The Hand of Peril/Part 5/Chapter 7
VII
Kestner still waited. But he moved a little, to relieve the ache in his knees. As before, he did so with the utmost care and deliberation, straightening his legs almost imperceptibly, inch by studious inch, moving his stockinged feet out experimentally, tentatively, interrogatively, so there might be no betraying creak of the knee-joint. His shoes he had long since removed. And in the heavy planking under him, luckily, there was little chance of a floor squeak.
He moved slowly and softly, yet it was laborious enough to bring a sweat to his straining body. Then he sat tailor-wise, leaning slightly forward, listening again.
Out of the infinite stillness a small trouble had insinuated itself on his consciousness. At first he thought it was the sound of his own laboured inhalations. Then he attributed it to the blood-pressure in his head. Yet the next second he was leaning further forward and listening more intently.
On his over-sensitized aural nerves that small trouble still impressed itself. He could neither explain nor define it. Then a running and ramifying thrill of apprehension swept through his stiffened body. He rolled slowly and cautiously over on one hip, and as slowly lowered his torso until the side of his head was flat against the planking on which he had been sitting. He lay there for a second or two, with his ear pressed flat against the heavy boards. Then he raised his head, listened, and snaked his body slowly forward, stopping again to press an ear against the planking before continuing that silent and erratic advance.
He was nosing about one particular plank, by this time, like a French hound in quest of its underground truffles, moving back and forth and listening and again and again quietly cupping his ear against the rough wood.
He could now hear the sound quite distinctly, a continuous muffled rasp, as faint as the slide of a blacksnake over dead leaves. He kept passing the tips of his fingers delicately along the surface of the plank over which he leaned, questioningly, as though the oak were inscribed with the raised lettering of an alphabet for the blind and he were intent on spelling out some answer to the enigma.
He was rewarded by the sudden small sounds of splintering wood, no louder than the crack of a strained match-stalk. Moving forward a few inches, he again fell to fingering the floor-surface. For the second time an involuntary thrill sped through his body. His hand had fallen on the revolving sharp steel-point of an auger boring up through the wharf-floor.
He knew then, in a flash, that his plans had gone astray, that Whitey McKensic and his men had in some manner evaded Romano, that they were there with their boat, and that in less than half an hour's time they would have a passage-way cut up through the floor-planking and would be in touch with Lambert.
Kestner thought quickly. He was not afraid of those newcomers. He could, in a way, handle them one by one as they came up through the floor. But that could not be done silently. That would betray his position. It would give an advantage to his enemy. And Kestner's one fear now was that Lambert might get away, that something might intervene between him and the fugitive and his capture. And it was too late to waste energy on interlopers, and too late to be sidetracked from his one end in life.
Kestner's first move was as odd as it was prompt. He drew out his revolver, feeling with his left hand along the plank-face for that ever-turning point of steel. When he had found it he caught his fire-arm by the barrel and the grip, holding it horizontally and pressing heavily down on the point where the auger was emerging from the pierced wood. He held the hardened metal of the stock firmly against the cutting edge of that revolving auger, knowing that a few turns would blunt the edge beyond repair. But he made sure of his job; he wanted that bit so that it could never again eat its way through four inches of oak.
Then he sat back, trying to place his position in the wharf-shed. He guardedly felt the seams of the floor, reviewed each movement he had made during his last advance, and concluded he had progressed some twenty or thirty feet towards the water-front end of the pier. At the other end, he knew, stood the small office-room with the telephone. And Kestner felt that his best chance lay in getting to that telephone and calling for help.
But it would have to be a soundless journey, and a laborious one. It would have its dangers, yet they would have to be faced. There was a grave mis-step to be corrected. And the sooner that call went out, Kestner knew, the safer he would be.
He started on his journey, patiently, laboriously, grimly. He kept reminding himself that above all things no sound must be made. He knew that at any moment he might come into sudden collision with the watching and waiting Lambert. He could not forget that any unexpected contact with a bale of merchandise or a pine box end or an unconsidered scrap of paper or twig of wood might betray his presence. A mere bone-creak might spoil his plan. A garment rustle might announce his whereabouts.
Kestner went forward, inch by inch, in the strained attitude of a runner awaiting the starter's pistol-crack.
His feet had become tentacles, groping and questioning for noiseless contact. His outstretched fingers were converted into vibrating antennæ, poised and extended for the transmission of the slightest message of warning. He moved slowly through the engulfing blackness, seeming to push it aside as though it were something material and muffling. A snowflake fell no more softly than did those stockinged feet. Each foot-fall seemed an experiment of vital importance, each forward shift of the body became an adventure fraught with the direst peril. Yet he continued to advance, step by caressing step, veering his course about an occasional obstacle, sounding for his channel, shying away from each danger-spot as a careful pilot shies away from a shoal-buoy.
When he came to the empty piano-crate he felt like a swimmer who had reached an island of deliverance. That gave him something on which to base a new reckoning of his position. It brought him assurance, as the voice of an old friend might, and permitted him to breathe more freely. So far all had been well. And every foot that he covered meant a further guarantee of safety.
He began his journey again, astonished by the apparent length of the pier, wondering how wrong he might also be in his reckoning of time, arguing with himself that an hour or two of mental agony might easily prolong itself into what seemed a whole night. He had heard of such cases.
