Читать книгу The Men Who Wrought - Cullum Ridgwell - Страница 15

He had known the mill all his life; at least he believed he had. He had gazed upon that awesome black ruin, keeping watch and ward over the wicked little cove below it, like some sentinel on guard over a dangerous criminal, with wide, childish eyes, and a mind full of terrified speculation. He had known it later, when, with boyish bravado, he had flouted the horrific stories of a superstitious countryside, and explored its barren, ruined recesses. He had known it still later, when, with manhood's eyes opening to a dim appreciation of all those things which have gone before in the great effort of life, he had seen in it a picturesque example of the endless struggle which has gone on since the dawn of life.

So he thought he knew it all.

Now the limitations of his knowledge were forcing themselves upon him. Now he was realizing that there were secrets by the score in those every-day things which a lifetime of contact may never reveal. The strangeness of it all set him marvelling. The limitations of human understanding seemed extraordinarily narrow.

He gazed down into the gaping cavity beneath his feet, and, by the dim rays of a lighted lantern, counted the worn stone steps until the darkness below swallowed up their outline.

Ruxton Farlow straightened himself up and glanced about him at the bare stone walls, from the joints of which the cement had long since fallen. He looked up at the worm-eaten, oaken rafters which had stood the wear of centuries. The flooring which they supported had long since fallen into decay, and he only wondered how much longer those sturdy oaken beams would continue to support the colossal weight of the millstones now resting from their grinding labors.

Through the rents which time and weather had wrought he saw the warm glow of daylight above, for all was ruin in the great old mill, ruin within and without. As it was with the walls of stone, and the great tower of woodwork above them, so it was with the outbuildings beyond the doorway, within which he stood. The walls remained, heavily buttressed by the hardy hands of a race of men who had understood so well the necessity for fortifying their homes against all eventualities, but the timbers of the roofs had long since fallen victims to the inclemencies of the seasons and the ruthless "North-easters" which, probably, since the time when the iron shores of Britain first emerged from beneath the waters, had beaten their relentless wings against the barrier which held up their freedom.

Ruxton set his lantern on the ground and moved away to the wide doorway, which no longer possessed the remotest sign of the old wooden doors which had probably been at one time heavy enough to resist a siege. Here he drew a letter from his pocket and read it carefully over by the light of the sunset.

"Dear Mr. Farlow:

"I never knew your wonderful coast could be so interesting, even absorbing. I feel I owe you personal thanks for a delightful time, simply because you live—where you live. I have discovered a most wonderful spot. I say discovered, but probably you have known it from the days when you were first able to toddle about by yourself. However, I must tell you of it. It is an old, old, ruined mill, regarded by the folks on your coast as an evil place which is haunted by the spirits of the smugglers who once upon a time used it as the headquarters for their nefarious trade. But the incredible part of it is we unearthed a secret in it which has remained hidden for generations, possibly centuries. Now listen carefully and I will tell you of this secret. In the middle of the stone chamber under the mill there is the entrance to a passage which communicates with that villainous cove over which the evil eye of the old mill forever gazes. Six inches beneath the surface of the debris on the floor there is a slate slab, and, on raising this, you will discover a stone staircase which goes down, down,—follow it, and you shall see what you shall see. I have since discovered that this is the only means of reaching the beach of the cove—unless you possess wings. But I began this note with the intention of only telling you how much I am looking forward to seeing you again on Thursday evening at eight o'clock. I do hope you are taking full advantage of your vacation from parliamentary work, and are storing up plenty of good health upon your wonderful, wonderful moors.

"Yours very sincerely,

"Vita Vladimir."

Ruxton refolded the letter and put it away. He understood it was the final summons to that great adventure which was to tell him of the threat overshadowing his beloved country.

He had obeyed it readily, eagerly, and now that the reality of the whole thing was developing he paused to consider the motives urging him.

He was going to witness things first hand. He was glad. His understanding of duty assured him that it was the only means by which he could hope to convince others, when the time came. But was this his sole motive? Was this the motive which had inspired that feeling of exaltation when he first read the perfumed note, so carefully written lest it should fall into wrong hands? He knew it was not.

