living rock, I saw, so the chances of the base giving way under my weight were virtually nil. It was exactly five feet wide. That was where my luck ended. The stone, concrete and ironware hadn't been displaced or touched since the whole thing was first made.
Bad news, Lovejoy.
Which left the recess. Presumably the tunnel ran to emerge somewhere back there. I examined the iron wartime doors first. Both were rusted in place. That's modern metal for you. Rubble had fallen from the walls and made it difficult for me to squeeze in. I could hear water trickling and dripping in the dank blackness. Would there be bats?
Peat. It stank of peat. Did peat give off fumes like those that gassed you in coal mines?
I had a pencil torch. But, I worried, are those little bulbs electrically insulated so they can't touch off an itchy explosive gas? Why the hell is all this never written on the bloody things? They always miss essential instructions off everything you buy nowadays. I was so angry I took the risk, cursing and swearing at manufacturers. No bang. The light showed me a brick-lined space about four feet wide. The start of the tunnel. The sea down below gave a louder shuffle which made my heart lurch. A few soldierly graffiti indicated the last time anyone had stood there. Dust covered the floor.
The tunnel's infall began a couple of paces from the iron doors.
It had probably been deserted after the war. Weather, perhaps mostly rain and seeping water, had weakened the tunnel walls. Bexon could never have beer, here. I edged back into the daylight, still pressing the surface with my foot as I went. No sun seemed to strike into the sea-washed cleft. You'd think they would have built the seal pen to catch a lot of sun, if only for yesteryear's holidaying spectators. Lord, what a day out it must have been. I'd have paid not to come. I wasn't unduly perturbed when I didn't see the rope exactly where I'd left it. Ropes hanging free swing about, especially in winds.
Actually I couldn't remember knotting it carefully on an iron upright but I'd worked it out. I'd soon catch it as it flicked past.
I looked about from the cage. The sea had risen somewhat but could never reach the pulpit. There was no sign of a tidal mark this high. Safe as houses. The trouble was I couldn't see the rope at all, flicking about or otherwise.
Oddly it didn't concern me much at first. It was probably caught up somewhere, maybe on a clump of heather or on a small scag of rock face. It had to get blown free sooner or later, hadn't it? Hadn't it?
'Lovejoy,' Rink was waving from across the crevasse.
I didn't answer immediately. All I could think of was rope.
'Yoo-hoo,' he called. Not a smile. That's the sort of character you get in antiques nowadays. No soul. He'd won hands down and not even the glimmer of a grin. He was alone.
'What?' It took me two goes to croak it out. It suddenly seemed a long way over there.
And back up the cliff. And down. It was a hell of a long way to everywhere. Bleeding hell.
'Find it?'
'No.'
'Then good luck, Lovejoy. That's all I can say. Good luck.'
'What do you mean?'
'You'll need it.'
He sat on the platform. The swine had a hamper. He took out some sandwiches and a flask. He seemed prepared for a long siege. It all seemed so exasperatingly strange at that moment. There was Rink, in his smart suit, noshing an elegant picnic breakfast.
And there was me, stuck in an iron pulpit like a caged fly in a gruesome grotto. His very appearance of normality was grotesque.
'I can climb out, Rink,' I managed to squeak after swallowing a few times.
'No, Lovejoy.' He was maddeningly calm. 'No. Look at the cliff.'
I'd already done that. I didn't need to do it again.
'Where's the rope?' I called lamely.
'Quite safe.' He poured a hot drink for himself. 'Don't try.'
In a panic I jumped and caught on the incomplete roof of the pulpit. Better to try climbing out now while I was fresh than after being trapped a whole day - week?
Something cracked sharply. The rocks nearby my left side spattered with ugly suddenness. My cheek ran warm. I dropped back. Rink was smiling now. He had a double-barrelled shot-gun.
'I won't run out of cartridges, Lovejoy,' he assured me.
'Bastard.'
'I'm only anxious to preserve your life.'
'Why?' I asked. Maybe Algernon had heard the gun and would come searching. But there were a lot of hunters after pigeons knocking about. I'd seen them about the middle of the island. One more shot wouldn't be noticed. Anyway I couldn't encourage Rink to keep on using that thing. It was a modern hammerless cartridge ejector, I saw with scorn, when you can still find brilliantly engraved antique hammer-locks of the early percussion period. They're even cheaper than good modern guns, the burke. He could have used a luscious Forsyth scent-bottle fulminate percussion weapon, damascus-barrelled and silver-engraved. What a slob. Honestly, some people, I thought. It really shows a typical low mentality.
'You'd better start, Lovejoy.'
'Start what?'
'Guessing.' He waved a sandwich at me. 'I can wait. Every guess you give will be painstakingly investigated, Lovejoy. If the box is where you say it is I'll return and drop your rope over.'
'And if not?'
