The Steel Dutchman

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20362, 20 July 1934, Page 14

The Steel Dutchman

A GREAT STORY OF ADVENTURE ON LAND AND SEA —

(Author of “Paradise Orchid,” “The Green Hat,” etc.)

By

Vincent Cornier

CHAPTER XXII. The Smuggling Headquarters.

Eventually something more than mere phosphorescence lighted their path. A glare of lanterns, showed from above, in this radiance—and it was white and powerful, acetylene gas without a doubt —a flight of beautiful hewn red sandstone steps could be seen. They were easy to tread, and, in less than another five minutes, Cleone and Guy Alerlincote emerged from ascending them into a vast rock cavitv.

It was furnished. For all of two centuries it had been furnished, too. The general ‘air’ of the massive woods it contained had all the veritable imprint of that olden day. A mighty table, built of teak that had once been the planking of some proud ship, spanned the chamber. Chairs and forms, some of beautiful walnut and others of dull oak, were set around this board; and there were rugs of fur and hangings of painted sailcloth and tattered tapestry culled from the holds. and the wrecks of many a score of craft. In the midst of his wonderment, Alerlineotc was suddenly seized with a dreadfully disturbing thought; here lie was, with Cleone, in a sort of Ali Baba’s cave—and very certainly the Sloughstowe men, after hoarding their secret for generations, would not want it to pass out with the return to civilisation of their two captives. Only security could remain for this dim place—if those captives never returned!

For the last time he recalled the diabolical Spanish strain in the Sloughstowe people. What if it chanced, as it could chance, that all this play of cloddish “gentleness” was nothing more than a terrible guise? Could it not prove that the very art of all treachery was summed in the silent attitude and unprovocative behaviour of their captors? Alight it not be that all this deliberate and apparently orderly movement surrounding their imprisonment was but a means to an appalling end—that .it was not intended that either he or Cleone should live to go back to the world ?

He turned to the self-appointed “boss,” Haggerston. “Well, now you’ve got us here, whafs the next step ?. Of course, you know that we’ll have to go back sooner or later; why bring us to a place like this ?”

Barrister-at-law . . . but never had he asked a leading question of more importance. On its answer hung two lives—on its answer Cleone depended, and he was racked. When the answer came it confirmed his worst fears:

“Aye now, Alester Alerlincote, I’m onlies obeyin’ orders, as a way o’ speaking. Van Klaus said y’ were t’ be gotten—an’ once gotten, we was t’ let him know . . . what’s t’ foiler lies atween t’ Dutchman an’ y’ two selves.” The giant’s lips parted in a wicked smile. “As for th* young ’oman—well I thinks I can speak fer her. Van Klaus won’t be harmin’ her . . . much!” Alerlincote’s fist took him on the jaw point. “You dirty filthy hound—get up, and see if you’re as big as you 100k —* Haggerston did not wait for all the invitation. He dived sideways and got to his feet and launched himself at Alerlincote, all wild swinging arms and bumbling body. In the science of boxing he had not had a pennyworth of instruction, it was clear, but if one of his blows got home . . . Alerlincote met the lumbering rush with a short arm jab to his heart and a sudden hook that crushed Haggerston’s beak nose into a tomato-like squash. Haggerston hit a glancing blow and . . . went down a second time on the younger man’s piston return to it. It was a pretty enough fight while it lasted —but Haggerston saw that it was not for long. In three minutes he took punishment like a belaboured bull, but at the end of that time, gasping and bubbling about the mouth, lie roared for his mates to get Alerlincote down, and, after a struggle, that was accomplished. “Tie him—rope him!” Haggerston snuffled from behind a clout he had taken from his pocket for his pouring nose. “Get him lapped up afore I forgits mysen an’ kicks his een outen him. . . . tf it worn’t fer yon Dutchy’s tellin’ a feller different, I —l’d murder him!”

“Brass trumpets use lots of wind,” Alerlincote panted back a taunt. “Why —you blasted market bull, you daren’t stand up!” He glared at the cords whose tarry strands gripped at his wrists. “Oh,” he almost moaned, “if only you’d let me get these off and try! ”

Haggerston brought his battered face close up to Alerlincote\s writhing mask of features. Animal stared at animal from the rough-cast longshoreman to the Mayfair-accepted barrister. All remembrance of Cleone was gone from Alerlincote’s furious mind —all respect for the terror called Van Klaus was out of that of Haggerston. “I’ll tell tha what,” snarled the marshman, “thou s’all ha’ thy wish afore this night comes! Don’t think I’se skeered on thee, polished scrapper as thou seems t’ be. But I’ve summat ’ats got t’ be done afore theer’s time However he would have ended could not be told. A sudden shout interrupted the blistering course of those remarks. It came, strangely enough, from the despised and quite negligent ’Arry ’Ardisty: “Hoy. v’ damn lunatic, ’Aggerston—shut thv silly warp-head! While tlia’s all bin laikin’ an’ Hingin’ abalit . . . Classic’s gone an’ gotten clear! Wlieer i* hellmont can she ha’ —”

