Man of Two Tribes b-21 Read online

  “When excited, Mitski’s voice did irritate you,” he pressed.

  “Yes, it did. I used to beg of him to be calm. His voice didn’t go on and on for hours like my wife’s did, when I could have screamed for sleep, yet didn’t dare occupy another room.”

  “Where were you when Mitski shouted ‘Donot! Do not! Help!’?”

  “I was coming from the Jeweller’s Shop where I’d been to empty kitchen waste down a shaft,” replied Maddoch. “I know the way so well that I didn’t need a light, and oil is precious. I heard Igor call out just before I left the passage to this cavern, and when I entered it, I saw movement just here. Whatever it was-I didn’t know then what it was-it stopped as I went towards it and I could see nothing. As I was groping past that big boulder, I heard someone behind me and Riddell grabbed me, and the others were all here.”

  “You say you were without a light. Where was the light in this cavern when you saw movement?”

  “I didn’t need a light.”

  “Then how could you see movement in the dark?”

  “I’ll show you how it is, Inspector. I’ll stay here. You go over there and blow out the lamp.”

  Bony accepted the suggestion. Having puffed out the lamp, he waited for his eyes to become accustomed to the darkness when he found that the light from the distant ‘hall’ gave just sufficient illumination to see the formless figure standing beside the body, and the boulder which was several feet to the left.

  “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 b
ush 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.”

  “Who came after Dr. Havant?”

  “I did. Then Brennan and after him Riddell. After Riddell came Jenks. The girl came but a little while ago. I don’t know exactly when. We’ve given up counting days. What’s that?”

  Into the narrow circle of light entered Lucy, tail wagging her pleasure at finding them.

  “I had forgotten about the little dog. Hadn’t you?” Maddoch cried, hugging Lucy against his chest.

  “Yes… and no,” confessed Bony. “Tell me what happened to you, the manner in which you were brought here.”

  “Well, in a way, it was just the same as the others, Inspector. One of the conditions under which I was released was that I was to go at once and remain on a small station property owned by my brother. I was on the way by train, when a woman who was travelling with a man in the same compartment asked me if I were Clifford Maddoch, and when I admitted it, the man said they were delighted to meet me as they were near neighbours of my brother, who had told them I would be on that train.

  “I thought it was very decent of them because, after being imprisoned for several years, the outside world is a little frightening. When the train reached a junction, where it halted for twenty minutes, the man suggested that he and I might like to stretch our legs. So we did this, and, quite naturally, both of us walked towards the lavatory, which, as at most railway stops, was at the far end of the platform, and beyond the platform lights.

  “As I was about to enter the lavatory, I was struck from behind, and from then on it was all sleeping, and dreaming I was on a truck going somewhere, and not caring where. I remember being lifted from the truck-it could have been a car-and then a sense of being lifted off the ground, and a louder sound was all about me like air. When I did come to my senses, I was lying on blankets in what we call the hall, being given coffee by Dr. Havant, and Igor Mitski was kneeling beside me.”

  “Can you describe the man and the woman on the train?”

  “Yes. The man, or the woman, or both, had a part in kidnapping all of us. The woman was dark and of slight build. She smiled often, but never with her eyes, and Myra Thomas reminds me of her. The man was slightly built but wiry and active. He had dark hair and dark eyes, too. He talked alot, I seem to remember, but am not clear on this.”

  “You would know them again?”

  “Oh, yes. I would surely know them again, Inspector,” answered Clifford Maddoch, and the harshness, the brittle hatred, shocked Bony.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Bony Nominates an Ally

  “NOW, Maddoch,” Bony said, “relax and let me think.”

  Including ArthurFiddler, and Igor Mitski who lay dead and still unburied, seven men convicted of murder and sentenced to long terms of imprisonment had been released, abducted and conveyed to these caverns. And a woman who had been acquitted of the charge of murder also had been abducted and brought here.

  In every case the release waseffected before the expiration of the sentence imposed by the court. In one case, that of Mark Brennan, the prisoner had been released despite his papers having been markedNeverTo Be Released. The ethics of these persons in authority in subverting the sentence imposed by the constituted court was a matter of no official concern to a police officer.

  Facts were what Bony sought. The apprehension of lawbreakers was his job, and this he often reiterated. The channels through which political influences could work to achieve the release of any of the seven murderers were unknown to him, and, in any case, were not in his territory.

  Of official concern to him was that these seven convicted murderers on being released were re-imprisoned without the authority of the State, and in a place not authorised by the State. These men were made free citizens although bound for a period by certain conditions, and that they had not abided by the conditions had been due to circumstances wholly beyond their control.