His eyes were raised to the glistening sea away beyond the cove. He was gazing straight out through the narrow opening of the cove where the precipitous cliffs rose sheer out of the blue waters and marked the entrance which the country-folk sensationally loved to call "Hell's Gate." His mind was searching and probing the feelings which inspired him, and he knew that the beckoning hand of the woman was exercising a greater power than any sense of duty. He did not blind himself. He had no desire to. Those dark Slavonic eyes of his were wide and bright, and the half smile of them was full of an eager warmth. The idealist mind behind them was widely open to its own imagery. He saw through those Hell's Gates the perfect, palpitating figure which had poured out its burden of soul to him on the edge of those very cliffs; and she was—beckoning.

The youth of him had been engulfed in the soul of the woman. Nor, as yet, did he realize the extent of the power she was exercising. All he knew was that he had neither the power nor desire to resist the summons, and herein lay the distinguishing mark of those whom Destiny claims.

After a few moments he glanced at his watch. And at once the alertness of the man was displayed. It was twenty minutes to eight, and shortly after eight it would be low tide. The appointment had been made with regard to that, and that while he approached from the land, she would come by water. Therefore he must not delay.

Dismissing every other consideration he turned back to the mysterious stairway he had unearthed and began its descent, aided by the light of the lantern he had discovered secreted upon the top step, ready for his use.

His progress was rapid and easy. The vaulted, declining passage beneath the mill was high and wide, and constructed of masonry calculated to withstand the erosion of ages. It was moist and slimy, and the steps were at times slippery, but these things were no deterrents.

The stairway, however, seemed endless in the dim lantern light, and by the time he had completed the journey he had counted upwards of one hundred steps. At the bottom he paused and looked back up the way he had come, but, in the blackness of the tunnel, his light revealed little more than the first few steps.

Without further pause he turned to ascertain the nature of the place upon which the stairway had debouched. It was a wide and lofty cavern of Nature's fashioning, except that the walls and the natural obstructions of the flooring had been rendered smooth and clear by the hand of man. It was easy to estimate the purposes of this subterranean abode. There was less imagination in the legends of the old mill than he had supposed. If the books of his childish reading had any foundation in their local color this was certainly the den of some old-time smugglers.

He passed rapidly along the declining passage, and the end of it came as he expected to find it. It was a cave which opened in the face of the cliff overlooking the cove, but so ingeniously hidden by Nature that its presence could never have been even guessed at by any chance visit from the sea.

He stood at the opening and gazed out upon the already twilit cove. But he could not see the sea from where he stood; only along the face of the cliff to his right, down which, zigzagging and winding, a sort of rough-hewn stairway communicated with the beach below. In front of him a great projection of rock, as though riven from the main cliff at some far-off time by the colossal forces of Nature, hid the entire entrance of the cavern. And so narrow was the space intervening that he could touch it with an outstretching of his arm. It was a remarkable hiding-place. Nor did he marvel that he had never heard of it before. But the rapidly deepening twilight of the cove warned him of the approach of the hour of his appointment. So he blew out his lantern and began the descent to the beach nearly fifty feet below.

Within five minutes he was standing in the centre of a patch of golden sand with the still ebbing water of the cove lapping gently at his feet.

A curious change had come over him. All interest inspired by the journey through the cavern was entirely gone. Even, for the time, he had no longer any thought of the purpose for which he was there. His mind was absorbed in the curious weird of the place, and the dreadful feeling of overwhelming might bearing in and down upon him.

The appalling grey barrenness, the height of the frowning ramparts which surrounded him on all sides, except the narrow opening to the sea. The absolute inaccessibility of those frowning walls, and the melancholy scream of the thousands of gulls which haunted the place. It was tremendous. It was terrible. But added to all these things was a discovery which he made almost upon the instant. With the instinct of personal security his eyes sought the high-water mark upon the beach. There was none. It was high up on the cliff sides at no point less that ten feet above the highest point of the beach. Herein lay the terror of the cove which lived in the minds of the dwellers upon the moors. Here was its real terror. A rising tide, and the secret of the smuggler's cavern undiscovered, and—death! He smiled as he thought of the name given to the entrance to the cove. Hell's Gate! It was surely——

"Ahoy!"