Haggerston almost screamed his surprise. He burst away from Alerlincote’s side and began such a fusillade of questionings and orders that he made confusion ten thousand times more confounded. But out of all one fact emerged with glorious certitude . . . Cleone Bainbridge had managed to get free. And Alerlincote knew that Hardistv liad managed to fulfil one promise he had made. CHAPTER XXIII. Cleone’s Escape.

Cleone Bainbridge’s wits worked very swiftly during the fight between Haggerston and her lover. She could see that all the rest of the Slouglistowe men immediately gathered around the hammering figures, and suspected them at first of a clannish intention to overbear tiny Alerlincote by sheer weight of numbers. Then, to her surprise, she felt a tug at her cuff and heard a hoarse but friendly attuned voice at her ears.

It was ’Arrv ’Ardisty—the only member of the swarthy gang who had no part in the moiling. Like a dart she remembered that *?(rry was in her lover's debt: that he owed the fact of his freedom to Merlincote’s leniency. 4 And, she lictened . . .

Hardisty’s importunities were roughlj made but they were intelligent enough He told her that Merlincote could be left to look after himself—that the burlj Haggerston was “mowt but wind an’ uglj lookin’s”—and, if she would take ad van tage of this affair to make good her escape, he vouched for the fact that Merlincote would follow her at the earliest opportunity; Hardisty promised to aid him a*s well.

In all there would be about ten seconds in which decision had to be made. It went sorely against the grain of Cleone to desert Guy Merlincote. Yet, on the other hand, * her faith in his lighting skill was equivalent to that of ’Arrv ’Ardisty. Of late she' had seen him in one or two man-to-man scuffles and a fist that could fell a giant like Mynheer Ryjer van Klaus, ought to be able adequately to settle the hash of a fellow like Haggerston. Again, granted she attained freedom, she would be able to bring help within half an hour . . . Once out of the tunnel in the cliff, and in sight, of the ever-vigilant police who scanned the Slcm from points of vantage in Sloughstowe village, surely she would be certain of attracting attention. So the decision was made and the eager ’Any ’Ardisty satisfied. Momentarily he was becoming more scared. If hi«s companion found he had aided the girl—if ever Van Klaus found out as much —lie knew his life would not be worth a penny's purchase.

“For God’s sake, lass—for God’s sake, be quick wi* ye! Ista goin’.t’ mak’ a run for it, or not ? Thou's nobbut a minute—”

“I—I’ll try,” Cleone gasped. “And, thank you.” “T’hell wi* y* thanks! I wish t’ th’ Lord I'd niver clapped eyes on thee, or yet that man o’ thine!” In Hardisty’s voice was a curiously dry sob. “If —if it worn’t that I owes Merlincote s’mucli, I’d see thee damned fust! Niver lias a Slo’stowe feller •gone back on liis breed afore, t’ my knowledge.” It was neither the time nor the place to consider psychology, yet there swept through Cleone’s mind a flooding realisation of how great a sacrifice to age-old codes of conduct this uncouth man of the marshes was making. And with that realisation, an abiding sense of pity. To be true to a self-appointed trust of honour, Hardisty was iconoclastic among the sanctities of his strange inheritance—the semi-Spanish strain that inhered in h\m and made him, with his fellows, of a people quite apart.

“I am so sorry,” was what elie said. Simple in words, but the tin\bre of them conveyed much more. Hardisty flickered a strange glance at her, and wearily smiled. “I am more than sorry. Hardisty.’

“Ah, nah then, lassie, so’in I —but come on, nay time t’ argy-bargy aboot that!” He pointed to a slot in the rocky wall of the gallery by which they had entered the cavern. “Sitha, if tlia’ll only tak, t’ th’ left hand tlieer, an’ keep t’ th’ left all the way y’ go —tka’ll come thy ways out o’ th’ cliff face by t’ Then tha’ll know ezzac’ly wheer t’ mak’ for next. Nah then, sharp’s th’ word—’op it!”

Cleone thrilled under his directions. It was going to be more satisfactory than she had dared to hope. HunterEnd was situated where the ragged shoulder of the cliff bent in to join up with the body of the shore. It overlooked Hartness Slem, like a castle above a plain. If only she could gain that point—outlined against the towering red bulk of the cliff —the watching guardians of Sloughstowe would pick her out through tlicir binoculars and the coastguard glasses they had procured. Her reappearance to the light of day would also mean that Guy was assured of a speedy release.

