“I had the curiosity to examine that Blowhole cave at low tide once, inspector,” he explained as he drove up towards the hotel. “The thing works this way. The entrance is low, and the tide fills it soon. The air in the cave can still get out by a narrow tunnel leading up to the Blowhole. But in a minute or two this second tunnel’s mouth gets filled up, and there’s no escape from the cave. The sides are smooth, and the tide rises quickly, so that fellow will either drown or else he’ll creep into the Blowhole tunnel to escape. The tide rises a bit farther, and compresses the air in the cave. At that stage the souffleur begins to work. Intermittently, you get the air-pressure in the cave big enough to blow through the Blowhole tunnel, carrying the layer of water there in front of it; and that mixture of water and compressed air makes the jet. So, you see, if that fellow’s in the cave, he must be swimming round like a rat in a pail; and if he’s in the tunnel, he must be suffering agonies as the jet comes up and tears at him. You know what sort of force it has. And if he can’t cling on to the rocks of the tunnel, he’ll be battered against the sides as the jet carries him before it, and he’ll probably be severely injured by the time it spits him out at the top.”
“Good Lord!” said the inspector, as the realisation of the thing crept into his mind. “That’s a nasty trap to fall into. He’s going to get his gruel, sure enough.”
They had reached the hotel, and Sir Clinton dispatched the constable to bring ropes, if any were available.
“You don’t seem eager to get him out, sir,” the inspector ventured, as they were waiting.
“I don’t know exactly what happened at Peter Hay’s tonight,” Sir Clinton returned, “but I saw enough to know it was something uncommonly bad that they were trying to do to that girl, inspector. It must have been something worse than the normal way of putting the screw on a woman. Our friend in the Blowhole didn’t mind doing that. And, somehow, that makes me feel a bit indolent when it comes to rescuing him. Let him go through it. Besides, the longer he’s there—if we happen to get him out alive—the more his nerves will be shaken, and the easier it will be to wring some truth out of him. You can tackle him at once, before the effect wears off. And I shan’t feel inclined to ask you to be moderate in your questioning this time. We must get all we can out of him while he’s got the jumps. I’ve no doubt whatever that Billingford will turn King’s evidence if he gets half a chance—he’s that sort. But the other fellow was deeper in, and we may get more out of him if we can catch him at the right moment. So I’m not really in much of a hurry. This isn’t a case where my humanitarian instincts are roused in the very slightest.”
He broke off, seeing Wendover coming out of the hotel.
“Everything fixed up comfortably, squire?” he asked.
Wendover nodded affirmatively; then, as Sir Clinton invited him to join them, he amplified his news.
“We got Mrs. Fleetwood down here quite comfortably; and she’s upstairs now. Very shaken up, of course; but she’s a plucky girl, and she hasn’t had any bad collapse of her nerves so far, though one might have expected it.”
“I’ve a good mind to see her myself now,” Sir Clinton said thoughtfully. “Did she say anything about what they’d done to her?”
“No. But she asked me to send for Rafford immediately. I didn’t like to worry her with questions.”
Sir Clinton’s face darkened.
“It’s a nuisance we have to go and fish that creature out of the Blowhole. I’d much prefer to leave him there to go through it. He deserves as long a spell as we can give him. But I suppose there would be a howl if we left him to die. Besides, I want to hang him if I can. By the way, what about his jovial colleague, Billingford?”
“He’s here too,” Wendover explained. “We thought we’d bring him to the hotel and wait for your instructions. He’s safe enough.”
“That’s all right. Now here’s the constable with the ropes, so I think we’ll have to move on.”
Sir Clinton showed no desire to hurry; nor did Wendover when he had learned the state of affairs. Both of them were in the mood to prolong the agony so far as decency permitted. Wendover could not get out of his mind the expression he had seen on Cressida’s face at Peter Hay’s cottage; and when it came back to his memory he felt that the man in the Blowhole tunnel was getting only a fair retribution for his crime.
As they came near the mouth of the souffleur, the great fountain shot up into the night air and broke in spray in the moonlight. Sir Clinton hurried forward and bent down to listen to the orifice.
“He’s there, all right, and still alive,” he reported. “A trifle unnerved, to judge by his appeals. I suppose we’ll have to yank him out now.”
Armadale also had been listening to the cries from below.
“If we get him out in that state,” he said, with satisfaction, “there won’t be much that he’ll keep back when we start questioning him. He’s all to pieces.”
Before they could do any more, the souffleur spouted again. Wendover, whose imagination was keener than that of the inspector, was suddenly appalled by the picture conjured up by that wild fountain jetting from the ground. Down below their feet he could see with his mind’s eye the miserable wretch clinging for life to some inequality in the tunnel, while the continual blasts of the
