Tales of Mysteries & Espionage - John Buchan Edition. Buchan John

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СКАЧАТЬ awoken shivering, and now as they walked their teeth chattered, for both were too sore and stiff to go fast enough to warm their blood.

      Suddenly they struck a path—a real path, not an animal’s track, but a road used regularly by human feet. Indeed, it seemed at one time to have been almost a highway. At one place Archie could have sworn that the rock had been quarried to ease the gradient, and at another, where it flanked a stream, it looked as if it had been embanked. In that wild place it seemed a miracle. Archie thought that he must be light-headed, so he examined carefully the workmanship. There could be no doubt about it, for his fingers traced the outlines of squared stones. Once this had been a great highroad, as solid as Roman work. It seemed to come out of the mist of the Poison. Valley, and to run straight towards the pass in the ridge. He pointed it out to Hamilton.

      “Aye, there’s been folk here langsyne,” was the answer. Archie bent over a patch of snow. “Not so long ago. Here are the marks of feet, naked feet, and they were made within the past twenty-four hours.”

      Slowly they tramped up the glacis of the range towards the pass. Hamilton walked like a man in a dream, stumbling often, and talking to himself. He seemed to have a head ache, for he stopped at the water-pools to bathe his head. The pain in Archie’s forehead grew worse as they ascended till it became almost unbearable. He kept his fingers on his eyes to ease the throbbing behind them. But his mind was clear, and he could reason with himself about his condition. It might be the poisoning of the forest—most likely that was true in Hamilton’s case—or it might be mountain sickness. He had once had a slight bout in the Karakoram, and he had heard that it was common in the Cordilleras… Just before the summit of the pass he looked back. The tablecloth was lifting from the Pais de Venenos, and the white floor was now cleft with olive-green gashes. The summit of the pass was a hollow between snowdrifts.

      There both men stood and stared, for the sight before them was strange and beautiful. Archie had expected another tableland, or a valley of rocks shut in between peaks. Instead his eyes looked over a wide hollow, some three miles in diameter. High ridges flanked it on all sides, and on the west was a great mass of mountain, which he believed must project like a promontory towards the Tierra Caliente. The slopes beneath them were at first boulders and shingle, but presently they became the ordinary grassy savannah, with clumps of wood here and there which seemed to be more than scrub. And in the centre of the hollow lay a lake, shaped like a scimitar, of the profoundest turquoise blue.

      He unslung his field-glasses and examined the place. There was no sign of life in it. At various points on the shore he could detect what looked like millet fields, but here was no mark of human habitation. Then he examined a dark blur near the western end, and found something that might have been the ruins of a Border keep.

      “We’ve struck a queer place,” he told his companion, but Hamilton turned a blank face. He had almost lost the power of sight; his whole mind was bent on forcing his sick body into movement.

      As they began to descend, an oppression seemed to lift from Archie’s soul. The horror of the place where he had landed left him, now that he had come into a clean bright country. Also the band of iron round his brow fretted him less. He found that he moved with greater ease, and he could lend a hand to his tottering companion. When they reached the first grass he felt hungry, and they sat down complete their breakfast. But Hamilton could only manage a single raisin, though he drank thirstily from a stream.

      The whole place was a riot of blue light, the heavens above and the lake beneath; even the rim of silver sand seemed to catch a turquoise reflection. The air, too, was no longer the dry, throat-catching thing of the high snows, but fresh and clement. The sun warmed them gratefully, and Archie’s eye recovered its old keenness. He saw a bird at last and the ornithologist awoke in him.

      “By Jove, a black snipe,” he cried. “The first I’ve seen.”

      The road they had followed skirted the northern edge of the lake and led them straight to the ruins near the western end. At close quarters the strangeness of the latter was increased. This had been a castle, like any Scots peel tower, the guardian of this fair valley. It had long been deserted, but the keep still stood foursquare, of a masonry which time and storm could not crumble. Archie examined it curiously. No mortar had been used, and the stones fitted into each other with such mathematical exactness that a knife could not find a lodgment. There were no signs of windows. Whoever dwelt here must have dwelt in darkness unless he had some means of artificial light… Archie remembered a story which Luis had told him of the old lords of the mountains, who controlled the Poison Country. They dwelt secure, he had said, for they made a belt of poison round them, and in their windowless dwellings they lived by candlelight. No, not candles, Luis had added, something stranger—natural gas, or perhaps electricity—for he believed that they were great men of science…

      At the recollection this clod of masonry, solid as a single boulder, seemed to link him up again with the vale of horrors behind him. The sunshine had become less bright, the place less innocent.

      Beyond the keep was a meadow where the stream from the lake issued. Here Archie saw something which had been hitherto hidden by the ruins, and which made him drop Hamilton’s arm and hobble at his best pace towards it. It was an aeroplane—a sea-plane, drawn up just beyond the sand of the shore.

      Archie recognised the make—a Wentworth B—of which there were none in the Gran Seco. His next observation was that it was out of action. The floats had been damaged, and the propeller was bent. Had it crashed?… It was D’Ingraville’s machine beyond doubt. Had Janet travelled in it? What had befallen her?

      With a sinking heart he examined the thing, and presently he was reassured. The machine was damaged, but there had been no serious accident. It must have alighted in the lake, for it had been drawn by human hands up on the shore. He saw the grooves and ribs which it had made in the sandy beach… He examined it carefully. There was still a good supply of petrol in the tank. Could he use it? A further inspection convinced him that he could not. Repairs were needed, and he had no means of repairing it.

      His first impulse was to destroy it. He could easily set it on fire and reduce it to a ruin of bars and wires… But what good would that do? If Janet had come in it and was now somewhere not far off, this might be a means of escape. How, he did not know, but there was no point in burning a possible boat.

      Then a few yards off he saw something white on the grass. It was a tiny fragment of cambric, with a monogram in one corner. Janet was always dropping handkerchiefs; he spent his time retrieving them.

      He stood with the thing in his hand, and a lump rose in his throat. He wanted to cry, the first tears since his childhood. Janet had sent him a message, Janet who had disappeared into the darkness. By some miracle he had found touch with her, the one chance in a million had succeeded. A great wave of longing and tenderness engulfed him. He stood blindly, as visions of Janet passed before his eyes, her dancing grace, her whimsical humour, her friendly courage. He had picked up her handkerchief, here at the ends of the earth, as he had so often done at far-away Crask…

      Then suddenly, for the first time since her loss, there came to him hope. An unreasoning hope, but as vivid as a revelation. She was somewhere near—two days ago, not more, she must have stood on this very spot. He would find her. Nay, he would rescue her. The Providence which had led him thus far so strangely would not fail him.

      With this new confidence something returned to Archie. He became his normal self again, and felt desperately sleepy. He had not slept for days. Hamilton sprawled limply near the ruined tower, his burning head pillowed on his arm. Archie got a piece of tarpaulin and some broken struts from the sea-plane, and made him a shelter from the sun, which was now very warm in that bare place. He stretched himself at his side, and in an instant was sound asleep.

      He woke to the sound of СКАЧАТЬ