“Stand clear of the water!” the latter bellowed in his ear. “It would sweep you off like a fly!”
He shone the powerful light downwards. There were wooden stairs in an iron framework. The torrent was breaking upon the first platform below, and thence descending, a great, shimmering, yellow coil, to unknown depths. Others were pushing through, but:
“Stand back!” Gallaho shouted. “There’s no more room between the water and the edge!”
Trench pressed his lips to Gallaho’s ear.
“This must be the shaft leading down to the tunnel.” He yelled. “But no one could pass that platform where the water is falling.”
Gallaho turned and pushed the speaker back through the opening into the passage. Startled faces watched them climbing through.
“Forester!” he cried. “Up to the room in the wooden outbuilding. We want all the rope and all the ladder you have!”
“Right!” said Forester, whose usually fresh colouring had quite deserted him, and set off at a run.
Gallaho turned to Trench.
“Did you notice the heat coming up from that place?”
Trench nodded, moistening his dry lips.
“And the smell?”
“I don’t like to think about the smell, Inspector,” he said unsteadily.
At which moment:
“Inspector Gallaho!” came a cry, “you’re wanted on the telephone upstairs.”
“What’s this?” growled Gallaho and ran off.
It was possible to make oneself heard in the corridor, and: “I believe that place leads down to hell,” said Trench. “If so it will run the Thames dry.”
“What’s the inspector’s idea about a rope ladder, Sergeant?”
“I don’t know, unless he thinks he can swing clear of the waterfall to a lower platform. He’s a braver man than I am if he is going to try it.”
There were muttered questions and doubtful answers; fearful glances cast upward at the roof of the passage. Schumann and the works manager had gone out and around to the river front, to endeavour to locate the spot at which the water was entering the cellars.
And now, came Merton, the exA.B. trailing a long rope ladder. As he reached the passage way he pulled up, brushing perspiration from his eyes, and:
“Here I say!” he exclaimed, staring at the spray-masked gap beside the iron door. “I’m not going in there for anybody!”
“You haven’t been asked to,” came Gallaho’s growling voice.
All turned as the detective-inspector came along the dimly lighted passage with his curious, lurching walk.
“Any news?” Trench asked.
“The Old Man’s on his way down.” (The Old Man referred to was the Commissioner of Police.) Dr. Petrie’s with him— the girl’s father.”
“Whew!” whistled Trench.
“The queer thing is, though, that the girl’s turned up.”
“What!”
“She’s at Sir Denis’s flat; they had the report at the Yard only a few minutes ago.”
He divested himself of his tightly fitting blue overcoat, and, turning to Merton:
“I want you to come through there with me,” he said, “because you understand knots and ropes, and I can rely on you. I want you to lash that ladder where I’ll show you to lash it.”
“But I say, Gallaho!” Forester exclaimed . . .
“Unless, of course,” said Gallaho ironically, “you consider, Inspector Forester, that this properly belongs to your province.”
CHAPTER 47
THE WATERSPOUT
Sterling groped his way through darkness in the direction of the foot of the stairs. The roar of falling water was deafening. At one point he was drenched in spray, and hesitated. A small ray shone through the gloom, higherto unbroken except for stabs of yellowish light through chinks in the furnace door. He turned sharply, aware from the pain in his chest that he was fit for little more.
The light came nearer and a grip fastened upon his arm. Close to his ear:
“Around this way—we can’t reach the steps direct.”
The voice was Nayland Smith’s.
A pocket-torch had been amongst the latter’s equipment, and now it was invaluable. Using it sparingly, Nayland Smith indicated the edge of a great column of water which was pouring down into the pit, so that anywhere within ten feet of it one was drenched in the spray of its fall. A rushing stream was pouring down the tunnel, the entrance to which they were now passing.
Even as Sterling, horrified as he had never been in his life, stared along that whispering gallery, a distant lantern went out, swept away by the torrent.
Then they turned left; and, stumbling onwards, presently Sterling saw the foot of the wooden steps. But Dr. Fu Manchu was not there.
His lips close to Sterling’s ear:
“It’s only a matter of minutes,” shouted Nayland Smith, “before the water reaches that ghastly furnace. Then ... we’re done!”
Spray drenched them—a sort of mist was rising. The booming of the water was awful. Sterling had been along those rock galleries cut beneath Niagara Falls: he was reminded of them now. This was a rivulet compared with the mighty Horseshoe Fall; but, descending from so great a height and crashing upon concrete so near to where they stood, the effect was at least as dreadful.
Into the inadequate light, penetrating spray and mist, of Nayland Smith’s pocket torch there stumbled a strange figure—a drenched, half-drowned figure moving his arms blindly as he groped forward.
It was Murphy!
Suddenly, he saw the light, and sweeping his wet hair back from his forehead, he showed for a moment a white bloodstained face in the ray of the torch.
From that white mask his eyes glared out almost madly.
Nayland Smith turned the light upon his own face, then stepping forward, grasped Murphy’s arm.
Far above, a dim light shone through the mist and spray. It revealed that horror-inspiring shaft with its rusty girders, and the skeleton staircase clinging to its walls: this, eerily, vaguely, as a dream within a dream. But it revealed something else:
That ever-increasing cataract descending from some unseen place, sprouted forth remorselessly from one of the upper platforms!
No human being could pass that point. . . .
Nayland Smith staring upward flashed the feeble light of his torch in a rather vain hope that it would be seen by those at the top of the shaft; for that at long last a raiding party had penetrated, he was convinced.
The light above became obscured in ever increasing mist; it disappeared altogether.
Much of that stair which zigzagged from side to side had remained mantled in impenetrable shadow during the few seconds that light had shone through at the head of the pit. If Fu Manchu and those of his servants who remained alive were on the stairs they were invisible.
To one memory Nayland Smith clung tenaciously.
Dr. Fu Manchu at the moment that his killings had been interrupted, had descended three steps and extinguished the lamps. Somewhere, hereabouts, there was a switch.
Suddenly, he came upon it, and reversed it.
There was no result.
The explosion had disconnected the current.
