Chapter Seventeen. Is Extraordinary.

The agony was excruciating. A burning bubbling seethed in my brain, as though my skull were filled with molten metal. My mouth was parched, my neck stiff, and my jaws were fixed when I opened my eyes and found myself in a great chasm of cavernous darkness.

How long I had lain there I have no idea.

The thunder of rolling, roaring waters deafened me, and my lower limbs were so benumbed that at first I was unable to move them. I felt my leg, and then discovered the reason. Wet to the skin, I was lying half in water, my head alone being on some slightly higher ground—a fortunate circumstance that had certainly saved me from being drowned.

Where was I?

For fully ten minutes—minutes that seemed hours, I was utterly unable to move, but presently I managed, by dint of supreme effort, to struggle to my feet and grope about me unsteadily, at last finding a smooth arched wall. I lifted my hand above my head and found that I could touch the roof.

In that pitch darkness, with the roaring torrent at my side, I dare not move two paces lest I might lose my foothold.

I felt frantically in my pocket, and my heart leapt when I found that I still possessed a box of wax vestas. The silver box was water-tight. One of these I struck quickly, but its light was lost in that cavernous blackness.

It only showed me the bricked walls, high to the roof, wet and slimy, and revealed to me that I was in one of the main sewers of London! At my side the great black torrent flowed on towards the outfall with deafening roar in that long, interminable tunnel beneath the Metropolis.

Rats, hundreds of them, grey and scuttling, ran helter-skelter on seeing the fickle light; but I stood motionless leaning against the wall and gazing around at my weird surroundings until the match went out. My head reeled, I feared to walk lest I should stagger into the Stygian stream.

Knowledge of where I was gave me courage, however. My head was very painful with strange fancies dancing through my imagination. I think that the blow had unbalanced my brain.

Which way should I turn? To right or left? Was mortal man ever in such a predicament? I recognised the truth. I remembered one appalling fact. The scoundrels had sent me through into that deadly place, knowing that even if the fall did not kill me outright, I must be drowned when, at regular intervals, the sewer was automatically flushed, and my body washed out to the Thames estuary.

I had seen the walls still wet to the roof from the last flushing, and as I recognised my awful peril, my blood ran cold. At any moment might come that gigantic flood to sweep me away into eternity in an instant. Somewhere, higher up, was that mechanism which at certain hours of day and night automatically let loose the great sweeping wave through the long, black tunnel sweeping to the sea, the cleansing of London.

My only hope was to find safety somewhere, therefore in frantic haste, all forgetful of the pain I was suffering, I turned to the right and groped along the wall by aid of a match, the light of which was not sufficient to show the true dimensions of the sewer.

On, on, I went, how far I have no idea. It seemed to be miles. My matches burned only dimly, so bad was the air. Time after time I came to side channels, small arches belching forth their black stream into the roaring torrent like tributaries of a river, until I suddenly saw something white upon the wall, and, raising my match, discerned the painted words: “Poland Street.”

Then I knew that I was beneath Poland Street, close to Oxford Street.

I was in search of a manhole by which to ascend to the roadway, but, alas! could not discover one. A great terror seized me lest the flush should come before I could gain a place of safety.

I was in the act of striking another match, in order to proceed more quickly, when I felt my head reeling, and in clutching at the wall for support the matchbox fell from my nerveless fingers into the water.

My disaster was thus complete. Without light how could I find a place in which to raise myself above the level of the flood?

My heart stood still. In that moment the recollection of all the sequence of strange and startling events of the past few weeks passed in rapid review before me. My enemies had entrapped me, and I now knew that I was doomed.

Eric’s shout of defiance, followed by that groan and shriek, still rang in my ears, but, most tantalising of all, I had no idea where the house to which I had been enticed was situated. It was somewhere off Regent Street, but further than that I had no knowledge.

I saw how cleverly the whole affair had been arranged; how the man introduced to me as Humphreys had met us by appointment in the vestibule of the Empire, and how, knowing my interest in antiques, the bait had been so cleverly placed.

I had now no doubt that Ellice Winsloe was an adventurer, therefore my eager desire was to reveal to Scarcliff the astounding truth.

And yet this was actually the man who had the audacity to propose marriage to Sybil, and she had contemplated accepting him!

To old Lady Scarcliff the fellow had posed as a gentleman of means, and had so ingratiated himself with Jack that the pair had become inseparable. The situation was monstrous.

In sheer desperation I groped forward slowly and carefully, my face to the black, slimy wall, feeling it forward with my hands. If I stumbled the force of the torrent would, I knew, take me off my feet and I should most probably meet with an awful death. Cautiously I crept along, how far I cannot tell. Each moment seemed an hour, and each step a mile, until of a sudden the wall ended!

Only the black swiftly-flowing flood lay before me. I put out my hand in the darkness, but only grasped the air.

Next moment, however, I discovered that the sewer took a sudden turn, almost at right angles, and that I had come to the corner. Yes. The wall continued! So I groped on and on, my hands travelling over bricks worn smooth by the action of the cleansing flood.

I hoped to encounter one of those men whom I had often seen descend from the street in high boots and carrying a miner’s lamp, but I was, alas! alone. The very absence of the workmen told me the terrible truth. It was the time for the automatic flushing!

