Part 8 (1/2)

CHAPTER SIX.

'It's going down!' I shrieked. I stood up and yelled and waved my arms around, for the level of the water was now stationary, and now, very slowly, dropping. It crept down the brick wall beside me, leaving a deposit of wet sludge behind it. Suddenly debris was circling round, converging on Edward, who was gallantly holding on to Johnny and the plank. He was going to be battered by everything loose in the cellar, in its whirlpool withdrawal.

'Hang on another minute!' panted Johnny. 'It's coming up. The force of the stream below is helping to keep the bin up...'

The water made sucking noises as the battered drum rose slowly into sight. My ropes were stretched to their limit. One was uncurling...unfurling...going to give way...

I dived into the water and swam in a rapid crawl to the rescue. Something buffeted my shoulder, but I kept on. Just as the rope was about to part, I reached the bin and thrust at it, forcing it away from me, over on to its side. It tipped and fell, but now it was only halfway over the whole, and Edward could release his grip on Johnny to help me shove the bin out of the way. Johnny scrambled down to help us.

Then the water was dragging at us, trying to suck us down into the drain with all the loose shale and cement and wine racks and broken furniture and planks that had been floating around. We fought our way back to the steps and huddled with our arms round each other, bruised, tired and chilled.

'What I'd give for a brandy,' groaned Edward.

I recalled with annoyance that I was never going to drink brandy again. What a pity. I twisted wet strands of hair onto the top of my head.

'I must look awful,' I said. 'The very latest look for bathing; gilt sandals, nylon bra and pants, and a lot of jewellery! What a pity I've only got one earring left!'

Edward started to say that he thought I looked marvellous, but Johnny laughed. Edward's lips relaxed and he admitted that yes, I wasn't looking quite my normal self. There was hope for my union with Edward if he could love me looking like a corpse out of a horror film.

'What now?' asked Johnny, surveying the cellar as the water level dropped lower. Everything movable was now jammed in a tight pack over the manhole, leaving only the bunk beds and the sideboard in their original positions.

We looked at our watches. Mine had stopped, Johnny's was smashed, but Edward's still worked. It was nearly midnight. We supposed the party was still carrying on way above us, although we could hear nothing of it.

'I'll start on the door when we've had a rest,' said Edward. 'Using a bolt as a hammer, I could maybe chip a hole through, using a bundle of nails tied together with wire as a chisel.'

I could see that Johnny thought as little of the plan as I did, but it was plain that doing something would be better than doing nothing, and equally plain that if we sat still for long we would slide into sleep and die. The cold in the cellar was intense. I curled up between the two men while they discussed what they ought to do if Lewis were foolish enough to check on us by opening the cellar door.

'Plenty of stuff to clobber him with here,' mused Johnny. 'Planks, an old sock filled with shale and cement mixture. I could stand flat against the wall at the head of the stairs and clobber him before he knows what's happening!'

We looked at the narrow landing at the head of the stairs and realised it wasn't going to be as easy as Johnny made out to catch Lewis. The door opened into the larder, so Lewis need only open it, standing well back, to see that the cellar was no longer flooded and that we were therefore alive. Indeed, if he had any sense, he would not touch the door to the cellar, for one look at the larder floor would show him that the water had failed to rise to the ceiling of the cellar. He would report to Amy that there was no tale-tell water on the larder floor, and...

'She will guess we are still alive and have found some way to divert the floods from inside. She will take no chances,' said Edward. 'Whether she needs proof of my death or not, she will not risk a murder charge. Better to leave us to starve and wait the seven years for presumption of my death. No, we've got to get out of here by ourselves, and the only way out is through that door.'

'New bolts top and bottom,' I muttered.

'It's oak,' said Johnny. 'It'll take for ever to get through that with what tools we have.'

'We have all the time in the world,' said Edward. 'No one will disturb us. I agree that it may take days for us to carve a way out, but that's better than dying, isn't it? We'll take it in turns. I'll start.'

I pointed to the floor. 'Look, the water is rising again!'

'The outlet's blocked with all that debris,' said Johnny, jumping down. 'We'll have to clear it again before we can start on the door.' We formed a human chain to clear the hole and drag the dustbin clear of the hole. The water sank rapidly once more, until it was running cleanly along the channel under our feet. Edward rescued the bolts, disentangled some wire from the bunk where it had been used to tie me up, and started chipping away at the door.