The cry echoed about the grey walls in haunting fashion. Ruxton was startled out of his reverie. In a moment his repulsion at what he beheld was forgotten. He remembered only his purpose, and his searching eyes gazed out over the water.

"Ahoy!" he replied, when the last echo of the summons had died out.

He could see no boat. He could discover no human being. And—it was a man's voice that had hailed him.

For some moments a profound silence prevailed. Even the gulls ceased their mournful cries at the intrusion of a human voice upon their solitude.

Ruxton searched in every direction. Was this another surprise of this extraordinarily mysterious place? Was this——? Quite suddenly his gaze became riveted upon a spit of low, weed-covered rock, stretching out into the calm water like a breakwater. There was a sound of clambering feet, and as his acute hearing caught it, a sort of instinct thrust his hand into his coat pocket where an automatic pistol lay. Then he laughed at himself and withdrew his hand sharply. The figure of a man scrambled up on to the breakwater.

They stood eyeing each other for several thoughtful moments. Then without attempting to draw nearer the stranger called to him.

"Mr. Farlow, sir. This way, if you please."

Without hesitation Ruxton crossed over to him and scrambled on to the rocks.

"You are from——?" he demanded.

The question was put sharply, but without suspicion.

"The lady's waiting for you out there," replied the man simply. "We haven't much time, sir. You can't come in here on a rising tide, and you can't get out of it either. It's hell's own place for small craft, or any craft for that matter on a rising tide." He threw an anxious glance at the water.

Ruxton was gazing down at the little boat lying the other side of the natural breakwater. It was a petrol launch of some kind, but small and light as a cockle-shell. There was another man in the stern, and he observed that both he and the man beside him were in some sort of uniform.

"I didn't see you come in," he went on curiously.

"We've been lying here half an hour, sir. Our orders were to wait till just before the tide turned. We've got about half an hour, sir," the man added significantly.

"Where's the vessel?" enquired Ruxton.

"Just outside, sir."

"I didn't see her."

"She's lying submerged."

"And Miss Vladimir is—aboard?"

"The lady is, sir," replied the man, with a shadow of a smile in his deep-set blue eyes.

The stranger stood aside, a direct invitation to Ruxton to climb down into the boat. But the latter made no move to do so.

Then the man pushed his peaked cap back from his forehead and displayed a shock of sandy grey hair which matched his closely trimmed whiskers.

"You'll excuse me, sir," he said, a trifle urgently, "but we've got to get out smart. Once the tide turns it races in here like an avalanche. We'll never make Hell's Gates if we aren't smart, and we don't want to get caught up in Hell itself."

The man's urgency had the desired effect. Ruxton stooped down and lowered himself into the bow of the boat.

"That's right, sir, it'll trim the boat," the man approved, as he dropped lightly in amidships. In a moment the clutch was let in and the little craft backed out of its narrow harbor.

It was a moment of crisis. Ruxton Farlow had practically committed himself to the power of these strangers. Not quite though. For he had taken the bow seat, and his loaded automatic was in his pocket still. However, the position was not without considerable risk. He had expected to meet Vita. Instead he had been met by two men in uniform. They were both in middle life, and burly specimens of the seafaring profession.

He had calculated the chances carefully before taking his final decision. Moreover he had closely appraised the men in charge of the boat. They were British. Of that he was certain. Nor were they men without education. On the whole he did not see that the balance lay very much in their favor if any treachery were contemplated.

"You are British," he said to the man in front of him, as the boat swung round head on to the gates of the cove and began to gather speed.

"Yes, sir. Served my time in the Navy—and had a billet elsewhere ever since."

"Since the war?"

"No, sir. Before the war."

"Where?"

The man faced round with a smile, while his comrade drove the little boat at a headlong pace through the racing waters.

"Where a good many of our Navy's cast-offs go, sir. In Germany."