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.’ I was 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.
It was slow, heartbreaking work. The dirt slid down from above almost as fast as I dug it out. Finally Iwent back and got some boards from the fallen staircase to shore up my miniature tunnel. It helped some.
When Tony tugged at my ankles, I let him pull me out and take my place. Utterly exhausted, I curled up on the stone floor and, incredibly, fell asleep.
I slept uneasily, dreaming there was a steel band around my chest. I awoke with a gasp to find Tony shaking me.
‘The air is pretty bad, Vicky. We’ve got to get through soon, or we’ll never make it. If you clear away the dirt I push out . . .’
‘Blankenhagen?’ I croaked, rubbing eyes that felt as if they were glued shut.
‘He’s still breathing, but he won’t be for long. if we don’t get out of here soon, none of us will be.’
I insisted on taking his place in the hole. The air was foul in that narrow space, even worse than it was in the tunnel, and he had been breathing it for some time.
I felt as if I were working under water. Each movement had the languid deliberation of a swimmer’s arm-stroke. I could see nothing. Eyes can adjust to a tiny amount of light, but there was no light at all in that stinking hole. My senses were foggy; I couldn’t hear anything except the echo of my own hoarse breathing. After a time the only sense remaining to me was that of touch, the only reality the gritty yielding substance under my bleeding fingers. Occasionally I backed out of the hole to breathe the slightly less noxious mixture that passed for air out in the tunnel. I found Tony flat on the floor the second time I did this, and dragged him out of the way so the dirt wouldn’t cover his face. Then I crawled back in, and worked till I started to see flames dance against the darkness.
Finally I waited too long. When I tried to back out, I couldn’t move.
My hands went to my throat, as if to tear away the thing that was blocking my lungs. No use . . . Blankenhagen and Tony were dying, maybe dead. And I was dying too. I would fall down in this awful dirty hole and never wake up. It was almost a relief to feel the pain of my labouring lungs fade as I fell forward into blackness no more absolute than that which already surrounded me.
When I came to, I was breathing. The shock of this discovery woke me completely.
I had been on the verge of breaking through the earth fall when my last convulsion threw me against the thin shell of soil remaining. I was lying with my head and shoulders on a downhill slope of dirt. The rest of my body was still in the hole. By a miracle, it hadn’t caved in.
I went back through my little tunnel as fast as I dared. Tony was already stirring as the fresh air from beyond reached him. Ruthlessly I slapped him awake. We didn’t waste time feeling Blankenhagen’s pulse or handling him gently. I backed through the tunnel dragging him by the shoulder, with Tony pushing from the other end. Tony barely made it. The ceiling began to subside as his head came out of the hole, and he had to pull his legs through solid dirt.
The first thing I did was light a match. The feeble flame was a beautiful sight. I’ve had a slight phobia about darkness ever since that night.
To our surprise and relief, Blankenhagen was still breathing. That was all we bothered to find out. Tony was on his feet, swaying dizzily, but driven; I followed, lighting matches with reckless abandon.
The tunnel went straight on without bending. It ended in a flight of wooden stairs.
I let Tony go up. The stairs looked solid, but there was no point in risking a double weight. If only the stone I could see at the top was movable . . .
When Tony came down, his face was grey. He didn’t need to speak. He just shook his head.