CHAPTER 11

Landslide

AFTER the first great cry of alarm and fear, all sound of human voices was drowned by the deep, rumbling roar of falling earth. Out of sight of Polly, George and the party with them, a stretch of the chine moved downwards, carrying helpless people with it. As the landslide grew in extent and speed, as more earth was shaken loose and began its sluggish fall, panic spread like lightning among the people.

Those who had been near the edge, were gone.

Some cooler spirits tried to stem the tide, but the great majority turned and fought and kicked and ran in the desperate effort to get away from danger. While the rumbling of the landslide filled the air and spread alarm much farther afield, that panic grew. Faces illuminated in the garish light of the huge lamps were distorted, terror showed on white, strained faces, glaring eyes seemed feverish in the brightness.

Here and there a man or woman went down in the stampede, and over them rushed the others.

Polly saw it all.

She also saw Loftus bend down and speak close to George’s ear. Superintendent Carr had already gone forward, for the fall had been on their side, and now the crying, struggling mass of people was getting nearer, the leaders of the stampede were already abreast. She saw three terrified girls, gaily dressed in holiday clothes, forced slowly towards the edge of the chine, and she saw their open mouths and eyes filled with terror, as, remorselessly, the crowd pushed them nearer disaster.

One disappeared.

‘George!’ cried Polly. ‘Can’t you——’

The rumbling noise had lessened and the shrieking was audible now, drowning her own cry. George gripped her arm and put his mouth close to her ear.

‘Orders to stop here!’ he bellowed.

A second girl disappeared over the edge, arms and legs waving. Polly darted forward, but George caught her hand. She pulled against him for a moment, then realized that he was right to stop her, and went back. The third woman flung herself into the crowd and was lost among it, while her companions were somewhere over the edge, possibly safe against a tree or shrub, perhaps still falling.

Then Polly saw Loftus, the Errols, Carr and several other members of Department Z, and for the first time she heard a voice clearly. Loftus was shouting, and his voice was incredibly loud. He moved as if both legs were his own, and now he stretched out his hands. Carr and the others joined hands, making a barrier of human flesh across the road. A few people escaped the barrier and went flying past, to stop a little farther away, gasping for breath and beginning to feel the first twinge of shame.

Other men, strangers from the crowd, joined Loftus and his party.

Loftus was roaring:

‘Stop where you are. Stand still! Stand still!’

He kept on bellowing, and the words became a refrain. As he shouted men and women rushed at him, unable to stop themselves because of the pressure from behind, but they came against a body as massive as a wall, and got no farther.

The pressure grew worse.

Loftus, still booming out the warning, still heard above the noise of panic, felt the strain of the weight against him and gave way an inch at a time. The others resisted with the same grim determination. If the stampede were allowed to continue, none knew how many people would be crushed beneath the sea of feet. Already many were underfoot, heads buried in their arms, sides, ribs and thighs bruised where they were kicked or trodden on. If it continued there would be disaster—greater disaster, for already there was tragedy enough. Many people were still in the chine, under that pile of earth which moved so sluggishly.

Loftus, at first afraid that he had started too late, thought that the pressure began easing slightly. A woman, crouching almost double, had her head in his stomach, pressing remorselessly, jammed against him by a big lout behind her. The man was one of the worst of the crowd, bellowing high-pitched cries of fear, and struggling wildly. Loftus tightened his grip on Carr’s hand, leaned towards him and said:

‘Try and hold it for a moment.’

Carr nodded.

Loftus released the policeman, bunched his fingers and leaned forward. His fist cracked against the lout’s jaw. The man collapsed, helpless, on the shoulders of the others. Loftus felt the pressure increase for a moment, and could not find Carr’s hand again; then he realized that someone had sprung forward and filled the gap.

In another five minutes the worst was over. Loftus and the others backed away more quickly, people were moving more steadily, and the crowd began to thin out. Soon Carr’s police took complete control. Many of them had been struggling in the middle of the stampede, to slow it down, and now that the panic had passed its height they were able to work more effectively.

But there was much to be done.

As the crowd thinned out little parties of people remained in the roadway. A child was crying in shrill, high-pitched screams, standing over the huddled figure of a woman, its mother, who lay quite still. A man joined them, and started to cry:

‘Jennie, Jennie, Jennie!’

