Elizabeth Peters - Borrower of the Night

‘So do I.’

‘I will see what is wrong with me,’ said Blankenhagen.

‘I’m glad somebody around here is a doctor,’ said Tony.

I offered to light a match, but Blankenhagen refused. Maybe he didn’t want to see the damage. I didn’t enjoy the following minutes; I could tell by Blankenhagen’s grunts and gasps whenever he found a new bruise.

‘Nothing has been broken,’ he announced, ‘except the arm. You cannot go for help?’

‘I don’t know,’ Tony said. ‘We haven’t explored yet. But I have a feeling the guy who tricked us in here isn’t going to leave an exit open.’

‘Perhaps you would care to look?’ Blankenhagen suggested. I didn’t blame him for sounding sarcastic.

‘Okay,’ said Tony meekly. He stood up; and then sat down again, clutching his head.

‘I am sorry,’ said Blankenhagen, feeling his weight descend. ‘I did not think . . . You are injured. If you will come here, I will try – ’

‘Oh, don’t be so damned noble,’ said Tony grumpily. ‘I’m all right. I just had a thought. Maybe some of this wood might make a torch. We’d have an easier time with a little light.’

‘Without oil or petrol,’ Blankenhagen began.

I interrupted him with a hoot of triumph. ‘I have some oil. I got it so I could oil the locks.’

I fished the almost forgotten can out of my coat pocket and gave it to Tony. He wasted several matches experimenting, but finally a chunk of wood consented to burn.

We looked first at the shaft. One look was enough.

A few stairs remained, at the very top. The lowest tread was five feet above my upstretched fingertips.

Tony turned the light into the passage that led out of the shaft. It was faced with stones cemented together. We could see only a few feet of its length; it turned a corner not far from us.

Tony started down the passage, but he had taken only a couple of steps when he swayed dizzily and fell back against the wall. I grabbed the torch from his hand.

‘Sit down till you get your strength back,’ I said. ‘I’ll have a look.’

He didn’t argue. He looked sick.

The roof of the passage was so low that I had to stoop. I went on around the corner, but I didn’t go far. Just behind the bend, the passage ended. It was not the original end. A mass of loose stones and dirt had spilled down from the roof, filling the tunnel from top to bottom. To me, it looked like a very recent cave-in.

Chapter Eleven

I HAD NOT EXPECTED to find an open door with an EXIT sign beside it; but I hadn’t anticipated anything quite as bad as this. My hands were shaking as I wedged my torch into a crack in the wall and started digging. It didn’t take long to verify my pessimistic suspicions. The dirt and rubble continued for some distance. For all I knew, the rest of the tunnel might be filled. And I was here, in a neat airless trap, with two injured men.

I gave vent to my emotions briefly, but I did it without noise. Then I wiped my face on the sleeve of my coat and went back to the wounded.

Tony, squatting with his back up against the tunnel wall, looked a little better. I had put on a cheery smile, but it didn’t deceive him.

‘No way out?’

‘It doesn’t look good.’ I handed him the torch and knelt down by Blankenhagen, whose eyes were closed. ‘Doctor. If you can tell me what to do as I go along, I’ll try to fix your arm.’

‘I will tell you first,’ said Blankenhagen, without opening his eyes. ‘I am about to lose consciousness.’

And he did, too, as soon as I put my clumsy paws on his arm. Tony offered to take over, but I clamped my lower lip between my teeth and elbowed him away. Like mine, his knowledge was purely theoretical, derived from far-off memories of Scout manuals and Red Cross training. I did the job, with strips torn from my blouse and pieces of wood from the stairs; but I was covered with perspiration by the time I was through.

After a while, Blankenhagen opened one eye.

‘Finished?’ he inquired warily.

‘Finished is right.’ Iwas sitting on the floor next to Tony.

‘Then speak,’ ordered Blankenhagen, prone but positive. ‘What is our position?’

I told them. Neither of them liked it very much.

‘Seems to me,’ I concluded, ‘that our best bet is to try to dig through the earth fall. Even if I could climb the shaft – which I can’t – we can be sure that trapdoor is closed for good. The stone is a foot thick, and it’s down in the cellars, where no one ever comes. But if the dirt is just a localized fall, we can dig through it. Maybe.’

‘I can climb the shaft,’ said Tony, squinting up at it. ‘It’s a simple chimney job. But I agree with your other conclusions. I could hang up there yelling till I sprouted mushrooms before anyone would hear me.’

‘I didn’t know you could climb,’ I said, distracted.

‘I have many talents you don’t know about.’ Tony tried to leer, but didn’t do a very good job of it. ‘How far underground do you suppose we are?’

‘You mean we might try to dig out through the ceiling of the tunnel? We must be twenty or thirty feet down; the land rises behind the Schloss. What would we do with the dirt? There’s enough of it out there in the tunnel right now.’

‘But,’ said Blankenhagen, ‘if you dig through, and find the exit at the other end is also blocked?’

‘Let’s not cross bridges till we come to them,’ I said. ‘However, I don’t think our friend would have created a landslide if the exit at the other end were easy to close.’

‘It was deliberate, you believe?’

‘The dirt hasn’t been there long. And the rest of this is deliberate. I can assure you I didn’t dive feet first down that shaft on purpose. I’ll bet the stairs were partially sawed through, too.’

‘Someone flung you down?’ exclaimed Blankenhagen, as if the idea had just occurred to him. ‘You saw who it was?’

‘I saw nothing. I still don’t know who has been behind all the skulduggery. I suspect two people – ’

‘One of whom,’ said Tony, ‘could be you, Blankenhagen.’

Blankenhagen surveyed his battered form in meaningful silence. Tony shook his head.

‘That part could have been an accident – the stairs, I mean. You could have rapped me on the head and left me here if the stairs hadn’t collapsed.’

‘That’s silly,’ I said impatiently. ‘My money is still on the countess and Miss Burton. Good Lord, they are the only two left. And this argument isn’t getting us out of here.’

‘And,’ said Blankenhagen, ‘we may not have so much time.’

He didn’t have that much time. My surgery had been crude, and we had no antiseptic. A couple of days down here in his condition and he wouldn’t care about getting out. But that was not what he meant. The air in the tunnel had always been close and dry. Now, it seemed to me, it was already perceptibly warmer.

With Tony’s help, Blankenhagen managed to drag himself along the tunnel to where the dirt blocked the way, but when he tried to dig he collapsed.

‘I told you so,’ I said, helping Tony drag him out of the way. ‘I’ll start digging. I am, if you will pardon the expression, in better shape than either of you. And put out that torch, it’s just using air. This is going to be mostly by touch anyhow.’

Then began a period of time which is the worst memory of a not wholly pleasant summer. I started with great energy, sending out a spray of dirt like a burrowing puppy. Despite my boast I wasn’t feeling all that hot; I hadn’t had any sleep and my bruises ached. But there is no incentive quite as persuasive as the fear of dying of asphyxiation.