Arthur Upfield - Man of Two Tribes

“Wave your arms,” he ordered, and the little man did so. Having re-lit the lamp, he called to Maddoch to join him.

“What is your height?”

“Five feet seven, Inspector.”

“Your age?”

“Fifty-four.”

“Now show me the rest of this place.”

Maddoch conducted him to a short off-passage ending in a cul-de-sac, explaining that once it had been used as a dump, and was now the site of a tunnel being driven by Jenks, who thought this was the only way out.

“He’s been working here for a long time,” Maddoch said, indicating a hole roughly wide enough to take Riddell’s larger frame. Bony peered into the hole, seeing that the tunnel had been excavated for less than six feet. “All he had to dig with was a table knife, which is why the table knives are worn halfway and to a point. When he broke two off at the handle, the doctor made him stop.”

There was so much in Bony’s mind clamouring for elucidation, but he schooled himself to concentrate on the dead man, and the plan of this underground labyrinth.

“All right, Maddoch, go ahead.”

There was an annexe off this cavern which his guide said was the largest, and was evidently the sleeping quarters of the five surviving men. This concluded the points of interest here, and Maddoch then led the way down a sloping passage having a rough floor, and not wide enough to permit two persons to pass. Following many twists and sharp turns, they came to what Maddoch announced was The Jeweller’s Shop.

The light carried by Maddoch was reflected to them from a million points. The chamber was so crowded with chandelier stalactites meeting with stalagmites rising from the floor that these columns of calcium carbonate formed fluted drapery, fashioned organ pipes of pearl, even the jaws of sharks, mysterious grottoes and implements of torture.

“Look. I’ll show you,” cried Maddoch, a note of ecstasy in his thin voice which echoed as though by a giant. Stepping behind the columns he waved the lamp, and the columns shimmered in pearl and silver, and caused to be born and instantly die a myriad of bright bars. The roof was filled with stars, winking as the light moved. The little man continued in the role of Aladdin in his vast and glorious treasure house, and had to be brought to earth by Bony, who wished to know if the running water, flowing into a great basin and slowly spilling over to cascade into a shaft, was their water supply.

“Yes, Inspector. There used to be fish in it-before I came. Igor said he played with them, and was sorry when Fiddler caught and cooked them. They didn’t have eyes, and were a dull white colour, and not very palatable.”

A passage beyond this cavern was less easy to traverse. It was never of the same width, often being so narrow that Bony wondered if Riddell had negotiated it. It sank abruptly, and at the bottom of the incline they had to crawl under a rock over-hang where claustrophobia would have been distinctly unpleasant. From this point the passage rose slightly, often sharply angled, and ended at yet another cavern the shape of which required a few moments to discern.

This was actually a long compartment where they found themselves on a broad ledge above a wide crack in the floor. Beyond the crack was a similar ledge, and at the rear of this ledge faint daylight revealed the mouth of another passage, which, before the earth had split, had been a continuation of the passage they had come by.

The place was filled with sound. Water gushed, and from the wide crack came the distant roar of water, and another sound to give one pause to consider whether Ganba after all might not be just aboriginal legend.

Maddoch stepped to the edge of the chasm, waved his lamp over it in invitation to Bony to join him and gaze downward, but Bony declined, for he was not yet completely sure of Mr. Clifford Maddoch.

“You don’t like heights,” Maddoch said. “I don’t either, but sometimes I force myself to do something I dislike. How wided’youthink this black gulf is?”

“The light makes it sheer guessing. Perhaps ten feet.”

“Quite a jump anyway,” Maddoch conceded. “Fiddler made it-one way. Shall we rest and smoke? D’youremember Fiddler?”

They sat with their backs to the wall and their feet were then a couple of yards or more from the lip of the chasm. Bony began with tobacco and paper, and Maddoch produced a table knife, worn almost to the handle and having a long point, with which he cut tobacco from a plug.

“I remember his case in part,” Bony replied. “But you tell me.”

“I didn’t know Fiddler, but since being here, what I know of him I learned from Mitski-that he was overbearing and often unpleasant.

“Arthur Fiddler must have been unbalanced. Early in his career he served jail terms, and then when he was in his early thirties and working as a steeple-jack, his workmate fell and was killed. Fiddler took over the widow and her two children. He could have married the woman, but didn’t.

“It seems that he cared for this family commendably for two years, when the woman left him and the two young children. Then, you remember, he gassed the children via the kitchen stove, and only escaped death with them through a miracle of medical science. The usual thing, you know, death sentence, commuted to life, and released on parole after having served eleven years.

“When he was brought here, Igor Mitski had spent ten months alone, for Mitski was the first to be brought here, and the coming of Fiddler saved his sanity. Fiddler was an agile man, as a steeple-jack would be, and he discussed with Igor the possibility of jumping across to the other side to see if that daylight over there meant escape.

“Like us, they could see that the far ledge is slightly lower than this one, and we agreed that the distance between is ten feet, but, as you will also see, the place from which to make the leap is narrow, too narrow to jump with confidence, I’d say.

“Anyway, Arthur Fiddler decided to do it, backing into the passage to extend his run, and Mitski standing right at the edge with the lamp to guide his take off.

“Fiddler made it to the far side. He shouted back at Igor, who cheered his effort, and then he went into the far passage in which he disappeared. Igor waited for Fiddler to return, and when he did, the oil in the lamp had given out. Fiddler shouted that there was nothing above-not a house, a cultivated field or a road of any kind. The land was as flat as a pancake all the way to the horizon on every side, excepting to the north, where he could see sand dunes. He said they must be on Mars. He had gone a little way from the exit and then realised he might never find the hole again, so he had taken off his shirt, which happened to be white, and laid it over a low bush to guide him back. But after going a mile towards the sand dunes, he found that if he went any farther he wouldn’t see the shirt, and so he had returned.

“Igor said he was very excited, and talked like a man who had been badly frightened. He wanted to jump back to what now was safety, but had to wait until Igor refuelled the lamp. He was still there when Igor came back, but appeared to be losing his nerve and said that the return jump looked much more difficult than the first.

“They tried to find a way for Igor to assist him, but there was none. Finally Fiddler said he would delay no longer, and so Igor placed the lamp at the edge of the chasm and Fiddler took his run from the widest part he could find. Well, he missed the ledge by only a few inches, and Igor could do nothing to help him. And so Fiddler fell to his death and Igor was left alone for another five months, when Dr. Havant was brought here.”

“There’s no way down that cleft, I suppose?” asked Bony.

“No. And it’s a long way down to the water. One can count seven slowly before hearing a stone splash.”