What's Bred in the Bone (Murder Mystery Novel). Allen Grant

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      CHAPTER IV. — INSIDE THE TUNNEL.

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      And, indeed, if brain-waves had been in question at all, they ought, without a doubt, to have informed Guy Waring that at the very moment when he was going out to send off his telegram, his brother Cyril was sitting disconsolate, with dark blue lips and swollen eyelids, on the footboard of the railway carriage in the Lavington tunnel. Cyril was worn out with digging by this time, for he had done his best once more to clear away the sand towards the front of the train in the vague hope that he might succeed in letting in a little more air to their narrow prison through the chinks and interstices of the fallen sandstone. Besides, a man in an emergency must do something, if only to justify his claim to manliness—especially when a lady is looking on at his efforts.

      So Cyril Waring had toiled and moiled in that deadly atmosphere for some hours in vain, and now sat, wearied out and faint from foul vapours, by Elma’s side on the damp, cold footboard. By this time the air had almost failed them. They gasped for breath, their heads swam vaguely. A terrible weight seemed to oppress their bosoms. Even the lamps in the carriages flickered low and burned blue. The atmosphere of the tunnel, loaded from the very beginning with sulphurous smoke, was now all but exhausted. Death stared them in the face without hope of respite—a ghastly, slow death by gradual stifling.

      “You MUST take a little water,” Elma murmured, pouring out the last few drops for him into the tin cup—for Cyril had brought a small bottleful that morning for his painting, as well as a packet of sandwiches for lunch. “You’re dreadfully tired. I can see your lips are parched and dry with digging.”

      She was deathly pale herself, and her own eyes were livid, for by this time she had fairly given up all hope of rescue; and, besides, the air in the tunnel was so foul and stupefying, she could hardly speak; indeed, her tongue clung to her palate. But she poured out the last few drops into the cup for Cyril and held them up imploringly, with a gesture of supplication. These two were no strangers to one another now. They had begun to know each other well in those twelve long hours of deadly peril shared in common.

      Cyril waved the cup aside with a firm air of dissent.

      “No, no,” he said, faintly, “you must drink it yourself. Your need is greater far than mine.”

      Elma tried to put it away in turn, but Cyril would not allow her. So she moistened her mouth with those scanty last drops, and turned towards him gratefully.

      “There’s no hope left now,” she said, in a very resigned voice. “We must make up our minds to die where we stand. But I thank you, oh, I thank you so much, so earnestly.”

      Cyril, for his part, could hardly find breath to speak.

      “Thank you,” he gasped out, in one last despairing effort. “Things look very black; but while there’s life there’s hope. They may even still, perhaps, come up with us.”

      As he spoke, a sound broke unexpectedly on the silence of their prison. A dull thud seemed to make itself faintly heard from beyond the thick wall of sand that cut them off from the daylight. Cyril stared with surprise. It was a noise like a pick-axe. Stooping hastily down, he laid his ear against the rail beside the shattered carriage.

      “They’re digging!” he cried earnestly, finding words in his joy. “They’re digging to reach us! I can hear them! I can hear them!”

      Elma glanced up at him with a certain tinge of half-incredulous surprise.

      “Yes, they’re digging, of course,” she said quickly. “I knew they’d dig for us, naturally, as soon as they missed us. But how far off are they yet? That’s the real question. Will they reach us in time? Are they near or distant?”

      Cyril knelt down on the ground as before, in an agony of suspense, and struck the rail three times distinctly with his walking-stick. Then he put his ear to it and listened, and waited. In less than half a minute three answering knocks rang, dim but unmistakable, along the buried rail. He could even feel the vibration on the iron with his face.

      “They hear us! They hear us!” he cried once more, in a tremor of excitement. “I don’t think they’re far off. They’re coming rapidly towards us.”

      At the words Elma rose from her seat, still paler than ever, but strangely resolute, and took the stick from his hand with a gesture of despair. She was almost stifled. But she raised it with method. Knocking the rail twice, she bent down her head and listened in turn. Once more two answering knocks rang sharp along the connecting line of metal. Elma shook her head ominously.

      “No, no, they’re a very long way off still,” she murmured, in a faltering tone. “I can hear it quite well. They can never reach us!”

      She seated herself on a fragment of the broken carriage, and buried her face in her hands once more in silence. Her heart was full. Her head was very heavy. She gasped and struggled. Then a sudden intuition seized her, after her kind. If the rail could carry the sound of a tap, surely it might carry the human voice as well. Inspired with the idea, she rose again and leant forward.

      A second time she knocked two quick little taps, ringing sharp on the rail, as if to bespeak attention; then, putting her mouth close to the metals, she shouted aloud along them with all the voice that was left her—

      “Hallo, there, do you hear? Come soon, come fast. We’re alive, but choking!”

      Quick as lightning an answer rang back as if by magic, along the conducting line of the rail—a strange unexpected answer.

      “Break СКАЧАТЬ