EXIT TWO
Kiaoliang! Freed of pain’s numbing effect, Captain Hugh North’s brain commenced to function rationally again. He looked hurriedly about him while plumbing the depths of his experience. His assets were two companions—a murderer and a harlot, but for the moment willing subordinates—a sword, some rope, and a few odd weapons which would be of no use against pistols and rifles.
Ruby Braunfeld remained stretched white and senseless on the floor, which perhaps was just as well; but Michael Smith stood ready for action. Apparently he was one of those iron-souled Prussians who are afraid of nothing—North had met others of them in the depths of the Somme country.
“Got any ideas?” North demanded.
“No. Have you?”
“Both doors are locked, of course—”
“Yes,” growled the German, “and they’re the only ways out of this hell-hole.”
“No.” North shook his head and hurried over to the barred drain which, perhaps two feet in diameter, seemed to offer a precarious means of egress.
“What about those bars?”
“Maybe we can tear them out.”
“How? They’re set in solid, and we can’t get a purchase to pry them out.”
“But they’re rusty around the sockets—maybe—yes, by God!” The Intelligence Captain braced his feet against the wall and, seizing a bar, heaved for dear life.
Instantly both men perceived that though the bar was a little loose, mere man power could not tear it out. “Bear a hand! Pull that keg off the stand—I want one of those supports.”
Though he obviously did not understand North’s intention, Smith did not stop to question but quickly wrenched a heavy timber from the barrel stand.
His Indian-like cheek bones prominent, North leaped over the motionless form of Ruby Braunfeld and snatched up the rope which had bound him to the table.
“It’s strong enough—”
“For what, you fool? You can’t—”
“Shut up and pass this end around those bars.” Impressed by the hopeful gleam in North’s eyes the German obeyed while his companion threaded the rope’s other end through an iron ring set in the wall opposite.
“Ha! A good idea!” the German growled, and his haggard face lit. “Better use a square knot—it won’t slip.”
Once the two rope ends had been knotted, North quickly thrust the wooden support through the center of the loop joining bars and iron ring; using the windlass principle, he began to twist the two strands tighter and tighter. Never a fool, Smith needed no command to leap to North’s side and join in wrenching over that crude windlass bar. Around and around they twisted the stick, until the rope’s strong sisal fibers groaned, and knots commenced to appear in its length.
Choking and sweat-blinded, the two men strained at their timber. Was the rope strong enough? Would the bars break? Breath was whistling into North’s lungs like wind through a keyhole, and Michael Smith’s face was growing purple with exertion. Damn! North felt his strength going fast but dug his feet into crevices between the flagstones and heaved until his back tendons crackled.
Suddenly both men went tumbling across the room, and North’s first impression was that the rope had broken, but Smith was already picking himself up and was yelling joyfully.
“They’re broken! They’re pulled out! Quick, now.”
But a new anxiety had come to harass North. Ruby Braunfeld still lay utterly motionless, her bitten feet and legs bloody and limp. He knew it was impossible to drag her down such a narrow passage. Even if she was conscious, it would be a miracle if she possessed strength enough to risk the terrors of that small drain. Yet he would not leave her to face the fury of Chang.
Michael Smith’s small blue eyes took in the dilemma, and before North could guess his intent he caught up the sword and bent above the coaster’s half-naked figure.
“I am going to kill her,” he panted.
“No! No!”
“Don’t be a fool! We can’t leave her, and we can’t take her. She must die!”
North was too far away to intervene and as in a trance he saw the sword gleam up but falter as it began to fall.
“Ach! No need!” Smith dropped to his knees and roughly pried open an eyelid. North, peering over the German’s shoulder, saw that Ruby’s pupil was fixed and vacant. His hand flew to her limp wrist: there was not even a trace of a pulse.
“Ja! She has died of fright! So much the better. Ach!”
Delivering a short jiu-jitsu chop, North had numbed the other’s arm and made him drop the sword. In the drain it might be too much of a temptation for Michael Smith to remove an enemy who knew too much.
“Schweinhund!” Smith roared, but fell back when the sword glimmered into the on-guard position.
“Sorry, Smith,” North snapped, “but I don’t trust you!”
“You needn’t have worried. We will probably need each other again before we’re out of this mess.”
“All right—stand back—I’ll go first, I’m a bit larger—if I can pass, you can, too.”
