The City of No Escape ebook

Contents

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER I

NICK PREST stopped, gazed at the left-hand cliff, went on a few paces and stopped again. “This is it,” he whispered as he turned, and the other three crept after him, silent as ghosts.

The bottom of the gorge was filled with old lava, black and brittle as bottle glass, but the cliffs which went up endlessly on either side into the African night were of limestone. All was still as death. Not even a jackal cried beneath the stars.

A low arch gaped in the cliff face, and Nick passed in under it.

“Wait! No lights yet,” came back his voice out of the velvet blackness. “Be careful. It’s steep.”

For a while there was no sound except the soft shuffling of Nick’s feet as he moved slowly down a steep slope. The darkness was horribly daunting to the others, but Nick knew the way and they trusted him implicitly.

A beam of white light broke out from Nick’s electric torch, and fell upon the rock floor of a wide passage which sloped steadily away into the bowels of the earth.

“All right so far,” said Nick. “We are well below the level of the cave mouth. No light can show outside.”

“You’re sure scared of Bastin, Nick,” remarked Mort Bradby, rather scornfully.

“I am,” Nick answered curtly. “We’ve dodged the fellow so far, but if he had the least suspicion that we were here I wouldn’t give two pins for our lives. What do you say, Jeremy?”

“I say you are right,” said Jeremy Stretton, whose reddish hair and clear skin contrasted strongly with Nick’s dark leanness.

“Yo’ bet Marse Nick am right,” added the last of the four, a little nigger, ugly as a monkey, but as strong and as active.

Mort shut up and they went on. It was easy going, for the floor was wide and level. No–not quite level, for the centre was slightly hollowed.

Jeremy noticed this and spoke to Nick. Nick nodded. “Feet, Jeremy. That hollow has been made by the tread of feet, and if I am not mistaken their owners were dust a few thousand years before we were born.”

The passage sloped steadily, and soon its invaders were far below the level of the old lava floor which lay solid in the gorge outside.

Nick’s torchlight flung out gleams of colour from the walls. Mort saw and stopped. “I say, look at those pictures,” he exclaimed.

“Yes, there is the dog’s head of Anup, and the beaked face of Thoth,” said Nick. “By the look of it that blighter Bastin is on the track of something big.”

“Can’t we stop and look at them?” begged Mort. “Where there’s paintings there’s likely other things–things dad would be mighty pleased to have.”

“We have no time,” Nick answered. “Bastin and Kasim went much farther than this. What really matters must be a long way in, behind the big fall.”

A mass of broken rock showed, blocking half the passage. Above was the break in the roof from which the stuff had fallen.

“Earthquake,” commented Nick, in his brief way. “Probably the same time as the fissure eruption which flung out the lava and buried all Feshan.”

Beyond was a second fall, but it was easily passed, and they had travelled nearly half a mile into the heart of the hillside before they reached a third fall larger than the other two. Part of the wall had broken away, leaving a deep hole in the left side of the gallery.

Nick stopped. “That’s where I hid last night,” he said. “The big fall is only about fifty yards farther on. It was that which stopped them.”

“You looked at it?” asked Jeremy.

“Yes, after Bastin and Kasim had gone. It blocks the whole passage.”

Mort cut in. “Where did they get the jade thing they showed to old Durham?”

“I can’t say for certain. They may have found it in here, or likely as not Bastin brought it with him to humbug the Professor.”

“But why would Bastin want to fool him like that?” demanded Mort.

“Because he’s out for loot,” replied Nick. “He means to go the whole hog. I heard enough last night to make me certain of that.”

Mort stared. “I don’t get you, Nick. Why should Bastin try monkey tricks? Dad promised to go equal shares with him on all finds, and he’s paying ten thousand for showing us the way to Feshan.”

“Ten thousand cuts no ice with Bastin, Mort. The man thinks in millions. He is on the track of something big. I don’t know whether or not Kasim put him up to it, but I’m as sure of what I say as I am that this beast has simply been using us to get here.”

Jeremy whistled softly. “You go the whole hog, old man,” he remarked.

“Don’t you believe me?” demanded Nick hotly.

Jeremy shrugged his great shoulders. “I dare say you’re right. Myself, I can’t stick Bastin at any price. I never could. And Kasim is a crook. You’ve only to see him once to swear to that.”

Mort looked thoroughly unhappy.

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