By the sound of Green's incoherent prayers, which had now become a continuous muttered whispering, he made his way back to she steps. He was frightened now just a little. There was no way out? How long would Zirrif keep them there? The dank still darkness ... the rats ... the heavy silence! But, of course, they were only being kept there as prisoners. Just until Zirrif could satisfy himself as to which of them was really Jeremiah Green. All sorts of things might happen before that. He fought to reassure himself and began to consider the possibility of bribing their guards.
It was then that he noticed a new sound. A low steady rhythmic beat coming faintly from above.
'Stop that!' he exclaimed sharply, giving Green's shoulder a push. 'Listen ! Is that an electric pump?'
The negro ceased his whimpering. Lovelace stood stock still, almost up to his knees in water. The thud, thud, thud, of the engine was perceptibly louder.
He remained motionless, a new terror gradually forming in his mind and then he knew. He knew that the water was rising. An engine had been turned on which was pumping it up into the cistern from the river. It would rise and rise until it reached their thighs, their waists, their armpits, until their gasping mouths were pressed against the ceiling.
Zirrif believed him to be the spy, but what was the life of a wretched nigger to a man like the Armenian, whose golden harvest depended on the death of millions? Mr. Zirrif was one who had a great aversion to accidents. He meant to take no chances. Lovelace knew now that both he and the wretched Green had been condemned to die there in the close, black darkness,
12
In the cistern
The water in the cellar was only rising very gradually but the rhythmic thud, thud, thud, of the electric pump sounded with inexorable regularity. There was no way, other than the trap door, out of that underground cistern and Lovelace knew that, as it filled, he might keep floating until his head was forced against the roof but then he must surely drown.
The negro began to mutter huskily again.
`Oh Lawd, Lawd! Oh Lawd Jesus heah ma prayer! I'se a po' sinner. I knows I done wrong. I knows it. But git me out o' this. Oh Lawd Jesus git me out o' heah ! '
With an impatient shove Lovelace thrust his fellow prisoner aside and stumbled up the steep ladder. In the pitch darkness he misjudged the height and hit his head a stunning crack against the trap door, slipped, slid, and fell into the knee deep water.
For a moment he lay there unconscious; his head resting on one of the slimy steps just above the waterline. When he raised it again he did not realise for a few seconds where he was and in that brief span of time a dozen scenes from his past life flashed through his disordered mind.
He saw again the green lawns of his house in England and the beauty of the well kept gardens as he had known them when a boy. Old Beetle, the butler, was welcoming him home, when he had returned after his father's death, and addressing him for the first time as Sir Anthony. He was the tenth Baronet; and his next of kin was a distant girl cousin whom he scarcely knew.
Fronds would be sold, under his present will, when he died. Suddenly he regretted intensely that he had never married and had a son.
As he moved his head a stabbing pain shot through t and he thought himself back in India, just coming round after a murderous struggle he had had years before with a dacoit. Other memories of his travels flickered before his mental eyes. The poor little Chinese girl who had had both her legs mown off at the knees when he was doing relief work behind the lines in Manchukuo. The human., devil who was selling water by its weight in silver to the refugees dying of thirst in a Bolivian forest when he had turned up there with his ambulance. The drunken crowd of white clad savages who had yelled their heads off with excitement when Haile Salassie was crowned Emperor of Abyssinia in 1930.
Abyssinia! Something clicked in his brain and the reason far his present desperate plight flooded back to him. The fanatical Christopher's association with the Millers of God and their abortive attempt to assassinate Paxito Zirrif in Athens. The Millers were madmen or were they all terribly sane Anyhow, it was murder and he would never have lent them his help unless yes, unless Valerie Lorne had overcome his better judgment and she was Christopher's fiancé,
Now they were in Egypt; the other two half a dozen miles away in Alexandria without the least idea where he was, and he himself at Zarrif’s lonely villa on the fringe of the desert; caught out, captured, and flung down into this underground cistern to die.
At the thought he staggered to his feet, dashed up the steps again; and began to batter on the underside of the trap with his clenched fists. Yet, even as he bruised his knuckles an the unyielding wood until they bled, he realised the childish futility of his effort. It was impossible to break out and, even if he could, Zarrif’s gunmen would promptly throw him back again,
He rested for a moment, panting slightly. Below him the negro's supplications had risen to a more exalted note. `Oh, Lawd, Lawd ... I ain't nobody ... I ain't don' nothin' . . . Oh, Lawd Jesus git me out o' heah git me out o' heah.'
In spite of the heavy darkness which wrapped them round like a black velvet cloak, Lovelace could picture the unfortunate Mr. Jeremiah Green. The smart white linen lounge suite, which had doubtless been the envy and admiration of his Baptist Brotherhood in Gainesville, Fla., now soiled and sodden from his having been flung, head foremost, down into the rat infested water.
Suddenly the white man was filled with a monstrous impatience at the black's sniveling prayers and ordered him to be silent.
Green's voice came again, whimpering now, `Oh, Mister. I ain't harmed nobody an' I wouldn't be heah if yo' hadn't .said yo' was me. Let me pray, Boss let me pray. Dere ain't no hope for us 'cept in de Lawd!'
Instantly Lovelace was smitten with a terrible feeling of guilt and pity. It was true enough. He had said he was Jeremiah Green in order to get into Zarrif’s house. Then, when the rightful owner of the name had turned up so unexpectedly, he had accused the poor wretch of being an impostor. Worse, he had even suggested that the black might be a Miller about to make an attempt on Zarrif’s life. Only to confuse the issue and gain time in which to think, of course, and never imagining for one moment that Zirrif, unable to make certain which of them was the enemy within his gates, might decide to do away with them both.
`All right,' he said. `I'm sorry terribly sorry. Pray if it helps. I only wish I could.'
As he spoke he came down the steps. He felt he could not possibly stay still waiting for death to creep up to him with the rising waters. Instead he splashed through them to make a more thorough examination of their prison.
The darkness was a heavy handicap. His own matches lad been taken when Zirrif 's men had searched his pockets and if Jeremiah Green had any on him they must have been soaked and rendered useless.
For nearly half an hour he searched feverishly among he slimy stone pillars; hoping to find some contraption by which the water was drawn up from the cistern to he rooms above and which might be utilized as a way exit. By the time he had satisfied himself there was nothing of the kind, and that it must be pulled up through the trap door in a bucket to be filtered in the kitchen, the water had risen to his thighs.
Jeremiah's prayers now alternated with psalms. He chanted them in a deep, musical voice which quavered row and then as his faith was nearly overcome by terror.
Lovelace wished fervently that he would stop. That endless monologue made it almost impossible to think; and think he must unless he was prepared to die.