id="u40e02a85-08fe-5027-b793-855c22247486">
CHAPTER VIII
Fawley, a few nights later, lay on his stomach in the midst of a crumpled heap of undergrowth on almost the topmost spur of the range of mountains eastward from Mont Agel and very little below the snow line. He was on the edge of a recently made clearing and the air was full of the odour of the sawn pine trunks lying about in every direction. The mists rolled over his head and the frozen rain stung his cheeks and pattered against his leather clothes. It was the third moonless night of his almost concluded enterprise and there remained only one unsolved mystery. The six galleries were there, visualised before his eyes. He knew the connecting points of each one and the whereabouts of most of the amazing battery of guns. He knew the entrances and roughly the exits to each. His work had been done with genius and good fortune, yet it was incomplete. The seventh gallery! The key to all the positions. The seventh gallery which must hold the wonder gun. Its exact whereabouts still eluded him.
The night before, the storm which had swept the mountains bare, which had driven even the guards and sentries into shelter, had been a godsend to him. In the roar of the elements and that blinding deluge of rain, the crashing of the trees and the hissing of the wind through the undergrowth and along the ground, he had abandoned caution. He had tramped steadily round from post to post. He had been within a few yards of the Colonel’s headquarters. He had even laid his hand on one of the guns, but it was not the gun he sought. He had worked it all out, though, by a process of elimination. The main gallery, the control station and the supreme mystery, which was probably the mightiest anti-aircraft gun in the world, must be somewhere within a radius of about a hundred yards of where he was. It was information invaluable as it stood, but Fawley, through these long hours of darkness and peril, had conceived an almost passionate desire to solve the last enigma of this subterranean mountain fortress. The howling of the wind, which the night before had been his great aid, obscuring all sound and leaving him free to roam about in the darkness in comparative safety, was now, he felt, robbing him of his chance. The special body of men of whom he was in search—he had discovered that many hours ago—worked only in the darkness, so that even the woodcutters should know nothing of their doings. They must be somewhere near now…There were great piles of cement lying within fifty feet of where he was, barrels of mortar, light and heavy trucks. Somewhere close to him they must be working…
This business of listening grew more hopeless. One of the trees in the wood, on the outskirts of which he lay, was creaking and roaring, like a wild animal in pain. He raised himself slowly and carefully on one side and by straining his eyes he could catch the outlines of its boughs, stretched out in fantastic fashion like great arms. He even heard the splinters go. Then, for the first time, he fancied he heard—not one voice but a hum of voices! His whole body stiffened—not with fear but with the realisation of danger. The voices seemed to come from below. He raised himself a little more, almost on to his knees. His eyeballs burned with the agony of the fruitless effort to penetrate the darkness. Below! In his brain, at any rate, there was light enough. He remembered the somewhat artificial appearance of the great masses of undergrowth amongst which he lay. Perhaps this Number Seven tunnel was underneath! Perhaps in seeking for shelter he had crept into a ready-made ambush. Then for some time he ceased to think and action became almost automatic.
Nothing in the orchestra of the howling wind, the crashing trees and the hollow echoes amongst the grim mountains had produced sound such as now seemed to split his eardrums. Within a few feet of him came a crash which blotted out the whole world with a great barrier of sound. He felt his cheeks whipped, his body thrashed, the sense of an earthquake underneath him—the sense of falling.
It took him only a second or two to realise what was happening. Within a few yards of him, the tree which he had been watching had given up its fight with the rising wind and had crashed through the artificial roof on which he lay, down into the space below. He, too, was falling, as the branches and shrubs on either side subsided. He fell with his mind quite clear. He saw two men in the familiar uniform of the Chasseurs Alpins, their faces convulsed with amazed fear, flung to the ground by the trunk of the tree. It fell upon them so that Fawley, even in those wild seconds of excitement, was obliged to close his eyes. Their shrieking and yelling was all over in a moment…Fawley himself fell sideways on to the platform of a smooth and shining cylindrical erection which was unlike anything he had ever seen before. There was nothing to which he could cling and almost at once he slid down on to the cement floor. Opposite him was the most astonished human being he had ever seen—a soldier, who had run to the assistance of the other two and was suddenly faced with the consciousness of Fawley’s amazing appearance.
“Sacré nom de Dieu!” he called out, wringing his hands. “What is it then that has arrived? Is it an earthquake? Who are you?”
“Never mind. Stay where you are. Don’t raise your hands.”
One last sobbing cry echoed from wall to wall of the passage. Fawley took one look under the tree and then turned his back.
“They are dead,” he said. “You cannot help them. Listen. Is this gallery Number Seven?”
The chasseur, incapable of speech, pointed to the wall. There it was—a great sprawling seven.
“Which is the way out?” Fawley asked.
The youth—he was scarcely more than a boy—was shivering so that words were almost impossible. He pointed in a certain direction. Fawley drew an automatic from his pocket.
“Look here,” he threatened, “if you have lied, I shall come back and shoot you.”
The chasseur pointed again. His face was white. He looked almost as though he had had a stroke. His head was bleeding where one of the boughs had struck him. The tree lay like a great destroying octopus all over the place. Only one thing seemed to have survived untouched. The great machine with its metal cylinders and huge dynamos, which might well have been some devilish contrivance of the nether world.
“Where do you come from?” the youth asked.
Fawley raised his weapon. He had completely recovered his self-control.
“No more questions,” he said curtly. “Give me your belt.”
The soldier obeyed. Fawley’s hand seemed as steady as a rock and the revolver, though small, was an ugly-looking affair.
“Put your hands out. Fold them together.”
Again the chasseur obeyed. Fawley tied them; then, leaning forward, he struck him lightly but firmly near the chin.
“That is for your good,” he said, as his victim stumbled backwards.
He turned away and crawled down the passage. There was no sentry but the wind had ceased its sobbing for a moment and from the road came the sound of voices and the hurrying of feet. Fawley, bent double, made his way through the rough piece of waste ground towards the edge of the precipice. Something seemed to have created an alarm and shots came from behind him to which he paid no attention. A bullet whistled over his head. He only smiled. At the edge of the precipice he steadied himself: six hundred feet to scramble. Well, he had done it before. He fell flat just in time to escape another bullet and then, with gloved hands and protected by his thick leather clothes, he commenced the wild descent. Sometimes his feet slipped and he heard the crashing of the small boulders and stones which he had dislodged. He felt himself falling through space but each time a bump