  Within days of release, each had been coshed or drugged, conveyed hundreds of miles by road, then most likely by air and lowered into these caverns where living conditions were far worse than those ruling in a modern Australian jail.

  They were provided with food, tinned and dehydrated, a stove to cook the food, and oil to maintain half a dozen lamps. They were given straw-stuffed mattresses and blankets and the common medical remedies but the doctor among them was refused any instruments. Although not denied bare necessities, including hair-cutters and safety razors, they were denied replacement of footwear and mental food by way of books and papers.

  The delivery of supplies was irregular and once, for a period of five days, they had been without kerosene for the stove and lamps, following which Jenks had been appointed custodian of the fuel and light stocks. By what type of transport they and the supplies had been conveyed, the prisoners were not in agreement, one saying that even in his drugged state he believed he saw the lifting blades of a helicopter; and another thought he had been brought all the way by truck. At times, when supplies only were brought, they thought it must be by truck, judging by the noise of the engine, but on this point Bonywas sure that transportation had been by aircraft.

  “Tell me,” he said, “just what occurs when supplies are delivered.”

  “They always come at night,” replied Maddoch. “We hear them coming-the engine I mean-long before it actually gets here. The first thing that happens is that a powerful torch is switched on and directed down into the hall. Then a man says: ‘All of you below, show yourselves.’ Maybe the reason for that is to prove how many of us are still alive. A long time ago, Doctor Havant objected to this, and was told that the supplies would be estimated on the number of prisoners showing themselves. The doctor continued to object, and no one showed himself. Then no supplies were lowered, and we were on short rations and practically starving when they came again.

  “Since then we all show ourselves. The stuff is lowered in sacks, and the oil comes in steel containers holding four gallons. The empty cans are hauled up. Once Jenks caught hold of the rope and attempted to climb up by it, but he was told he was asking to be knocked on the head. Another time Mitski held the rope and refused to let it be drawn up. The men above fired a warning shot, and that settled that.”

  According to Maddoch, boredom was their greatest enemy, especially when convinced there was no possible escape excepting by the chasm which had claimed Fiddler. After him, no one had dared it, partly because in their minds was the story related to them of Fiddler’s terror of the isolation above.

  Doctor Havant had a profound influence on Igor Mitski, whom he joined, and on those to come after. Maddoch averred that Dr. Havant saved them from degenerating to the level of animals. He had hypnotic powers of a kind which could subdue Riddell and Jenks, but not Mitski, Brennan or the girl. Maddoch said he could resist Havant’s hypnotic power, but admitted he had realised that only a strong leader could save this small community from the depths.

  “You know, Inspector, I believe that,” he went on earnestly. “The doctor
has a never-ending library of stories; it really is a library. We listen to him telling stories, for so long as he will, such as Steinbeck’sGrapes of Wrath and Buchan’sThirty-Nine Steps. He’s like Scheherazade who saved her life by telling the tales of the Arabian Nights, and if you close your eyes and just listen, you can almost live the stories. He has saved our lives, because even Riddell came to understand that these caverns hold something worse than perpetual darkness.”

  “And yet there are fights like that we witnessed today,” Bony interposed.

  “Oh, yes. Doctor Havant does nothing to stop them. He says the steam must escape through a safety valve; that the bursts of violence are the valve. These oppressive caverns have subjugated what virility we had; they do not exactly encourage theupshoot of the sexual urge. We are sane enough to realise that the first to attack the woman could be killed by the others.

  “Igor Mitski died because of her. He was never any more than polite and friendly, but she teased him, and the others knew it. I’ve seen her encourage Mark, and even Riddell’s ape-like advances. She invites murder-not her own, of course. I think she aims to have us kill one another until the best man wins. Meanwhile, she believes she has full control of us all, including you.”

  “What has she said about her own case?” asked Bony, and Maddoch’s face expressed disgust.

  “Said she killed her husband because she was sick of him and his lies, yet boasts how she put it over the jury, the press and the public; boasts how good an actress she is. You don’t believe, really believe, I killed Mitski, do you?”

  Bony turned to gaze steadily at Clifford Maddoch. To become the manager of a branch of an important wool firm is not an executive height to which a weak character can climb, and he tried to see Maddoch as he must have been before the final straw was laid upon his back. Mentally he would have been dynamic. He would have been expert on the many classes of wool, a man whose judgment was sound, and whose decisions were quick and accurate.

  Once he had arrived at the moment of decision that no longer could he suffer his wife’s nagging voice, he would immediately begin to plan how to remove it. And now -the once important executive, pleading to be believed he hadn’t killed again. The yellow light revealed the large eyes, the colourless complexion, the trembling mouth of a man shocked by mental torture, racked by disgrace and punishment, and exposed to human violence and depravity. Execution would have been merciful.