She caught, once, warmly at Ilardisty’s calloused hand and was rather astonished to find the pressure returned. Then she had a confused vision of the big body of Dick Haggerston going down to a punch from Merlincote—and she fled.

The rock tunnel that the marsliman had indicated entered immediately on a long and slippery descent. For the first ten_ or fifteen yards of it Cleone progressed by a painful and woeful slither. The floor of the gallery was like polished mica, worn smooth by generations of smugglers’ traffic and bv the constant attrition of dripping waters. It was exactly 1 i!-» standing unwarily on a slidg in winter darkness; there was no * -c > --* L y aoojut it, no hope of remaining poised-—rjust a long and breath-taking shoot —bang into another wall of clayey stone.

Gasping and ruefully rubbing at her Aching bones, Cleone grinned and said soft words to the overpowering darkness. Then she wondered how on earth she was to keep to the left and find a way without using sense of touch. As it was she might already have passed some left handed aperture . . . and. risk or no risk, she angrily retraced her steps. It was well she did so. In her sliding she had gone past another “doorway.” And it was into this she turned to find she was in a bat-light intricacy of alleys that were arranged very much as she might have expected tunnels in a mine to be. I^eft —left —left—now the sense of Hardisty’s command became apparent. The rock slits suddenly gave place to a Avide flaring and a wound in the cliff’s heart, that, in turn, yawned in terrific span to a cavern ten times larger than the one she had fled from. It was a place of winds and of darkling water. A roaring of air was all about it and a Aast and secret lake sent tiny black waA’elets crashing to a curving shore that corruscated with pebbles looking like heaped diamonds. They were nodules of jet, of sea-onyx, clouded agates and of quartz; a faery treasure ground up from the llonr of that appalling lake since first time was . . . and they showed themselves in a light that came from the. roof of the cavern—which was actually the infirm surface of the cliff! Never again she •diudderingly vowed, would she go walking on those breezy and turvy heights! After a while she told herself that /•.lie could hear something more than airs that moved. Whether she dreamed it —or whether it was merely a figment of sounding, synchronised within her brain ,-vitli tlie regular thundering of her frightened blood —she could not tell lint she thought of it in a different wav; if it were neither of these—then jit was the deep ordinance of smoothly running machinery. Yes, machinery!

Now she came to listen more intently, more analytically, she was sure she was right. Not only was there a purring of steadily turning wheels, but a whining: a thin and insect-like scream that, in other circumstances, would have told her cars she Avas listening to a dynamo. She stopped. Her Avits reeled, and .die "tew enormously cold. All at once her mind was seized by a fury of revelation. Granted she was listening to machinery: here was falling A\*ater to impulse it. Granted the presence of a dynamo—that meant electricity from water power. And, being the daughter of Hector Bainbridge, the world-fam-ous scientist who had done more than any other man in the world to the miraculous power of the ultra-short wireless waves, she let her thoughts fall into A-alid order. Van Klaus, so surmise had it, gained the mighty force he had beneath his control, 0 from the incessant transmission of ultra-short waves. To send those out across the globe meant the pristine command of high-tensions running into voltages about the eiglitAthousand mark. Then again, tlie fnst source of current generated at some twelve thousand volts, and alternating, would have to be rectified to pulsating direct current. This change-over would necessitate a batterv of water cooled rectifier valves, with motors to regulate their induction; control panels and what-not . . . a\n t and it was a big “but,” above all a constant and never failing gale of "md would be required to cool the enormous system of transmission. Here A\ r as a gale-force wind; here was a waste of water; here was hidden an incredible space —here also could bo—Van Klaus’ hoard of power. Wit.i the secretiA-e villagers of Sloughstowe in b:s pay, during all these weeks, the 1 )utcli'man could easily have assembled a generating and transmitting station in the bowels of the cliff. Nothing was to stop him. So long as he had the money to spend (and some said he was well nigh a millionaire) he could procure valves and machinery parts without question. The actual mounting and assembly of those parts could he done by electrical engineers—and a man who could contrive so far as to arm a yacht, in mid-ocean, with quick-firers brought from far-away Japan, was not the fellow to find so much as all this a difficulty. Convinced that she had probed at the very heart of Van Klaus’ mystery, Cleone ran on along the shore of the underground lake, keeping rigidly to the left hand all the way . . . absolutely oblivious to the fact that she was being followed by three men in greasy overalls and wearing the self-same type of rubber gloves and helmets that Van Klaus’ pirate crew were said to wear. (To be continued daily.)