Hours passed — hour after hour of fast, painful driving with no more day-long stops. Shaw had no idea how long they had been on the road when a remark from the Negro sitting by the coffin told him they were nearing journey’s end. As the man spoke they began a longish climb, at the end of which they went into a fast descent presumably down the other side of a range of hills. After this they ran for some time on the level then went into another and steeper climb up a rough track. Then came a slow, lurching motion as though they were going across country, but after bouncing along like this for a while the way quite suddenly became smooth. Thereafter they crunched slowly over loose grit; after taking a bend the tyres, for a short part of the way, caused a curious hollow booming sound as if they were passing over a covered pit. Farther on they rounded one more bend, drove on for a while, and then stopped.
The engine died.
The hearse rocked as the escorting Negroes jumped out and a moment later blinding electric light streamed into Shaw’s dark-accustomed eyes as the coffin was lifted off him. While he got his vision back two of the Negroes got in and cut away the ropes holding Flame and himself, and removed the gags. It was a while before Shaw or the girl could move at all; somebody, invisible in the background, gave an order and the Negroes started massaging their locked limbs. When he could move a little, Shaw sat up stiffly, flexing his muscles, pain in every part of him after that nightmare drive.
Once again, when at last he and Flame were able to stagger to their feet, the little drama of disembarkation was repeated but this time the man who welcomed them with the gun as they were helped roughly out was a White — and not a White like Walley back at the Hound-Tucson pier. He was a leathery man as tough as old boots and with a sort of range-rider look about him even down to the bow legs and the cowboy-leather trousers and the gunbelt with its two holsters dangling down the thighs. Shaw was able to see properly by this time; he looked around with considerable interest. The walls of the place they were in, and the ceiling, were living rock — jagged in parts, smooth in others, as though a natural cavity had been extended by artificial means. Ahead a long tunnel stretched into the distance, lit by a string of overhead lights; behind was another, unlit, tunnel. The hearse had drawn into a square between the two tunnels and there were other vehicles around as though they had pulled into a parking lot. One of these was a heavy armoured truck with its rear door open, and inside Shaw could see a mass of complicated equipment — radio transmitters and receivers, radar, electronic apparatus whose purpose he could only guess at. It had the appearance of a command truck such as a divisional commander might use in wartime. Several doors, including two sets of big double doors, all closed now, led off the parking space.
“Seen all you want?” the character who had welcomed them asked. He had stepped right out of the old West, six-shooters and all. Without waiting for an answer to his question he said suddenly, “Reach.” Shaw reached, Flame reached, and the cowboy character frisked them thoroughly. The Negroes’ surly expressions said they didn’t like that; it reflected on theirs and Mr Spice’s professional capabilities, no doubt, but the man was evidently set in authority over them in the Dead Line’s hierarchy. Crisply he said, “Okay, you guys. They’re my prisoners now. Git along to the mess and Mushy’ll fix you up.”
And watch out for Redskins on the way to the bunkhouse afterwards, Shaw thought sardonically, and don’t drop in at the saloon or the sheriff’ll put a posse on you… the Westerner was a comedy turn, all right; but the mere fact of finding a character like that mixed up in what had to be a Communist intrigue made everything the more sinister — the cowboy himself included. And the more dangerous. Shaw felt his flesh creep as the strange, hard-faced White picked up a coiled rope and retreated a few yards. A couple of seconds later there was a swishing sound overhead and a noose dropped neatly around Shaw and Flame together, over their lifted hands, to settle in the crooks of their elbows.
“Walk, boy,” the White snapped as he hauled the rope taut. “Just go right ahead there along the inner tunnel till you hit a door. Then stop.”
Chapter Fourteen
They went ahead along the tunnel, a low-ceilinged passageway excavated from the solid rock. Doors led off at intervals, to left and right. Shaw still had no idea in the world of their geographical location but there was no doubt that this place must be the headquarters of the Dead Line operation, the place from which the English end also was controlled.
The cowboy character in the rear kept the rope taut as his boots banged along the rock floor and sharp-rowelled spurs jingled. Shaw was very conscious of Flame’s soft body moving against his own as they were held tight together on the rope. There was a bend ahead and when they rounded it they found two Negroes in uniform — long drill pants and long-sleeved shirts buttoned at the wrists and carrying insignia similar to that of the U.S. Army. These men carried side-arms as well as semi-automatic M-I’s slung in web bands from their shoulders. Their heads were topped by steel helmets, again of U.S. Army pattern.
The Negroes brought their rifles up and kept them aimed from the hip as the prisoners were marched past. The door was in view now, twenty yards ahead, and when they had covered half that distance the lone ranger yelled at them to stop. The man let go the rope and came up and walked on past them towards the door. Guns jabbed into Shaw’s and Flame’s spines. The Negro guards had come up behind, silently threatening.
The cowboy went through the door and shut it behind him. Fifteen seconds later it opened again and he came back, jerking his gun at the prisoners. “Come on,” he said. “You two guys with ’em,” he added, speaking to the guards. “One of you grab the rope.”
The rifles pushed and again the rope tautened. Shaw and the girl moved ahead and went through the door and as they did so they entered one of the most remarkable apartments, considering its situation, that Shaw had ever seen. It was a large room, a very large room, high and around forty feet square, and the walls, which underneath must have been of exactly the same rough rock as the rest of the place, were panelled all over in bird’s-eye maple. The ceiling appeared to be plastered; it was richly decorated, like the drawing-room of some country mansion. The floor was overlaid with highly-polished parquet on which were several exquisite Persian rugs and a tiger skin. The panelled walls carried oil paintings, one of them depicting Lincoln giving what appeared to be the Gettysburg address, most of the others showing old-time Negro slaves at work in Southern plantations. In these latter paintings White overseers were much in evidence; so were the whips they carried. The plantation Negroes all bore expressions of gentleness and patient suffering mixed with a resigned kind of yearning, while the red, whiskery faces of the overseers shouted drink, lechery and sadism.
At the far end of this apartment, set before an enormous wall map of the world on which concealed lighting played, was a big leather-topped desk, its front covered with intricately designed ornamentation, its top bare of everything but an angle-poise table lamp, a sumptuous blotter and a silver ashtray on which three inches of fine Havana cigar burned in solitary neglect.
Some way short of the desk their escort snapped at them to stop. They stopped and stared. This might have been the Presidential study in the White House had it not been for the man who was seated beyond the desk in an alcove shielded by a screen which until now had kept him hidden. This man was sitting sideways to his prisoners and facing a small table on which was a box of what looked like tiny stones. The man, who was a massive Negro well over six feet in height and with tremendously powerful shoulders tapering to narrow, graceful hips, was monotonously thrusting his extended fingers, one hand after the other, into the box of stones.