Holroyd turned and stared at him. Then he laughed, an extraordinary, almost macabre sound. "There is no body," he said. And I realized that the man was under extreme nervous tension, the laugh a sort of release. "Come on in. I'll show you."
Cartwright and Winters stopped work as we reached the fall. They had progressed another two yards or more since dawn. "Look at this." Holroyd picked up the pressure lamp, which had been placed to illimiinate the face of the fall, and held it up. "See the way the roof rises at that point? Didn't notice it yesterday-too intent on clearing the rubble."
"I did point it out," Cartwright said diffidently.
"But without drawing the obvious conclusion." Holroyd turned to Kotiadis. "You want to know what happened to Van der Voort. The answer is there. You can see the line of the old fall, and there, where the roof lifts up, all this section — that's the new cave-in."
Kotiadis lit a cigarette, the flame of his lighter illuminating his face, hard and uncomprehending. "I do not understand. Where is Dr. Van der Voort?"
Holroyd swung the lamp close to the rock fall. "In there," he said. And he added, "Show them. Alec."
Cartwright reached up, the crowbar in his hand, inserting the point of it into a dark gap they had opened up near the roof. The crowbar went in without meeting any resistance. "Another hour," Holroyd said, "and we'll be through the rock fall, into the gallery beyond."
"And you think Dr. Van der Voort is there?" Kotiadis asked.
"Where else could he be?"
But Kotiadis was not convinced. "Why does he not call out?"
Holroyd shrugged. "There are several possibilities. This is a sea cave. It may go in a long way. There may be other galleries, galleries on different levels even. Or we may find there has been another fall further in. As I see it. Van der Voort broke through the old fall some time during the twenty-four hours between this young man seeing him and my arrival here yesterday morning. There was that earth tremor, you remember. That would account for the new fall, and if he were in there, exploring the galleries at the time, then he would have been trapped."
"If he is trapped, then he must wish to get out," Kotiadis said, his cigarette glowing in the half-darkness. "Sound in a tunnel is very loud." He moved to where Cartwright stood, standing on tiptoe, his face close to the crowbar. "Dr. Van der Voort!" he shouted. And then again, listening intently after each call. "You see. He does not answer."
"As I say, there may be another fall. He may be injured, or possibly suffering from lack of air. He may be unconscious, even dead." The way Holroyd said it I thought he hoped it would be the latter.
These buggers talking, arguing about it. "We're wasting time," I said, and seizing hold of the crowbar, I began to attack the remnants of the fall. No need now to carry the rubble out. I just prised the rocks loose and thrust them behind me, working with a desperate, frenzied speed. If he were injured, or lying in a coma, half-asphyxiated, the sooner we got to him the better. The others responded to my urgency, even Kotiadis. The rocks and rubble flew, dust hanging in a choking cloud.
I had started at the point where Cartwright had thrust the crowbar through, hoping for a quick break-through. But the roof here was so badly fragmented that as fast as I cleared the rubble supporting it, fresh falls occurred. It meant prising all loose material out until I reached more solid rock, and this took time. In fact, it was about half an hour before I had opened up a safe gap into which I could work my head and shoulders. With the torch I had brought with me held out at arm's length, I could just see through the dust an open gallery beyond, and at the extreme limit of the torch's beam the cave seemed to narrow. But whether it was the end of it or another fall I could not be sure. I stayed wedged in the gap for a while, calling out to him, but there was no answer, and in the end I crawled back and Hans took my place.
The dust was very thick now, for Zavelas had arrived with Sonia and three extra men who were already at work trundling the rubble out in a wheelbarrow. "What could you see?" Holroyd asked. "Is the gallery clear?"
"For about twenty yards." I was feeling exhausted, my
shin sticking to me, heavy with rock dust. "After that I'm not sure. Maybe another fall. "
"And no sign of Dr. Van der Voort?" Kotiadis's voice was barely audible against the noise of rubble being shifted, his figure a dim outline in the dust-hazed cavern.
I shook my head. "None." I felt defeated, drained.
A hand touched mine, Sonia's head in outline against the glow of light from the entrance. "Come outside for a moment. You're wet through." She had sensed my mood. "The fresh air will do you good."
But there was no fresh air, only heat and a heavy, louring atmosphere, a sultry world, the clouds hanging low, a blanket of humidity. "What do you think has happened to him?"
"How the hell do I know?" He w^as either dead, or else he had gone deeper into the cave. "He may be shut in behind another rock fall." It was the best one could hope. "Why didn't the old fool wait till I returned? He must have known it was dangerous."
"He wouldn't think of that. Like my brother and Alec-Professor Holroyd, too-they don't think of danger when they feel themselves to be on the threshold of an important discovery. "
"No, I suppose not." I was thinking that Holroyd didn't care whether the old man was alive or dead. All he was interested in was the cave. And Kotiadis-all he wanted was a body to satisfy his superiors that the dangerous agent of his Communist-obsessed imagination was accounted for. "I'm going back now," I said. I wanted to be there when they broke through into the gallery beyond.
But it was another half hour before they had opened up a gap large enough and safe enough for a man to crawl in. Cartwright was at the face then so that he was the first through, calling to us that he could see the end of the cave. "Nobody here, I'm afraid." His voice came to us as a resonant whisper running through the rock.
Holroyd had shouldered his way through the Greeks and had his head and shoulders in the gap. "Have a look at the
walls, Alec." His voice was muffled, his broad buttocks almost filling the gap, and the distant whisper answered that there were traces of gravures, another rhinoceros, more reindeer.
By then I was on the rubble of the fall, right behind Holroyd, tugging at his shirt-tails. "To hell with your bloody scratchings," I shouted. "Either go on in or let me pass."
I could feel him hesitating. The gap was barely wide enough for his bulky body. But then his legs moved and he began to crawl through. I followed him, the rubble loose and jagged against my chest. Dust clouded the beam of my torch as we slithered down the rubble on the far side. And then we were on the packed dirt floor of the cave and could stand upright. Ahead of us the roof slanted down until it met the floor about thirty paces from us. No sign of Cart-wright. And then Holroyd moved and the beam of my torch showed the side tunnel, a black, gaping hole. "Are you there, Alec?" Holroyd's voice boomed in the confines of the cavern. A whisper answered us from the bowels of the earth: "Down here. There's a sort of chute. A blow hole I think. But go carefully. It slopes down quite steeply."
I went in then, Holroyd following, both of us bent almost double. The angle of descent was about twenty degrees, the floor brown dirt, packed hard, walls and roof smooth, hollowed out by water. And then suddenly I could see the end, the roof coming doAvn, the floor falling away into black shadow. I crawled past Cartwright on my hands and knees, and where the tunnel fell away, I lay prone, probing down with my torch. It certainly looked like a blow hole, the rock walls smoothed by the pressure of air and water and almost circular in shape, like a pipe angling do^vn very steeply. I couldn't see the end of it because it curved away to the left.