I crouched at the edge of the manhole, fascinated by the water as it slipped darkly away under my feet. Amy could not yet have diverted the water back through the sprinkler system or it would not be flowing so fast. Perhaps she descended to the larder every hour or so to check on the level of the water. How soon would she guess that something had gone wrong with her plan, and what action would she take then?

I s.h.i.+vered. I had a great respect for Amy.

'Look at this!' cried Johnny. He showed me a weird contraption taped to the bottom of the dustbin. He raised his voice to attract Edward's attention. 'Know anything about dynamite? There's some fixed here-they must have intended to set it off later on, in order to clear the channel for the water.'

'Don't touch it!' warned Edward.

It turned out that neither man knew anything about explosives.

'If it had a clock on it,' said Johnny, 'we could put it against the cellar door, wait for it to go off, and then walk out of here.'

'But it doesn't have a clock,' said Edward, 'which means that it is going to be detonated electrically at some time convenient to Amy. We daren't meddle with it ourselves. We can't use it. We mustn't try to alter its position or defuse it. We can't put the bin against the door and hope for the best because it might blow up while one of us is working there. Our best bet is to cart the bin into one corner of the cellar, build a barricade round it with whatever we can lay hands on, and pray!'

So that's what we did. I didn't like it. Johnny didn't like it. n.o.body liked it. But it was the only thing we could do.

Edward went back to the door, and I returned to the manhole.

'Couldn't we float a message down the drain?' I asked.

'Don't think so,' said Edward. 'You'll find a grating down-stream. I put it there a while ago to catch any debris which might come down the drain.'

Johnny came to look. He got down into the manhole, and felt around. He said he thought he could probably get the grating out, if Edward thought it was worth the effort.

'It's almost wide enough for me to go down the drain myself,' said Johnny. 'How far is it from here to the lake?'

Edward dropped his makes.h.i.+ft tools in horror. 'Don't think of it! It must be fifty metres to the lake. Remember how the lawn slopes to the lake...the drain drops sharply down below the house and enters the lake about two metres down...it would not be possible for anyone to swim all that way underwater. Besides, the drain is too narrow for any man-for any-one to get through it. It may even get narrower farther down.'

Johnny was frowning. Edward had said first that 'no man' could get through the drain, and then had amended it to 'no one'. He was right in thinking that a man as broad in the shoulder as himself or Johnny would be stuck before he got far. But a woman-a small woman, used to swimming underwater-might get through if the tunnel did not narrow at the lake end.

Johnny looked at me. 'Fifty metres?' he queried, too softly for Edward to hear.

'I don't think it's fifty metres. Maybe forty.'

'Underwater, through a drain...' Reluctantly he shook his head. 'He's right. You mustn't risk it.'

'Get the grating out, anyway. We'll try to send a message down through the drain.'

'A paper boat? A message in a bottle? Why not?'

But I knew there were no bottles in the cellar, and a paper boat would be swamped and sink in that water-filled channel. Nevertheless, I rummaged around while Johnny replaced his tripod, mended the rope and set about pulling the grating out of the drain. I quartered the floor of the cellar for Edward's pen-knife, but there was no sign of it. I suppose it had been sucked down into the drain when the water receded. I s.h.i.+vered with fear because I knew that I was going to have to go down the drain. We could not afford to wait for Amy to discover that her scheme had failed. Already Edward's movements were dragging, and Johnny moved like a sleep-walker. The chill of the cellar would finish us all off, even if Amy decided to leave us to starve to death, and did not descend on us with Lewis and the chauffeur to beat our brains out and throw us into a trench dug by night in the woods...

'What are you doing?' asked Edward, as I climbed the stairs to rummage once more in the bolster.

I explained once more that I was looking for something to send through the drain to attract attention to our plight. There was nothing left in the tool-box to help us.

He caught at my arm. 'You mustn't go down there yourself. Promise? It's too dangerous. I couldn't bear it.'

'I'm a good swimmer.'

'Not that good. Not good enough for fifty metres underwater. Promise me? The lake is full of reeds, too. It's not safe to swim there, which is why I built the pool. Promise!'

He was right, of course. I promised.