At seven o’clock, the first detachment of troops arrived by motor van. The local police had already reported that they had found no trace of Margaret Belman. They pointed out that the tide was falling when the girl left Larmes Keep, and that, unless she was lying on some invisible ledge, she must have reached the beach in safety. There was a very faint hope that she was alive. How faint J. G. Reeder would not admit.
A local cook had been brought in to prepare dinner for the detective, but Reeder contented himself with a cup of strong coffee—food, he felt, would have choked him.
He had posted a detachment in the quarry and, returning to the house, was sitting in the big hall, pondering the events of the day, when Gray came flying into the room.
“Brill!” he gasped.
J. G. Reeder sprang to his feet with a bound.
“Brill?” he repeated huskily. “Where is Brill?”
There was no need for Gray to point. A dishevelled and grimy figure, supported by a detective, staggered through the doorway.
“Where have you come from?” asked Reeder.
The man could not speak for a second. He pointed to the ground, and then, hoarsely:
“From the bottom of the well. … Miss Belman is down there now!”
Brill was in a state of collapse, and not until he had had a stiff dose of brandy was he able to articulate a coherent story. Reeder led a party to the shrubbery and the windlass was tested.
“It won’t bear even the weight of a woman, and there’s not sufficient rope,” said Gray, who made the test.
One of the officers remembered that, in searching the kitchen, he had found two window-cleaners’ belts, stout straps with a safety hook attached. He went in search of these while Mr. Reeder stripped his coat and vest.
“There’s a gap of four feet halfway down,” warned Brill. “The stone came away when I put my foot on it, and I nearly fell.”
Reeder, his lamp swung around his neck, peered down into the hole.
“It’s strange I didn’t see this ladder when I saw the well before,” he said, and then remembered that he had only opened one half of the hinged trap.
Gray, who was also equipped with a belt, descended first, as he was the lighter of the two. By this time half a company of soldiers were on the scene, and by the greatest of good fortune the unit that had been turned out to assist the police was a company of the Royal Engineers. While one party went in search of ropes, the other began to extemporize a hauling gear.
The two men worked their way down without a word. The lamps were fairly useless, for they could not show them the next rung, and after a while they began to move more cautiously. Gray found the gap and called a halt while he bridged it. The next rung was none too secure, Mr. Reader thought, as he lowered his weight upon it, but they passed the danger zone with no other mishap than that which was caused by big pebbles dropping on Reeder’s head.
It seemed as though they would never reach the bottom, and the strain was already telling upon the older man when Gray whispered:
“This is the bottom, I think,” and sent the light of his lamp downward. Immediately afterward, he dropped to the rocky floor of the passage, Mr. Reeder following.
“Margaret!” he called in a whisper.
There was no reply. He threw the light first one way and then the other, but Margaret was not in sight, and his heart sank.
“You go farther along the passage,” he whispered to Gray. “I’ll take the other direction.”
With the light of his lamp on the ground, he half walked, half ran along the twisting gallery. Ahead of him he heard the sound of a movement not easily identified, and he stopped to extinguish the light. Moving cautiously forward, he turned an angle of the passage and saw at the far end indication of light. Sitting down, he looked along, and after a while he thought he saw a figure moving against this artificial skyline. Mr. Reeder crept forward, and this time he was not relying upon a rubber truncheon. He thumbed down the safety catch of his Browning and drew nearer and nearer to the figure. Most unexpectedly it spoke.
“Olga, where has your father gone?”
It was Mrs. Burton, and Reeder showed his teeth in an unamused grin.
He did not hear the reply; it came from some recessed place, and the sound was muffled.
“Have they found that girl?”
Mr. Reeder listened breathlessly, craning his neck forward. The “No” was very distinct.
Then Olga said something that he could not hear, and Mrs. Burton’s voice took on her old whine of complaint.
“What’s the use of hanging about? That’s the way you’ve always treated me. Nobody would think I was your mother. I wonder I’m not dead, the trouble I’ve had. I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t murder me some day, you mark my words!”
There came an impatient protest from the hidden girl.
“If you’re sick of it, what about me?” said Mrs. Burton shrilly. “Where’s Daver? It’s funny your father hasn’t said anything about Daver. Do you think he’s got into trouble?”
“Oh, damn Daver!”
Olga’s voice was distinct now. The passion and weariness in it would have made Mr. Reeder sorry for her in any other circumstances. He was too busy being sorry for Margaret Belman to worry about this fateful young woman.
She did not know, at any rate, that she was a widow. Mr. Reeder derived a certain amount of gruesome satisfaction from the superiority of his intelligence.
“Where is he now? Your father, I mean?”
A pause, as she listened to a reply which was not intelligible to Mr. Reeder.
“On the boat? He’ll never get across. I hate ships, but a tiny little boat like that—Why couldn’t he let us go, when we got him out? I begged and prayed him to—we might have been in
