Bell started after him again, each breath a stab of agony. He’d broken ribs before and knew the feeling and, thankfully, this wasn’t that. But his pace was off.
The bomber reached the staging and started down without a moment’s hesitation. If he reached the bottom with too much of a head start, Bell felt certain he’d lose him in the anonymity of the rescuers hard at work down below.
Next to the scaffolding was an area with benches covered with tools, and a pulley for hauling things up from below. When Bell reached it and looked over the edge, the bomber was nothing more than a shifting shadow lost in the latticework.
He was going to lose the man if he didn’t think of something quick. At the base of the wall was a large bucket used to raise tools and materials up to the top. Bell hoped to use it as a counterweight, but it was filled with bags of portland cement, several hundred pounds’ worth, and far too heavy for his purposes. They used horses, he realized, as power to hoist.
Instead of holding on to the rope and letting gravity do the work, Bell snatched up a pair of heavy iron tongs, like riveters use to hold hot bolts while they’re being pounded into place. The jaws of the tongs closed in a circular shape just slightly larger around than the hemp rope. Had they clamped tight, Bell’s plan would have been dashed.
He got a firm grip on both handles and stepped off the concrete wall. Gravity should have sent him plummeting to his death, but his weight and the width of the tongs’s jaws meant the rope had to kink sharply as he fell, the friction of metal against the rope slowing his descent to a manageable speed. Still, it was a harrowing drop from the heights of the lock.
The landing was brutal, but he had gained on his man. The bomber was running hard again and ducked out through the opening in the gates they’d leapt from moments before. Bell gave chase.
From the ground level, the doors looked like the enormous portal to some pagan temple, and once again Bell was staggered by the scale of the canal. When he made it through the open gate, he saw the construction site spread out before him. A pair of locomotives sat, huffing steam, on a siding, while a truck raced up the hill away from the site, likely on a mission to bring additional help.
What Bell didn’t see was his quarry. He knew he had been close enough that the man couldn’t have escaped. There was only one place he could go. Bell rounded the front of the lock and encountered an eighteen-foot culvert, big enough to serve as a railroad tunnel, that ran the length of the lock. It was one of the conduits used to fill the massive locks with water.
The far opening was a thousand feet distant and looked as small and pale as a wafer. Bell drew his pistol again and started jogging. The light faded quickly yet he could hear the bomber running ahead of him and could just discern his loping figure in silhouette.
“Stop,” Bell shouted and fired a single bullet down the tunnel but well above the fugitive.
The man kept going. Bell went after him yet again. He raced past an inky black tunnel below that ran across the lock’s chamber. Though it was smaller than the main pipe, Bell could have ridden through it on horseback.
Deeper into the concrete structure, the light faded further. Bell could no longer see the bomber’s silhouette. He had moved closer to the side of the culvert to mask his location.
Bell passed another dark tunnel crossing below and then a third. He was almost past the fourth when he noticed something different. A bit of light filtered down the shaft from one of the well openings embedded in the floor of the lock. He had a snap decision to make and he’d either be right or the madman would escape. He turned and ran down the side tunnel, trusting his instincts. Cornered rats always take the first way out.
Over the sound of his ragged breathing and the echoing slap of his rubber boots on the tunnel floor, he could hear the bomber running ahead of him. Bell passed under three of the covered round holes in the ceiling, each the size of a large dining room table. It was up ahead, at the fifth and final one, that Bell saw the bomber. He was halfway up a ladder left behind by workers.
Bell would never catch him. The distance was too great. He’d be up on the surface in seconds and he’d haul the ladder up after himself. That would be it.
Bell stopped, raised his pistol so that its weight rested in his left hand and was guided by his right. The shots came in one thunderous tattoo and were painfully loud in the confined tunnel.
No sooner had the man’s legs vanished up the tunnel than the ladder was drawn up too.
Bell had failed. By the time he cut back across the width of the lock chamber and made it out the main culvert, the bomber would have vanished. Still, he wouldn’t call it fate or bad luck and just succumb to defeat. He ran, as best he could, back out of the giant’s maze of piping and conduits. His muscles felt rubbery, his body ached, and he was thoroughly exhausted, but he pushed on at an anemic pace. He didn’t stop until he reached daylight.
The scene was as it had been just moments earlier. The trains were there, and a different truck was driving toward the construction zone. Some of the men in the distance moved like walking corpses, while others ran about with frantic haste. Bell saw no one running, or even walking, inside the empty lock. The bomber had either climbed out of the chamber on some scaffolding or just
