'Where do
He fished the Saint's note out of his pocket and gave it to her. She read it through with growing apprehension. It had somehow failed to occur to her that he would automatically spend the time before evening in investigating the second possibility of the Old House — the disused inn behind the village. That was where he must have gone. Perhaps he had been trapped there....
'Come on,' she rapped, and led the way.
Outside, she took the path which led down to the inland end of the village, instead of the one which led to the opposite tor by way of the quay, and Orace hurried after her and caught her arm.
'Wrong wy, miss,' he said.
She looked at him.
'This is the way I'm going.'
'Sorry, miss,' he persisted. 'I carn't letcha do that.'
'Can't you?' she said slowly. 'I'm sorry, but I must. I'll show you — '
With a lightning twist she shook off his hand and ran. She could hear him racing lamely after her, shouting and imploring her to stop and think what the Saint would say, but she ran on like the wind. She went down the slope at break-neck speed, sure-footed as a cat, but Orace limped along behind doggedly, sliding and stumbling in the steep darkness. Then a stone rolled under her foot: she jumped to save herself, caught her other foot in a tuft of grass, floundered, and went down in a heap. He had grabbed her before she could rise.
'I'm sorry, miss, but it's me dooty, an 'e'd sy the syme.'
She got to her feet, shaken and breathless, but-relieved to find that she had not even slightly twisted her ankle.
Orace felt something hard dig into his ribs, and knew what it was.
'Will this show you I’m serious?' she panted. 'I'd hate to have to hurt you, Orace; but I will if you drive me to it. I've got to go.'
He waited without stirring for a long time. He could easily have grabbed her wrist and taken the gun from her, but it was the sob in her voice that stopped him.''
'Orl right,' he said at last. 'If it'll myke it easier for yer....'
She knew then that he feared the worst.
They hurried on down the hill. She remembered his limp and let him set the pace, but he managed to struggle on at a good jog trot in spite of his lameness. They went through the village until the black bulk of the Old House loomed before them.
'Will ya lead the wy, miss, since yer 'ere? I dunno this plice too well.'
She took him round by the approach the Saint had used, but there was no need for the same caution, for the moon would not rise for another three hours. He stopped her at the door.
'Lemme go fust.'
He thrust her behind him and blocked the way by his greater strength and weight, and she had to obey. She heard him fumble in his pockets, and then he kicked open the door and at the same moment a beam of light stabbed down the passage from the electric torch in his hand.
'See them footmarks?' he whispered. 'Men's bin 'ere lytely, and I'll betcha they wuz Tiger Cubs.'
The shaft of luminance broke on the table at the end of the corridor. The Saint had turned the box round, and from the side elevation its function was more easily deducible. Even so, it was creditably astute of Orace to stop dead in his tracks and turn suddenly to an examination of the door through which they had just come. He found the scar in the wood where the bullet had splintered it, and went back to make a study of the ground outside.
'Naow!' he announced at length.
He went down the passage again, keeping to the centre, so that she was forced to walk behind him and be shielded by his body. Her hand was on the automatic in her pocket, and, though every one of her nerves was tense and tingling, her muscles felt strangely cold and calm. Just as a boxer, trained to a milligramme, is a bundle of tortured nerves up to the moment he enters the ring, when all at once his brain becomes clear and ice-cold as an Arctic sky and his body soothes down in a second into smooth efficiency — so Patricia's agony of fear and anxiety had frozen into a grim chilled-steel determination. The Saint had been there: they were on his track. The suspense and anguish of inaction was over.
Orace had halted just before he came to the open door.
'We better lookaht 'ere,' he said.
She was looking round his shoulder as he turned the ray of the torch into the room, and they both saw the emptiness of it and the yawning square hole in the floor just inside the threshold.
Orace heard the girl give a strangled cry that choked in her throat. She would have rushed past him, but he caught and held her, though she fought him like a fury.
'Wyte — in a minnit!' he urged hoarsely.
He kept her back and edged toward the trapdoor, testing the soundness of the floor inch by inch as he advanced. It was not until he had thus satisfied himself about the safety of the footing right up to the edge of the opening that he would allow her to approach it.
They knelt down and turned the light of the torch into the gap. It shot down far into the blackness till it lost itself in space. Higher up they could see that the shaft was circular and lined with green, slimy brick. Evidently they were looking down the remains of a well over which the Old House had been built: Patricia thought she could detect a faint glimmer of reflection of the torch's light from the surface of the water. Orace fetched one of the empty beer bottles from across the room, and they dropped it down the pit. It seemed an eternity before the hollow sound of the splash returned to their ears.
'Bouter nundred feet,' Orace guessed, and in this he was approximately right, being no more than sixty feet out.
The girl leaned over and cupped her hands.
'Simon!' she called. 'Simon!'
Only the echo answered her.
'Mr. Templar, sir — Orace speakin',' bellowed the man, but it was only his own voice that boomed back out of the darkness in reply,
Patricia's face was bowed in her hands.
'Saint, Saint. . . . Oh, God. ... My darling. ...' The words came brokenly, dazedly. 'Dear God, if you can save him now, give me his life!'
Presently she looked at Orace.
'Are you sure he went that way? The other trap didn't catch him.
Orace had been examining the pitfall, and now, by the light of the torch, he pointed to the evidence. A square of the flooring had been cut out with a keyhole saw, leaving only the flimsiest connections at the corners which the weight of a man would destroy at once. The jagged ends of broken wood could be seen at once, and from one of these Orace plucked a shred of tweed and brought it close to the light.
'That there's 'is,' he said huskily. 'Looks like 'e weren't expectin' if. ...'But don' chew lose 'art, miss — 'e always wuz the luckiest man wot ever stepped. P'raps 'e's as right as ryne, lyin' aht cumfittible somewhere jus' lettin' the Tiger think 'e's a goner an' get keerless, an' orl set ready ter pop up an''ave the larf on'im lyter.'
It was not Orace's fault if he did not sound very convincing. His arm went clumsily about her, and drew her gently away and outside the room.
'One thing,' he observed in an exaggeratedly commonplace tone, 'ther carn't be no Tiger Cubs 'angin' arahnd 'ere naow — the noise we've myde, they'd uv bin buzzin' in like 'ornets be this time, if ther 'ad bin.'
'Could we get a rope and go down?' she asked, striving to master her voice.
'I'll git sum men from the village to 'avea look,' he promised. 'Ain't nothink we can do fer 'im fee
She leaned weakly against the wall, eyes closed and the tears starring on her cheeks, while Orace tried in his rough but kindly manner to console her. She hardly heard a word he said.
The Saint gone? A terrifying emptiness ached her heart. It was horrible to think of. Could a man like him be meant for such an end — to die alone in the unanswering darkness, drowned like a rat? He would have kept afloat for a long time, but if he had been alive and down there then he would have shouted back to them. Perhaps he had
