The Man from Moscow by Philip McCutchan

Author:Philip McCutchan [McCutchan, Philip]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Endeavour Press
Published: 2017-10-25T06:00:00+00:00

Thirteen

As the gap began to close, as the slabs came slowly together, Shaw felt blind horror. The mushroom-top was pressing him down now, irresistibly, uncheckable and monstrous, an awful force which he could not fight. There was no time for him to scramble clear now, to reach the edge and drop down. Long before he could squeeze and wriggle through that narrowing gap the two halves would have come flat together.

There was only one thing to do.

Dragging his body forward, scraping along the rough concrete, he got his hands firmly on the central rod as it turned and he plunged down into the darkness of the shaft itself, head first, turning on the rod. He slid down quickly, felt his feet clear the concrete, got a grip with them on the rod. Just as he did so the rod stopped turning, the mushroom-top hit the lower section of the pill-box with a dull boom, a thud which echoed eerily down the shaft. In pitch darkness and stifling heat, Shaw hung upside down, the blood pounding and swelling in his head until he felt that it must burst. Hanging on to the rod with a grip as tight as death itself, he let his feet come clear, taking all his weight on his hands. Groping around with his feet, he felt for the sides of the shaft, found them, braced his legs out sideways, and shifted the grip of his hands. Then he swung his legs downward, came head up, and gripped with his knees tightly on the rod, hanging like a monkey on a stick but, at least, the right way up now. Thankfully, he felt the blood leave his head. He felt a good deal safer now, but it was only a comparative safety. He knew that he was caught, caught like a rat in a trap and with just about as much hope of getting out — until someone far below opened up that mushroom-top again.

Meanwhile, he was in danger of suffocating.

There was no movement of air now, except for the naturally-rising exhalations, the used, filthy air from below, air which brought to his nostrils the stink of damp and mustiness, of decayed animal bodies, of sweat and all other known human smells, an overpowering aroma like rotted death. He was now in what could be his tomb, a sealed and lead-lined concrete tomb.

He felt faint and dizzy, his legs and arms aching from the strain of holding on. Soon he must slip, slide down into the unknown darkness. His thoughts grew fantastic, dreamlike; the darkness began to people itself with strange shapes and faces, the blood pounded again in his ears, in his head, as he tried to suck in what air there was. His lungs felt congested, useless as they heaved away in great dragging sighs.

*

He was on the point of slipping down the rod when he felt the movement, the turning movement which told him they were opening up again, and then a moment later

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