Perhaps, after all, it was little past midnight, and in his torturing anxiety he had translated minutes into hours, just as during that stealthy advance towards the pier-end he had accepted his travels as something which should have carried him into mid-ocean, as something which seemed to have no beginning and no end. But he kept on, doggedly, determinedly, unceasingly.
He kept on until his extended fingers came in contact with the sheet-iron covering of a side-wall. He felt noiselessly along this wall until he had groped his way to what seemed the door he wanted. Then came the hardest part of his night's work. For that door was locked, he found, as he let his fingers caress the huge knob and turn it with incalculable slowness so that no click of the latch might betray his movements. And to open it meant much delicate work with the "spider" and the five "skeletons" which he always carried, the same as he carried his watch and his cigar-case.
That new task would have to be noiseless, and to render it so meant much nursing of naked metal, uncounted cautious movements of the fingers, slow and tentative pryings and turnings of delicately insinuated steel flanges, careful withdrawals and stowing away of unneeded metallic objects which must never be allowed to clink together.
But he conquered the lock, in time. Then, with equally studious precaution, he slowly slipped inside and closed the door after him. Then the explorations began anew.
He found himself in a small fire-proofed chamber, as bald as a tomb and quite as dark. He could even touch the metal roof, and set in its centre found one electric-light bulb. But this he could not use, much as he wanted to. For the emptiness of that little iron-clad room was a puzzle to him. Then he realised that it must have been equipped as a strong box, a treasure vault, for holding valuables in transit.
But he had little time to give it thought. His task was still to reach the telephone. He remembered that he had lost time, when time might be precious. He stood studying the matter out. Then he concluded the pier-office must be somewhere close beside this treasure-room. So he emerged again into the more open space of the high-arched pier-shed, listening and staring through the blackness to make sure the light was not coming to put an end to all his plan.
But the velvety blackness was still unbroken, and again he had to exercise the greatest care as he groped on along the wall, feeling and padding about for the office door.
He came to that door, at last, and let a finger light as thistle-down caress and explore the knob. Then he permitted his entire hand slowly to encompass it, slowly turn it, and with steady but guarded pressure determine whether or not it was locked.
To his joy he found it was not.
He swung the door inward, inch by inch. He was breathing only with the upper area of his lungs as he waited, to make sure there would be no squeak. or whine of rusty hinges. It was with equal precaution and slowness that he closed the door again. Then he felt his way inward, circling about until he came to the edge of the desk, and exploring it with questioning fingers.
He found the cloth-covered telephone wires and traced them up to the transmitter stand. With the most scrupulous care he took up that transmitter and lifted it to the floor. Then he silenced the call-bell with his pocket handkerchief, tying it about the clapper to make all sound impossible. Then he stood in thought, for a moment or two, before groping his way back to the office wall. There his busy fingers again took up their exploration work, as he circled the room and stopped meditatively when he came to an overcoat hanging on a hook beside a paper-littered cabinet-top. It was a heavy overcoat, apparently of pilot-cloth, and it was lined with rabbit-skin sadly worn at the edges, and rent in the seams.
Kestner possessed himself of that overcoat. Then he lowered himself to the floor, sinking first on one knee and then on the other, slowly, so there should be no shadow of a concussion-sound or bone-creak. Then he leaned forward, with his finger-tips on the floor-boards, letting his body descend inch by inch until his face was close to the wharf-planks and his outstretched hands were within touch of the transmitter-stand.
He first lifted this stand until it was directly in front of him, close to his face. Then he slowly drew the heavy pilot-cloth coat up over his body until it covered both the transmitter and his head. He draped it cautiously about him, as a camera-man covers his instrument, making sure no vent was left. Then he slowly lifted the receiver from its hook, placed it to his ear, and with his lips almost touching the diaphragm of the transmitter whispered his number to Central. From that little tented corner of blackness he was able to call for Wilsnach and help. For Central had heard and given him his connection.
"Wilsnach!" he whispered into the tiny cave of metal against his lip.
There came a faltering and somewhat puzzled "Hello?" in response to his whisper.
"Wilsnach, do you hear me?"
"Hello!" repeated the answering voice.
"Don't you hear me?"
"No! Speak up!"
"This is Kestner," continued the whisper from under the muffling pilot-cloth coat. At last the man at the far end of the line appeared to comprehend the situation.
"Kestner, is it you? Yes—yes—go on!"
"I want help, and I want it quick!"
As never before there flashed home to the whispering man the miracle of the telephone, the renewed mystery of a human voice being projected along its tenuous nervous system of countless wires. He suddenly reawakened to the magic of thus bringing a far-distant voice winging along its rivulet of metal, of guarding and conserving and directing that voice through all the beleaguering uproars of a great city and leading it safely home to his own waiting ear.
"Where are you?"
"On the Saltus Pier in South Brooklyn. I can't talk. I'm shut in here with Lambert. His friends are cutting their way into the other end of the pier."
"I understand."
"Get here quick!"
That was all Kestner needed to say. The ever dependable Wilsnach, he knew, would be away from that telephone before the musty-smelling pilot-cloth coat could be thrown aside from his own head.