A Royal Abduction by Arthur W. Upfield

Author:Arthur W. Upfield [Upfield, Arthur W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical Fiction
ISBN: 9780994309648
Publisher: ETT Imprint
Published: 2015-05-12T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XXI

THE IRON YOUTH

BLUE EVERETT had taken the exploring party to the cavern in which was installed the hydro-dynamo, and there they had watched the great ceaseless flood of water pour out of a horizontal cleft in the solid limestone and tumble into a seemingly bottomless pit. In his quiet direct way Everett explained how the big water-wheel was geared to set the 220-volt dynamo humming at a terrific speed.

Yet the zest of the tour had been effectually damped by the sight of the extraordinary tracks on the sand near the skeleton of the great beast. Raymond Lund’s theory that they, too, had been made ages before did not hold water. No one troubled to dispute it. Everett knew, although he then said nothing about it, that those tracks were not there when last he had visited the deepest and greatest cavern; and both Van Horton and Snell knew, too, that Everett had previously been there and would have noted the tracks had they then existed.

Whilst returning to the inhabited part of the underground palace the explorers spoke but little. Each one of them knew that somewhere in the bowels of the earth there lurked a monster whose footprints were far larger than any man’s. What sort of a thing it was in aspect even imagination failed to visualise. There were the tracks, imprints of a foot with four long toes and one huge main toe longer than the others and widely separated from them. Both Natalie and Helen Van Horton remembered that there were no doors to their sleeping chambers to be locked and barred.

It was the surprising behaviour of Earle Lawrence which for the time banished from their minds the uneasiness created by the mysterious footprints. He, with Sir Knight and a man named Fred Bennett, awaited them in the Cavern of the Sword, and, without any preamble, Lund, Snell, and Van Horton suddenly found themselves looking down the barrels of automatic pistols.

“What the deuce!” ejaculated Everett.

“Search them for firearms, Everett,” commanded Lawrence in steely tones. “The slightest move, gentlemen, means finis.”

The unexpectedness of the situation enhanced the melodrama.

Helen Van Horton stood with clasped hands and wide eyes.

Natalie looked on the hold-up with narrowed eyes and grim little mouth. “Is it that you practise for the cinema?” she asked with velvet voice. “Or are you short of the cash so hard, Mistaire Lawrence?”

“Neither, Princess. I am looking for an automatic pistol which Larsen lost during his fight with Mr. Snell.”

“So! But there you use wrong word. Mr. Snell he thrash the bad Larsen. Of fight there was none. I commanded a thrashing, not a fight. A thrashing it was.”

“Excuse me, Highness! Everett, is there a gun on anyone of them?”

“No.”

“Now then, Snell, what did you do with that gun?”

“Tell the tale and I’ll report,” Snell said, his eyelids so low that his eyes were almost invisible. He stood with his bullet head thrust forward from hunched shoulders, so that he seemed to have no neck, whilst his hands were opened and the fingers wide apart.

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