Shaw said, “Just testing — that’s all!”
There was a rattle in his ear and he put the instrument down. Just to feel there was that fragile contact with the world, helped. He felt around for Flame once more; she didn’t answer when he spoke to her, but he heard sobs. He broke out into a fresh sweat, wished there was light to see her by, wished there was some hope he could offer her. There was nothing. Just that telephone. Unwillingly, his hand strayed towards it. Maybe he could trade his life in for the girl’s… or there might be some way of delaying the end even now if he could dream up something that would satisfy Tucker, if he could somehow bluff the Negro into actually letting them out. Overridingly, however, he had to remember that he mustn’t act just for the girl; agents couldn’t work that way. The Flames of this world were expendable; Western security was not.
Just a few minutes later there was a long, low rumble from somewhere inside the earth below them, a sound like distant thunder. The tomb-like space containing them seemed to shift bodily, a curious and terrifying swaying motion, as though the whole hillside was on the move. Shaw held his breath and listened, tried to interpret the sounds of this new phenomenon. It must be some internal movement resulting from the explosions of the charges. Earth tremors… an earthquake—an earthquake touched off by Lee’s dynamite, with he and Flame slap bang in the centre of it?
The rumblings went on and on, sometimes loud, sometimes just a long growling mutter like an angry but sleepy lion; sometimes close, sometimes far distant. The pitch-black space went on swaying now and again, like a ship in a seaway, rocking gently, lifting bodily and falling again. Now and then there was a jarring movement that flung them hard across the floor.
The man had said pray. Shaw did so.
Chapter Seventeen
Coughing and choking Shaw said, “I’m going to call the man at the entrance.” He fumbled around for the telephone.
“You — you going to — to talk?” She was crying hysterically now.
“If I do, it’ll be phoney information, Flame. But I’m going to play this by ear.” When he found the instrument and took up the handpiece the line had a dead sound and no one answered. The tubing could have been fractured. On the other hand the man at the other end could have decided the time had come to give himself his own orders to get the hell out, before the hillside slid right down on top of him.
“No good,” Shaw reported.
In a flat, dead-sounding voice as though she were suddenly beyond tears Flame asked, “How long can we last out?”
“I don’t know, Flame. Don’t talk meanwhile unless you have to — save your breath, and I mean that literally. If we keep as still and quiet as humanly possible we won’t burn up the air so fast.”
“What air?” she asked bitterly.
Shaw didn’t answer that; in fact each breath now was a painful effort. After a while he dragged himself to his feet, feeling a tightness in his chest as the movement made him drag in deeper gulps of the foul air. He had talked about keeping still but there was something he had to do first, and that was to struggle along the tunnel towards the site of the blasting operation and see if, after those subterranean rumblings, anything had shifted. If there should, by some faint chance, be even a chink of daylight from the mouth of the fissure, then air of a sort would reach them and they would do better to lie up nearer the fall of rock rather than stay in their present enclosed space.
When he told Flame she had to stay behind and wait she said in a brittle voice, “For God’s sake, don’t leave me in this dark.”
“I’ve got to,” he told her. “Listen, Flame. There’s no point in us both exhausting ourselves and using up the air, right? If I strike fresh air, I’ll come back for you at once. If I don’t strike air, and I’m bound to say I doubt if I will, then I’ll just — come back! You’d only have been moving around for nothing.”
“All right,” she said tautly, “but don’t be long. Promise?”
“I promise.”
He groped for the entry to the tunnel and moved with difficulty up the slope. There was more loose rubble on the surface now, thanks to Lee’s charges, rubble that had been scattered far along the tunnel by the force of the explosions; and at times Shaw found himself taking a pace back for every one he took forward; but at last the floor of the tunnel levelled off and, in the pitch blackness, he went ahead a little faster with his hands outstretched before him until, later, he stumbled upon the fringes of the main pile of rubble blocking the fissure. He was climbing higher now with each step, climbing the rubble itself, and soon he felt his head contact the roof. After that he went forward on hands and knees, tearing skin and clothing on the jagged edges of the rock, until he could go no farther. He was still faced with complete blackness — there was not the smallest chink of light to break it. He scrabbled at the rock, sending debris cascading down behind him as he tried to find that chink somewhere.
It wasn’t any use.
All he achieved was torn hands and knees… and then he faced the long trek back, using up the stale air. But, when his groping fingers reached the side tunnel that Sanderson had said led right through to the long drop, he went a little way along and found the air a shade fresher. He took some deep, welcome breaths and went back to fetch Flame. He helped her along the tunnel and into the intersection. When he had got her a few paces inside she, like Shaw, took several deep, rasping breaths and said, “Gee, that’s better! I couldn’t’ve lasted another five minutes back there, I guess.”
“Nor me. Now, Flame — I’m going to leave you again and this time for longer, maybe a couple of hours or more, I can’t say. I want you to make the best of it and not worry too much.”
“What are you going to do?” she asked, sounding dead scared.
“I’m going right along this tunnel to see if I can find anything.”
“Find what?”
“I don’t know—”
“Sanderson wouldn’t’ve told you about where this tunnel led, if it could have been any use to us!”
“Agreed, but it’s not unlikely the earth tremors may have opened something up somewhere, something Sanderson wouldn’t have expected. Maybe that’s where the air’s coming from. It’s a remote chance, I know, but we can’t afford to pass up the smallest hope, Flame.”
He pulled her towards him and kissed her and he tasted the salt of her tears. He felt the soft pressure of her breasts; he pulled away from her. He had to leave her. He went along the tunnel in the direction of Tucker’s hideout — slowly, carefully, feeling for every inch, every centimetre, of the way. He knew already about the long drop at the end; there could well be minor drops en route and he wasn’t chancing it. He slid each foot forward tentatively as he advanced into the unknown, into the wall of blackness. All the way he was watching for a chink of light — from above and to either side. You never could tell what your luck was going to be… but today luck was right out. There was nothing — nothing but solid rock all the way along. When he fancied he had been walking for long enough to be nearing the end he went ahead even more slowly and carefully, expecting the long drop now with each thrust of his feet; but his estimate was out for he had a long walk yet before a change, a greater freshness in the atmosphere, gradual at first but becoming more noticeable, told him he was nearing the end of the trail. Finally he heard the hollow boom of a vehicle going over the long drop beneath the trap above. He edged forward until he was on the brink of that drop. His foot, moving forward, touched no ground. The next step would have sent him into space.