Colin Forbes - The Savage Gorge

The entrance, easily large enough for her to crawl inside, was not inviting. The interior was clean but it gradually sloped downwards until, beyond the beam's reach, it was black as pitch.

'Come on, girl,' she said to herself, hitching the pack onto her back and dropping to her knees to crawl inside. Her last hope was that Tweed had found the message shoved under his door.

When Tweed had ushered private detective Dermot Falkirk into his suite he immediately noticed a differ ence from the man he'd rescued from the cell in London. He was smartly dressed in a suit, his black hair had been cut, his moustache was shorter, neatly trimmed. His litheness was apparent in his move ments but his normally poker face was smiling.

Using a technique rarely employed by other Yard interrogators, Tweed suggested Falkirk sat in the most comfortable armchair. At the Yard he would have been escorted to a bare room, seated in an uncomfortable hard-backed chair.

'How are you, Dermot?' Tweed asked, sitting in the other armchair.

'Exhausted.' Dermot grinned. 'I have a ton of information to give you. First, I'm breaking my code of secrecy. I have been employed by Miss Lisa Clancy, the only girl who escaped being murdered – her sisters, Nancy and Petra Mandeville, the two missing daughters of Lord Bullerton.'

'I have wondered recently if that's who they were,' Tweed said grimly. 'The daughter who employed you is Lizbeth Mandeville.'

'Yes,' Falkirk agreed, 'she changed her name when she escaped from Hobart House. She picked me out of the list of private detectives because she liked "Eyes Only". Don't ask me why. Mission, to locate the mur derer of her sisters. Since I've broken the code and identified her I'll return the five thousand pounds she paid me.'

'What else did Lizbeth tell you? Incidentally, last night I called a friend at the Yard and she's under pro tection, but doesn't know it.'

'What else? She told me about this place, which was what sent me haring up to Hobartshire. On arrival I described Lisa to the landlord, pretending she'd flirted with me at a party down in London. He identified her as Lizbeth Mandeville.'

'Did Lizbeth tell you the whole story about leaving here?'

'Yes.' Falkirk smiled. 'After a little coaxing. They left to get away from her father. When they were much younger he'd bullied them and the late mother had been a strict disciplinarian. When they told Lord Bullerton he was appalled, gave each of them the sum of forty thousand pounds. They decided Lizbeth should just "disappear". Petra collected her clothes and arranged them neatly on the river bank. So she could have gone swimming and then drowned. They were pretty bitter according to Lizbeth. Well…' Falkirk shook his head. 'Not entirely.'

'Did she say what she did when she discovered the corpses?'

'Panicked. Rushed back into her house, locked and bolted the front door, switched off all the lights. That's when she saw, peering from behind a net curtain, the Rolls-Royce and amiable Mr Neville Guile.'

'That would be his first of two visits. Actually saw him?'

'Had his tinted glass window down, was peering out. She recognized him from a picture in a glossy magazine.'

'Know much about him?'

'Guile is the cruellest villain in Europe. Most mur derous. Ruthless, callous and brutal. Adopts any method to succeed. Once he kidnapped the daughter of a Belgian banker who refused to sell his oil hold ings. A message was sent to the banker that if he didn't sell within twenty-four hours the daughter would be returned. In pieces. The banker sold the oil holdings through an intermediary. The girl, unharmed but out of her wits with fear, was thrown from a car at the entrance to the banker's villa.'

'A very nasty piece of work,' Tweed commented.

'Yet he has a most remarkable personality, can charm the birds out of the trees, especially the female variety. Operates via third parties, so the police can never link him to his crimes.'

'So at present Lord Bullerton is his front man.'

'That's what I suspect,' Falkirk agreed. 'And Bullerton may have no idea of what is really going on.'

'May,' Tweed emphasized.

At that moment he saw the edge of the envelope Paula had pushed under his door. He opened it, read what she had written and thought for a moment. After her traumatic experience at the falls, then seeing the murdered Hartland Trent, she was probably exhausted, would sleep the night through.

Paula had dropped to her knees to explore the tunnel. When she risked shining her more powerful torch into the darkness the beam faded into blackness a few yards ahead. The tunnel must be endless. She had just entered when the metal buckle on her backpack scraped against the top of the tunnel. She worried about the noise, hauled the pack off her back and dragged it along by the handle. It was not long before the pressure of the unknown crept into her mind. She gritted her teeth, determined to discover the reason for the tunnel.

The tunnel continued its gradual descent. Soon she'd be deep under Black Gorse Moor. Not a pleas ant thought. She was also worried that someone might find the lid entrance removed. Her back was completely exposed to attack. She paused frequently to listen.

The absolute silence was worse. It began to get on her nerves. She pressed on, crawling slowly. The hand which dragged her pack also held her powerful torch awkwardly, but she needed at least one hand free in case of emergency. Now the surface of the tunnel, still dropping, began to curve to her right so her torch could not illuminate what might lie ahead. She slowed her progress. Her outstretched left hand suddenly felt nothing beneath it. Dante's Inferno was nothing com pared to this.

Her exploring left hand felt round the rim of noth ing. She let go momentarily of her pack, aimed the torch, which had been wobbling all over the place. She had reached a vertical tunnel descending into the bowels of the earth. Beyond, her tunnel continued into darkness.

Easing herself forward inch by inch, she arrived at the rim of this new tunnel. She shone her torch down, almost dropped it in her shock. About eight feet down the beam was shining on the dead face of Archie MacBlade, body jammed into a space where the ver tical tunnel narrowed. The eyes were closed.

'MacBlade!' she gasped in a whisper.

The eyes opened. One winked at her. That was when she heard voices, curiously distorted as they travelled down the extension of the vertical tunnel up to the moor. Instinctively she switched off her torch, hauled herself back a short distance from the rim. Despite the distortion, there was one voice she re cognized immediately.

'You are quite clear what you have to do as soon as dawn comes?' the cut glass voice of Neville Guile demanded.

'Oh, I knows me business,' Ned Marsh, a wiry man with a hooked nose and a harelip, responded in his coarse voice.

'Then repeat your instructions and take that self- satisfied look off your ugly face.'

'At dawn I'll 'ave brought the truck of rubble and mud 'ere. I empty the flamin' lot down this tunnel. That bastard MacBlade will never be found.'

'Must be dead already/ Guile answered casually, 'after the blow from your cosh on the back of his head. And bring the truck along the top moor road. Time we moved off.'

Paula had held herself so still that after waiting to be sure they had gone she had to stretch. She shone her torch down inside the tunnel where MacBlade was trapped by the bulge in the wall. He called up to her in little more than a whisper.

'If I try to move I'll shift this soil bulge and drop twenty more feet. Bit of a problem, Paula.'

'Don't move an inch,' she whispered back. 'I've got an idea.'

The ingenious Harry had from time to time given her different equipment she might need. One item, stowed in her backpack, was a length of rope tightly knotted at three-foot intervals, and with a metal hook at one end covered with thick rubber. He'd told her it would 'come in handy' for entering the first floor of a target house. Lowering the rope, hooked end first, she told MacBlade what to do. As she talked, she wrapped the other end of the rope round her waist, praying she'd be strong enough to hold his weight. Twisting her body round, she pressed both feet against the top of the tunnel where the metal surface was rougher. She peered over the edge, told him to come up when ready. MacBlade had followed her instructions to the letter. With the rubber-covered hook tucked inside his thick leather waist belt, he began hauling himself up, hands gripping a knot, then another. As soon as he moved, the soil bulge which had held him collapsed. Without the rope, he would have fallen at least twenty feet into the depths.