There were a dozen such scenes, and more than one mother was bending over the figure of her child, nearly hysterical with fear. All this Loftus saw in that garish, unholy light. His heart was heavy within him, for he had started this thing, the responsibility for every man, woman and child who was hurt rested on him.

He picked up the child, to try to stop its screams, but they grew worse. Fists in eyes, mouth wide open; there were moments when the little chap was silent as he drew in his breath to yell—and then the scream came, piercing and harrowing.

Someone pushed against Loftus.

‘Give him to me,’ said Polly, and she took the child.

Loftus gave her a quick grin, and then moved away.

Carr came out of the crowd and joined him.

‘Doctors,’ said Loftus.

‘Some are here, some are being sent for,’ said Carr. ‘I sent word to the hospital and ordered a general call.’

‘Good! Also rescue squads?’

‘Yes,’ said Carr. His fair face looked ghastly, and there was a scratch, bleeding freely, which ran from his eye to his mouth—where an hysterical woman had clawed at him. ‘I hate to think of that bank.’

‘So do I,’ said Loftus. ‘Let’s get there.’

He looked round. George and Hoffmann and others of the Department were peering into the chine. They could see the path running through it, on which many people were hurrying to and fro. It was odd, but every face was clearly visible: if one of Rutter’s men passed, he would be seen.

Loftus bellowed again.

‘Keep watching!’

George and the others waved. Polly, sitting at the side of the road, was bouncing the child up and down; Loftus became aware that the screams had stopped. The man who had cried ‘Jennie’ was now on his knees, and his wife was sitting up dazedly. Others who had been prostrate were sitting up, also, but a few remained unmoving. Men were bending over them—the doctors. Two or three women in nurses’ uniform were busy. A fluffy-haired, middle-aged woman in a dressing-gown and slippers was coming from the gate-way of a house, carrying a large tray on which was a tea-pot and a dozen cups. She stopped near Loftus.

‘Bless you!’ he said, and smiled at her. She laughed. ‘Trust the people,’ Loftus mused, ‘after the first shock.’

There was some order, now. Many who had been among the first to scramble for safety were helping those who had been hurt. There was little confusion; the lights were invaluable, and there was no fumbling, no fear of chaos.

Loftus reached the edge of the bank where the landslide had started.

On the bank men and women were at the work of rescue. Many of them were knee-deep in sandy soil, some were clinging with one hand to the branches of trees and with the other to people who had been buried. It was an appalling sight. Loftus could have counted at least fifty heads above the earth—and here and there an arm, a foot, moving slightly. A man had been crushed by a tree. His eyes were wide open and his mouth shut tightly. A lad, no more than twelve, was pulling ineffectually at the tree.

Farther down, the path was completely covered by the soil. How deep was it? Loftus wondered.

‘This way,’ said Carr. ‘You can’t get down here.’

‘No,’ said Loftus, and hated his leg.

He passed some of his men. Hammond, with the help of several others, was working at a tree which pinned two people down. Here, where the fall had started, the people had received the worst shock. There was danger, too, of another fall.

Loftus walked along a stretch of road which was in shadows. There the lamps had been brought down in the landslide, and there was an eerie half-light. He walked, with Carr, past tall trees which now looked dark and sinister, until he came into the full light again. A stream of people walked in front of him. They reached the edge of the cliff, and then went down a narrow path. Loftus found it heavy going, but he reached the foot at last, and came to the beach, which was thronged with people.

Softly, soothingly, the sea murmured on the beach.

He walked towards the chine.

Parties passed him. Many people had already been rescued, and some were being carried, others helped along. Two ambulances drew up—they had come along the promenade—and from them sprang nurses of both sexes. A car from which three men appeared pulled up near Loftus.

‘Doctors,’ said Carr.

A lorry arrived, and a party of men jumped from it, carrying ropes, pick-axes, shovels.

‘What organization!’ exclaimed Loftus.

‘Civil Defence,’ said Carr.

The fallen soil on the path was thick in places, thin in others. Small trees, shrubs and branches lay across their path, but were already being moved to one side. Loftus got to the centre of the disturbance, and looked up. Ropes were dangling over the side of the chine, tied to trees or held by several men, and people extricated from the earth were laboriously making their way up. Some of the hands and legs were now freed of earth, and their owners were being dug out. In the space of half an hour a miracle had come about, but Loftus’s heart was still heavy within him.

‘Well,’ said Carr, ‘it’s properly in hand.’