Kiaoliang! Drawing a deep breath, North gripped the sword and, keeping a wary eye on Trenchard’s murderer, squirmed into the entrance of the drain. It was black, black as Egypt, and from it arose foetid exhalations.-At first the drain seemed to run straight and sharply downwards. So far, so good, but what if he came to an impossible turn or to a dead end? There could be no retreat—that he knew—and death would be slow and horrible in coming.
The drain, just wide enough to permit him to hitch along over a sediment of foul mud, continued its downward course, but the air, rank with sewage, grew so vile that every breath poisoned his lungs and made his head swim. When his strength began to give out he paused and listened to the noises made by Smith crawling along a few yards in his wake. How pleasant to have a ruthless murderer a few yards behind!
He started on, and something wet brushed his cheek and galloped the length of his body before there arose a shrill squeal. Evidently a rat resented this invasion of its lair.
Inch by inch, foot by foot, his body plastered with loathsome mud, North struggled onward through the maddening darkness until his extended sword indicated a turn in the drain. To his dismay the tile sides now closed in, his shoulders stuck, and a chorus of demoniac inner voices bellowed in his brain:
“You’re going to die here. You can’t get out! You’re going to die minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day.”
Only by the fiercest exertion of his will power was he able to beat back an instinctive impulse to yammer, to kick and struggle blindly at these enclosing walls.
“What’s the matter?”
Strangely reassuring was it to hear Michael Smith’s muffled tones just behind him.
“Drain’s got smaller,” North called back. “There’s a bend in here—can’t get through—but put your hand out—brace my foot—”
“Hell can’t beat this,” he heard the German mutter, and he agreed from the bottom of his heart.
In a moment he felt the murderer’s hand groping until it caught his heel; then he clenched his teeth, for his wounded side throbbed madly, and gave a mighty push.
Helped by the extra purchase, he forged ahead again and was presently flooded with immeasurable relief when the turn ended and he found that the drain had widened again to its original diameter. Choking and spent, he in his turn helped Smith by thrusting back an ankle which the latter seized and with greater difficulty pulled himself through the narrowed length.
The gases were growing more poisonous now, North realized, or else he was growing weaker. How could he keep going? It suddenly occurred to him that he might be dead and that he was wallowing on through a dark and noisome eternity. His movements became slower. Smith, too, must be feeling the effects of the foetid air: his breath now sounded very loud and labored.
“Stop!” A new fear raised its ugly head before North’s unseeing eyes. His hand had encountered water. So the end had come. Impossible to crawl backward up to that den of horror; he was having trouble now to tell whether he was on his back or not.
Briefly he informed Smith of the catastrophe. The other was too crushed even to comment.
“I’m going ahead,” North presently announced. “I’d rather drown than die like this.”
“Gut—Ich auch—gehen sie sofort.”
It was fearful work to hitch himself forward into that deathly blackness and to feel the chill waters lapping higher like the cold tongues of innumerable reptiles. When the water reached his chin he knew there was nothing for it but to draw a deep breath and scrabble along as far as he might—then “Twilight and evening bell, and after that the dark!”
He drew a long breath, expelled it, and drew another, but the atmosphere was so poisonous that his head spun like a gyroscope. He abandoned the sword and stretched his arms out above his head. Now completely submerged, he struggled along, dimly conscious of floating objects brushing his face and that his wounded chest was sending blinding stabs of agony through him. Was he moving feet or only inches? Was he moving at all?
Fiery streamers streaked back and forth before his eyes, and the roar of many waterfalls beat against his eardrums when at last he surrendered. His head jerked spasmodically upwards and encountered an air space. Moreover, the drain had widened, and presently he decided that it had terminated in a long, low sewer intended to collect the sewage from half a hundred other lesser drains such as the one he had followed.
Spent, nauseated, and weak as a young kitten, North crawled out onto a slippery stone ledge and crouched there, up to his stomach in water which stank like a cesspool.
At length his mind uncertainly formed a question. Why didn’t Smith appear? Had he succumbed during his long, nightmarish struggle under the water? Minutes necessary to regather strength dragged by, and still there came no stir from that dreadful drain.
“Must be dead,” he decided dully. “He’s bigger—guess he’s done for.”
His mind drugged, but ever conscious of his mission, North arose on wavering legs and waded towards the mouth of the sewer. Only feebly he beat off the enormous rats which squeaked and leaped at him. Kiaoliang! Could he reach the Settlement?
Five yards more and he would be in the open air again. What if Chang, guessing the course of the drain, had posted Hsu and the soldiers to wait for him? There was nothing at all he could do about it, he realized, as he tottered towards an expanse of lamplit canal visible beyond the lunette-shaped sewer mouth.