“There’s somebody in there,” he said. “Somebody trapped between the water and the end of the bore. I heard her scream!”
“Her?”
Smitty’s vast paw was a vise on the man’s arm. The man yelled and sank to his knees. Smitty realized belatedly that he was a little too urgent with his clasp, and released him. The man got slowly to his feet again.
“Yeah, a woman,” he repeated, rubbing his numb arm. “I heard her.”
“You must be hearing ghosts, then,” said the drill foreman impatiently. He hadn’t heard of Nellie’s arrival at camp, yet. “No one could get in there to be trapped by the water, let alone a woman—”
He stopped. Might as well save his breath. The mad giant had entered the black bore.
Smitty splashed in water ankle-deep almost the instant he got inside. He sloshed in a turgid, knee-deep flood before many more feet had been traversed. It went to waist, shoulders. Then he could see where the roof dipped into water, and paused a moment. It was where the new section had been cracked out that roof sloped down to water. The roof would be higher when the bore was completed; but it wasn’t high enough now to save a rat from drowning — if the rat were silly enough to keep on going.
Smitty clenched his great hands in torment.
The man might have been wrong, of course. There might have been no scream. But Nellie had been gone from camp too long, and—
Then he heard it himself. A faint, bubbling cry, seeming to come right from the water between freshly-rent roof and rough floor. It was a woman’s scream!
“Coming!” he bellowed.
Outside, the men heard that stentorian hail. Then they heard the bellowing stop as Smitty dove straight into the black water.
They waited a long time, and didn’t hear the sound again. Fifteen minutes. Half an hour. No man could live in there that long.
“He’s dead!” said the drill foreman, taking off his battered hat.
CHAPTER XII
The Labyrinth
The Avenger came back from Cloud Lake Ranch to find a pretty grim situation in the camp.
Nellie Gray had vanished — gone no one knew where. The only clue to her whereabouts was that the last workman out of the flooded bore had thought he heard a woman scream, back in there. And that was pretty improbable.
Smitty had also vanished. He had dived into a place that could hardly be anything other than a watery tomb, and hadn’t been heard from since.
It looked as if The Avenger’s aides were dead. In addition, work on the Mt. Rainod tunnel seemed to be permanently stopped, so there could be no attempts made to retrieve the bodies.
The crew looked furtively at the face of the gray steel man whom they had come to regard with such respect in so short a time. They wondered how he would take the news — this man whispered to be a murderer.
The dead, white countenance, of course, told them nothing. The brilliant, colorless eyes were as unreadable as the face.
Benson turned to Todd, the chief engineer.
“Order ammonia coils and apparatus flown here at once.”
“Amm—” repeated Todd, looking bewildered. Then he nodded. “Why, of course! Just the thing! I’ll wire for the necessary stuff immediately.”
Benson looked around for Mac and Josh. But he didn’t see the Negro and the Scotchman. They were nowhere around, it seemed—
They weren’t in sight at the moment, because they were sloshing in the water of the flooded tunnel. There was a bond among the Avenger’s aides much stronger than among most associates. One would sacrifice all for the others, at any time. Similarly, the rest would risk death in an instant to help any one of them in trouble.
Mac and Josh were preparing to give up their lives for Smitty and Nellie — even though it was a thousand-to-one that Nellie and Smitty were dead and past all help.
The two were near the end of the bore. The water, it appeared, had found its permanent level, which was several inches lower than it had been when Smitty came in. It exposed the newly cracked tunnel roof a half a dozen feet farther than the giant had been able to see.
In the exposure, the end of a fissure showed, where it had not showed before.
“Look,” said Mac, puzzled. “Whether Nellie was ever in here or not, we dinna know. But we do know that Smitty was in. The whole crew saw him come in. Now — where’s his body?”
Josh shook his head. It was quite a puzzle. The end of the bore should be blank rock at the point where the work had stopped. There was no way out there for a floating corpse. There was no place for it to float to but, eventually, back toward the entrance.
Yet there was no corpse in evidence. And surely this one should be big enough to see.
It was then that Josh saw the end of the fissure. The fissure was widening where it hit the top of the water and disappeared from sight.
The roof was still dripping from the slightly higher level of the water a short time before.
“The flood was higher, before we came in,” Josh observed. “It’s possible Smitty’s body jammed up through that fissure. I’ll go and see.”
“I’ll go!” said the Scot quickly.
“No. I’m thinner than you. I can go through a narrow place easier.”
“Whoosh!” complained Mac. “Ye’re just takin’ the dangerous part, that’s all.”
But Josh’s logic was unanswerable. So, biting his lips, with only his head above water, Mac saw the Negro draw a deep breath and disappear under water, swimming toward the unseen spot where the fissure probably widened.
So that made two who dove into the black depths — and didn’t come back. First Smitty, then Josh. For Josh did not reappear.
Mac watched with growing fear, as the minutes lengthened.
“Josh!” he yelled. “Josh!”
He dove in himself, and hunted for the broader part of the fissure in the roof. He couldn’t find it. He dove a score of times, and still couldn’t locate any such place.
Apparently the roof as well as the end wall was blank, with no place to admit a human body. Yet Josh was gone, seemingly through solid rock.
The reason Mac couldn’t find the broader part of the fissure was that the fissure, after extending under water so it couldn’t be seen anymore, turned almost at right angles. So the place where a body could go up was at least eight feet to the right of where you would expect it.
Mac hadn’t found it because his sense of direction was too good. He had dived too accurately for the place where the fissure should be — and wasn’t.
Josh had found it with the first groping upthrust of his hands, because he had gotten off-line and didn’t know it.
His hands had gone up into air, felt the sides of the fissure, and then his head had emerged.
He trod water and breathed air again, with his head stuck up through the crack in the tunnel roof. The air seemed plenty fresh. What had he blundered into? Was there another opening in the glass mountain, right above the line where the tunnel was being bored, that no one had known of till now? It looked like it. Josh began worming up the fissure to find out.
He was able to crawl up it, like a small bug up a crack in a thick floor, for fifteen feet or so. Then his bleeding hands felt the upper edge of it.
He pulled himself up — and instantly tentacles coiled around him with crushing force. He yelled once, then hadn’t the strength to yell any more. Utter horror filled him — grabbed like this by some vast monster in the heart of Mt. Rainod. But his yell saved him.
“Oh, it’s you, Josh,” the monster said. “Glad you sounded off. I thought you were one of the gang.”