On I groped in frantic haste, the rats scuttling from my path, the darkness complete; the noise of the black waters deafening. I recollected that as we had driven from the Empire it had commenced to rain, and thus was the torrent accounted for.

Of a sudden, I discerned before me something. What it was I could not distinguish. I crept on, and saw that it was like a small patch of faint grey. Then, approaching nearer, I found that it was a single ray of faint daylight which, penetrating from far above, fell upon the black waters. It was day. I had been in that gruesome place all night.

My heart leapt within me as I went forward to it, finding that above was a round, well-like shaft, which led to the surface, while in the wall were iron footholds.

I gained the bottom, and grasping the small, rusted iron rails commenced a slow and difficult ascent.

Not an instant too soon, however, for ere I had placed my foot upon the first rung of the ladder a noise like thunder sounded from the tunnel, and the black waters rose angrily to meet me, washing about my legs as I climbed higher up, and filling the sewer to its roof.

For a few moments the water remained at that level, and then the torrent slowly receded to its original height as the flushing wave rushed on towards the outfall.

A cold perspiration broke out upon me. I saw how I had been within an ace of death, and shuddered as I glanced below.

Then, ascending as quickly as my shattered nerves and swimming head would allow, I found above me a closed grating, through which I could hear the roar of the London traffic above.

I shouted, but could attract no attention.

To push up the iron was impossible, for I saw that it was locked.

A woman passed close by, and I shouted to her. She turned and looked in an opposite direction, surprised to see no one. She never suspected anyone being beneath the roadway.

An omnibus rumbled over me, and I saw that it was a green “Bayswater,” from which I concluded that I must be beneath Oxford Street.

Again and again I shouted for help, but could attract no notice. My position was far from secure, compelled to cling on to those iron footholds in the brickwork.

At last I saw a newsboy close to me. My shout startled him, but when he discerned my face beneath the bars he came closer, and asked,—

“’Alloa, guv’nor! What’s up?”

“I’m a prisoner here,” I explained. “Go and fetch a policeman.”

“My gum!” exclaimed the urchin in his surprise. “It’s the first time I’ve ever ’eard of a bloke gettin’ locked down the sewer.” And he went off at once to call a constable.

The officer came quickly, and after a brief explanation he sent the lad somewhere to the house of one of the sewermen, I think, for the key.

Meanwhile, a small crowd quickly collected around the grating, and I was subjected to a good deal of good-humoured banter until the man came with the key, and I once again found myself at the surface, a dirty, dishevelled, pitiable-looking object in evening dress. I was in Oxford Street, at the corner of Hart Street, Bloomsbury.

Both constable and sewer-man were curious to know how I got in, whereupon I explained that I had been the victim of a plot in some house, of the exact situation of which I was unaware.

The two men exchanged glances—meaning glances I saw them to be.

“Was it anywhere near Portland Place?” asked the big fellow in blue jersey and sea-boots.

“I don’t know. I saw Poland Street written up. Why?”

“Well, because there’s something mysterious goes on in a house somewhere near here. Only a month ago we found the body of a young woman drowned in the main sewer at the corner of Charing Cross Road, and the affair is a mystery. The police ’ave kept it out of the papers while they make inquiries. We’re trying to find out what house has direct communication with the sewer, but up to the present we’ve not been successful. It’s a good job,” he added, “that you weren’t caught by the flush, for it must just be going down at this time.”

I explained how narrowly I had escaped death, and then in reply to the constable described the dastardly plot of which I had been the victim.

“Of course, sir, you won’t mind making a full statement at the police station, will you?” the officer said. “The discovery of the poor woman in the sewer the other day has shown that there is some house in which people mysteriously disappear. It is evidently to that house you were invited. You will be able to assist us to identify it.”

I shook my head, saying: “I fear that I’ll never be able to recognise it again, for I really took no notice of its exterior. It lies somewhere east of Regent Street, that is all I know.”

“Depend upon it that more than one person has been swept down by the flush,” declared the sewer-man. “A man’s body was found down at the outfall at Beckton about three months ago. He was in evening dress, and evidently a gentleman, our foreman said, but where he came from was a complete mystery. My own idea is that the house has no direct communication with the sewer, for if it had, we should have discovered it. You say, sir, that you fell through a hole in the stairs?”

I replied in the affirmative.

“Exactly. You dropped down into a cellar or somewhere in the basement, and then, while you were insensible, they put you into the sewer—through some manhole, perhaps, of which they have a duplicate key. The house must be near a manhole. That’s my belief.”

“Then you don’t think that I fell plumb into the sewer?”

“Certainly not. You were thrown into the sewer while insensible down a manhole, without a doubt. It’s lucky you just escaped the flush. The villain evidently knew that the flush is at eight o’clock in the morning, and that we don’t go down till afterwards. And when we go, well, the victim has, of course, disappeared. By Jove! sir,” added the big muscular man, standing astride in his big, high boots, “you’ve had a narrow shave, and no mistake.”

I admitted I had. I was forced to repeat my explanation to a brown-bearded, good-humoured inspector who came up, and who afterwards gave me his name as Pickering. The officer was most interested, therefore promising to call at the Tottenham Court Road police station later I gave him a card and took a hansom back to Bolton Street.