Better, far better, not to think about that! Better to think about anything rather than that — if he could!
He heard Willoughby’s coarse laugh as the man walked away. A moment later the door shut behind the American. The light remained on, so that Shaw could watch, as well as feel, the terrible progress of the concrete, now mounting around his ankles.
He was quite alone now.
The machinery above continued pushing the liquid concrete slowly, slowly towards the open trap, and it continued to drop on him, soggy and horrible. It was all he could do not to cry out. He could see no hope whatever. Not unless he talked. He wouldn’t do that. But he wanted to yell and storm and curse.
He kept quiet, using all his will-power. Those bastards wouldn’t get the satisfaction of hearing him break.
Ten o’clock by his watch.
The concrete had reached his waist now. It had filled all the gaps, had seeped round behind him, pressing his clothing tightly to his body, moulding itself into him. In order to keep the stuff moving and running freely through the steel frame above his head, the mixture had been made fairly loose and liquid and he could still, though with ever-increasing difficulty, move his feet a little. It was a tremendous effort to do so with the sheer weight of sand and cement, water and gravel, pressing on his limbs; and there was a nasty sucking drag on the lower half of his body each time he shifted, a drag which seemed to pull out his very entrails and exhaust him. Basic instinct for survival made him try to stand on the shifting morass, to raise his body on to it and perhaps thereby give himself longer to live. But it was no good, and after a while he gave up the effort; the stuff was too soft, there simply wasn’t the consistency to support him.
And after midnight this place would be deserted and he would have had it.
He thought about that. Why would it be deserted? Why build this place and then leave it, dismantle all its complex equipment? Where were they all going? Was the final act, the last curtain, as near as all that — was that it? That indeed could be the only explanation, if this place was no longer needed. Yet — wouldn’t the final moment be the very time it would be most needed?
Shaw’s brain whirled.
Meanwhile the concrete continued inexorably to drop through the trap, the wide-set bars of the frame offering no barrier and little of the runny mixture adhering to it to impede the progress of the stuff rolling unceasingly down behind it.
And then… midnight.
Now or never, and the stuff was covering his chest.
No point in dying slowly, like this, like a rat in a trap by terrible degrees. Something had to be done to delay matters and it had to be done now. And there was only the one way of doing that.
Shaw yelled.
And at this stage he couldn’t suppress a note of panic.
Willoughby was in the radio room, gathering up a fistful of documents and codes. He had just finished stripping down the vital parts of the radio equipment and packing up everything that, should this place by some unlikely mischance be found during the next few days, might interest the F.B.I and U.S Counter-intelligence. Fleck never left anything to chance, and Willoughby, trained in the German’s painstaking methods, was thorough, though he was going about his work with some reluctance. He looked almost sentimentally at the great, intricate, long-range transmitters, which had never been used but had been intended, eventually and in certain cicumstances, to communicate very far afield indeed, once the aerials, at present cased in the strongpoint’s store, had been cunningly rigged out of sight, high up on the covered roof of the tall building. It was a pity all this had been wasted, just because H.Q had informed them by courier that they had found a better way of putting the plans into effect.…
However, that wasn’t Willoughby’s business. It was Fleck’s, and strictly speaking it wasn’t even Fleck’s except to obey. It was the business of the men who, from a long way beyond the seas, controlled Fleck’s activities. But Willoughby would have given a lot to know what the next move was to be, and where Fleck was going or had, perhaps, already gone… but Fleck wouldn’t pass on the orders until the last moment, of course.
Whistling tunelessly to himself, Willoughby gathered up the last of the papers and walked along to the store at the end of the corridor. From here he went into a room where there was a pulping-unit. He stuffed the papers and code-tables into the machine, then switched on. When he was satisfied that every piece had been properly shredded and pulped, he gave it a minute or two longer just to be on the safe side, and then he switched off, left the machine, and went back to the radio room; and he got there just in time to hear the hidden loudspeakers come alive and Shaw’s voice cry, ‘I’ve had enough… I’ll talk… just get me out of here! Just get me out…’
Willoughby grinned to himself and stuck his thumbs in the air. If he could report success to Fleck! He went out into the corridor, and as he passed one of the bedrooms the door opened and the girl Shaw had seen earlier came out wearing an almost transparent scarlet dressing-gown.
Willoughby said admiringly, ‘Well now, that’s how I like to see you, honey!’
‘Better not say that when Rudy’s around,’ she said in a hard, clipped voice. ‘What was that on the intercom, just now?’
Willoughby stared at her, devouring her with his eyes. ‘A guy.’
‘I gathered that much. What guy?’
‘Just a guy! A clever British Navy guy from Washington who maybe is going to forget his training and sing.’ He added, ‘That’s all you need to know, till all this is over. Till Fleck comes back for you.’ His hand reached out to her, to caress her breasts. She drew back quickly and gave him a hard stare. Willoughby shrugged, said, ‘Okay, if that’s how you feel about it,’ and moved away towards the door at the end. He didn’t look back so he didn’t see the look on the girl’s face nor the way she clenched her small fists.
Willoughby went on through, and up to the floor where the concrete was being pushed along towards the trap. Cassidy had gone some while ago. Willoughby switched off the electric motor of the pusher and closed the trap. Then he clattered down to the room below.
He squatted and peered through the twin bars of the frame. Shaw’s face, gleaming white in the electric light, looked back at him, spotted and streaked with cement and sweat, the hair plastered and stiff.
Willoughby said, ‘Hiya! So you’ve had enough. So start talking.’
‘I’m not talking till you get me out of here,’ Shaw said with a genuine note of desperation. ‘I—’
‘And I’m not getting you out till you start singing,’ Willoughby said flatly. ‘So? Who wins?’