“He came here to find it out,” said Heath. “A music box David McCulloch sent to Baltimore to a friend he didn't know had died, gave Trappett a lead. He heard the rest of it tonight, just before he died.”
CHAPTER V
JOHN McCULLOCH was gripping the edge of the chasm when Mary lost her footing. Heath let go the rope, grabbed for her, missed. She and McCulloch plopped into the water at the same moment.
“Mary! Mary, are you all right!” Heath found her a second later with the flash's beam. She was holding onto a roughness in the chasm's wall. McCulloch was swimming around, trailing the rope.
“I can't swim,” she said, her voice a half- strangled gasp. “But maybe I can hold on for awhile.”
“Listen, McCulloch!” Heath shouted. “I'm ripping up my clothing to make a string. I'll drop it down. You fasten it onto the rope.” He pulled his coat and sweater, ripped his pants leg off at the thighs, tore the garments into strips, knotted them together. In a few minutes he let the knotted string into the chasm.
“Here it comes,” he sang out.
McCulloch caught it, fastened it to the rope. In a few minutes Heath had the rope again. “The girl first,” he shouted.
“Never,” replied McCulloch. “I'm too tired to swim.”
The county detective ground his teeth in anger as he lifted McCulloch from the chasm. He watched the killer closely as he dropped the rope to Mary. McCulloch had stripped to his trousers to make the swimming easier. He stood glaring at Heath, panting hard.
Mary was on the rope when McCulloch made his play. He snatched up a rock, was aiming it at Heath's head when the detective smashed a right to his face. He heard Mary plop back into the water, saw the rope, with string attached, slip over the chasm's edge. He'd had to let go in order to stop McCulloch. He followed it up and slugged the kidnaper into unconsciousness.
He realized his and McCulloch's remaining clothes would not make a string long enough to reach down to Mary. Sick to his soul, black fear gripping his spirit, he flicked the light down the chasm's walls. “How long can you hold on?” he said, a deadness rapping in his voice.
“I—I don't know,” Mary replied tiredly. “The wall is so—so slippery!”
“I got nothing left but a sweater, and a guy can't rip up a sweater,” he said. “You'll have to hold on until I go outside for a rope, a wire, something.”
“I'll—I'll try. I'll be okay, Sully.”
Heath turned to the dazed McCulloch, knowing if he left him behind he'd revive, probably lay for him with a rock, brain him from the darkness when he returned. He had nothing with which to tie the man. In all Heath's life he'd never shot a helpless man, but he meant to cripple McCulloch with a few bullets.
He'd put aside his gun while ripping up his clothes, now he picked it up, centered the killer's face in the flash's beam, snicked off the pistol's safety.
Mary's voice stopped him. “Sully, did you say you had a sweater?”
“Yes,” he told her. “But it won't rip—”
“Unravel it, Sully. The yarn string will lift the knotted string. Hurry!”
He snatched up the sweater, started the yarn to ravel. He'd done this when a kid to get yarn to make socker balls. He laughed loosely, gladness moisty in his eyes, a chunk of it in his throat. “That's a dame for you,” he said.
WHEN they left the cavern the water was rushing back into the creek bed, was almost waist deep at the washed roots of the weeping willow tree. McCulloch had regained full consciousness before Heath had lifted Mary from the chasm. They'd found the Marcot ransom money in a metal lockbox beside the skeleton of David McCulloch.
When they reached the house, Mary told Heath, “He can't get out of the tower, Sully. The windows are barred, and there's only one door to the outside. It has a bolt lock. It will be a safe place to keep him until we can get word to the Coverlee police.”
McCulloch made no objection as Heath pushed him inside the tower and locked the door. But a moment later he called to them from the little window at the tower's top:
“Get ready to die, fools! I set a charge of dynamite under the fill above the house after I mined the creek bank. I meant to drown Bascome and the others like rats. The hollow is brimming with tons of water. I hold an electric switch in my hand. There's a battery, wires running from here to the fill.” He laughed hoarsely, wildly. “I'll get the ransom money yet. I'll find it after the flood—after you're dead.”
“He's bluffing,” said Heath.
“No,” Mary said, her voice anxious. “The water that ran into the hollow after he blew up the creek bank is held back by the fill. If he can blow up the fill from where he is the water will be over us before we can get away. The tower is our only chance. If we can get inside and up to the top we'll be safe.”
Heath took her hand as they dashed toward the tower. McCulloch saw them and shouted from above. “The door's locked on the inside. Just try to get in! Just try!” He laughed again, gloatingly.
The hard, jarring boom killed all other sounds. The earth groaned, shuddered. Heath and Mary were almost thrown on their faces. A second later the mad roar of stampeding water struck their ears.
“It's coming!” Heath said, “We'll run for it!”
Mary clutched his arm, shouting to be heard above the deafening surge of the approaching flood, “No! It's no use!”
He knew she was right. There was no safe place except the tower. The first rush of the flood would smash the house, the other buildings. A creek thirty feet wide and from ten to forty feet deep had been filling the hollow