‘Yes,’ said Loftus. ‘A masterly job.’

‘But your people probably got away.’

‘I wouldn’t be surprised,’ said Loftus. ‘I haven’t seen one of the beggars.’

‘This would happen,’ Carr said. ‘I’d no idea the bank was unsafe.’

‘Unsafe?’ echoed Loftus, staring at him.

‘Why, yes,’ said Carr, puzzled. ‘That’s obvious.’

‘My dear chap!’ protested Loftus. ‘Anything would be unsafe when high explosive goes off inside it.’

‘What?’

‘I thought you heard it,’ Loftus said. ‘There was the distinct roar of an explosion. This was no accident. There’s nothing the matter with the chine, it stood the test miraculously, I expected far worse. Our Mr. Rutter is responsible for this.’

Carr seemed bereft of words.

Loftus meant what he said except in one small detail. That an explosion beneath the earth had started the landslide he had no doubt at all, but—was Rutter responsible? Indirectly he was, undoubtedly, but in Loftus’s mind there was a thought which worried him more than anything else: T.N.25.

Dr. Morritz had been kidnapped in Paris, and might have been brought to England. Bournemouth was undoubtedly the centre of Rutter’s activities, and it was not unlikely that somewhere here there had been work on T.N.25. If there had been an experimental laboratory, under the earth, much would be explained. If the reports he had received from Craigie were reliable, a thimbleful of T.N.25 could do this—and worse than this.

Hammond appeared unexpectedly. There was a crooked smile on his lips as he joined Loftus.

‘Well?’ he said.

‘The worst hasn’t happened,’ said Loftus. ‘Have you seen anyone?’

Hammond did not need to ask whom he meant by ‘anyone’, and shook his head.

‘But I’ve been thinking,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ said Loftus. ‘It’s a stimulus for thought. We were slow before. Go on.’

‘The beggars didn’t leave the chine by normal means because they didn’t need to,’ said Hammond. ‘They went to earth. Probably they had tunnelled from one of the nearby houses and got through that way. The house would be fairly near the suspension bridge, I think.’

‘Yes,’ said Loftus. ‘If they broke surface in a garden, our fellows couldn’t have seen them. I’m beginning to think there are too many trees and thick hedges in Bournemouth!’

‘You heard the explosion, didn’t you?’

‘Yes,’ said Loftus. ‘I’ve some ideas about that, too.’

‘Experiment in T.N.25,’ murmured Hammond.

‘We ought to lecture on the mysteries of telepathy,’ said Loftus. ‘Now we’ve reason to think that Rutter and his men disappeared into a house near here, and there’s also reason to think that he was using that house as an experimental laboratory. Morritz was probably there all the time. The question is—did Rutter start the explosion for the sake of it, or did something just go wrong? If it went wrong——’

‘Morritz and anyone with him went sky-high,’ said Hammond.

‘In any event, now we can dig in earnest, and find the tunnel, if there is one,’ Loftus said. He turned to Carr, who had been talking to a uniformed police sergeant, and told him what he thought—without mentioning T.N.25. The possibility obviously worried Carr, but he raised no objections.

‘As soon as we’re sure all the people are out, we’ll start digging for your tunnel,’ he said. ‘It will be morning before we can start, I’m afraid.’

‘Can you pass the word round that the diggers might find one?’ asked Loftus. ‘Someone might strike it by accident.’

‘Yes, I’ll do that.’

‘And then I want to know which of the houses fairly near the suspension bridge has recently changed hands,’ said Loftus.

‘Probably quite a number,’ said Carr. ‘Mildmay will probably be able to help you.’

‘Who’s Mildmay?’

‘One of the biggest estate agents in the town, who handles a lot of property about here,’ said Carr. ‘He lives not ten minutes’ walk away. Would you like to see him?’

‘Very much,’ said Loftus.

‘I’ll send a man with you,’ said Carr. ‘Sergeant...’ He gave the sergeant instructions, which were passed on to a constable.

This man walked with Loftus, saying they would have to go right to the top of the chine, because the nearest steps had been dislodged in the fall. They neared the suspension bridge where Loftus, looking up, stopped short. Several other people saw him look, and also glanced up.

Climbing from the branch of a tree which almost touched the bridge, was a man whose hand was stretched out to try to grip the bridge and who was swaying up and down. If he missed his grip, if he slipped once, he would crash down.

Loftus, his expression strained, recognized George Henry George.