, who was the last to go, wanted to leave a guard over Marjorie. But Clubfoot would not hear of it.
“Amigo mio,” he said, “El Cojo is not so old as that young jackanapes would make out. I cannot climb while this cursed fever is on me. But I can look after myself—and anybody else who does me the honour of spending this pleasant afternoon in my company...”
Black Pablo laughed stridently. They heard his feet ring sharply on the rocky ground. The next moment he was gone, and the peace of a summer afternoon descended upon the hollow, the soothing quiet of droning insects, of a little breeze stirring gently in the thick foliage, the distant drumming of the sea.
Clubfoot began to speak to Marjorie.