The Chestermarke Instinct/Chapter 30
CHAPTER XXX
WRECKAGE
The four people standing beneath the portico of the police-station remained as if spell-bound for a full moment after the sudden flash and the sudden roar. Betty Fosdyke unconsciously clutched at Lord Ellersdeane's arm: Lord Ellersdeane spoke, wonderingly.
"Thunder?" he exclaimed. "Strange!"
Easleby turned sharply from Starmidge, who, holding by one of the pillars, was staring towards the quarter of the Market-Place, from whence the scream of dire fear had come.
"That's no thunder, my lord!" he said. "That's an explosion!—and a terrible one, too! Are there any gasworks close at hand? It was like———"
Polke came rushing out of the lobby behind them, followed by some of his men. And at the same instant people began running along the pavements, calling to each other.
"Did you hear that?" cried the superintendent excitedly. "An explosion! Which direction?"
Starmidge suddenly started, as if from a reverie. He put up his hand and wiped something from his cheek, and held the hand out to a shaft of light which came from the open door behind them. A smear of blood lay across his open palm.
"A splinter of falling glass," he said quietly. "Come on, all of you! That was an explosion—and I guess where! Get help, Polke—come on to the Cornmarket! Get the firemen out."
He set off running towards the end of the Market-Place, followed by Easleby, and at a slower pace by Lord Ellersdeane and Betty. Crowds were beginning to run in the same direction: very soon the two detectives found it difficult to thread a way through them. But within a few minutes they were in the Cornmarket, and Starmidge, seizing his companion's arm, dragged him round the corner of Joseph Chestermarke's house to the high garden wall which ran down the slope to the river bank. And as they turned the corner, he pointed.
"As I thought!" he muttered. "It's Joseph Chestermarke's workshop! Something's happened. Look there!"
The wall, a good ten feet high on that side, was blown to pieces, and lay, a mass of fallen masonry, on the green sward by the roadside. Through the gap thus made, Starmidge plunged into the garden—to be brought up at once by the twisted and interlaced boughs of the trees which had been lopped off as though by some giant ax, and then instantaneously transformed into a cunningly interwoven fence. The air was still thick with fine dust, and the atmosphere was charged with a curious, acid odour, which made eyes and nostrils smart.
"No ordinary burst up, this!" muttered Starmidge, as he and Easleby forced their way through branches and obstacles to the open lawn. "My God!—look at it! Blown to pieces!"
The two men stood for a moment staring at the scene before them, as it was revealed in the faint light of a waning moon. Neither had ever seen the effect of high explosives before, and they remained transfixed with utter astonishment at what they saw. Never, until then, had either believed it possible that such ruin could be wrought by such means.
The laboratory was a mass of shapeless wreckage. It seemed as if the roof had been blown into the sky—only to collapse again on the shattered walls. The masonry and woodwork lay all over lawns and gardens, and amidst the surrounding bushes and trees. In the middle of it yawned a black, deep cavity, from the heart of which curled a wisp of yellowish smoke. Between these ruins and the house a beech tree of considerable size had been completely uprooted, and had crashed down on the lower windows of the house, part of the wall and roof of which had been wrecked. And on the opposite side of the garden a great gap had been made in the smaller trees, and the shrubberies beneath them by the falling in of Rob Walford's old dove-cot, the ancient walls and timber roof of which had completely collapsed under the force of the explosion.
Over the actual area of the wreckage everything was still as death, save for a faint crackling where some loose wood was just catching fire. Starmidge began to make his way towards it.
"The thing is," he said mechanically, "the thing is, the thing is yes, is—was—there anybody here—anybody here? We must have lights."
And just then as he came to where the burst of flame was growing bigger, and Polke with a body of firemen and constables came hurrying through a gap in the lower wall, he caught sight of a man's face, turned up to the half-light. Easleby saw it at the same time—together they went nearer. And Starmidge bent down and found himself looking at Gabriel Chestermarke.
"Him!" he whispered. "Then he came—here!"
"He's gone, anyway," muttered Easleby. "Dead as can be!" He lifted himself erect and called to Polke who was making his way towards them. "Bring a lantern!" he said. "There's a dead man here!"
"And keep the crowd out," called Starmidge. "Keep everybody out—while we look round."
But at that moment he caught sight of Betty Fosdyke, who, with Lord Ellersdeane in close attendance, had made her way into the garden and was clambering towards him. Starmidge stepped back to her.
"Hadn't you better go back?" he urged. "There'll be unpleasant sights. Do go back!—amongst the trees, anyway. We've found one dead man already, and there'll probably be———"
"No!" she said firmly. "I won't! Not until I know who's here. Because I think—I'm afraid Mr. Neale may be here. I must—I will stop! I'm not afraid. Whose body have you found?"
"Gabriel Chestermarke's,"replied Starmidge quietly. "Dead! And—whoever's here, Miss Fosdyke, I don't see how he can possibly be alive. Do go back and let us search."
But Betty turned away and began to search, climbing from one mass of wreckage to another. Presently an exclamation from her brought the others hurriedly to her side. She pointed between two slabs of stone.
"There!" she whispered. "A man's—face!"
Starmidge turned to Lord Ellersdeane.
"Get her away—aside—anywhere—for a minute!" he muttered. "Let's see what condition he's in, anyway. The other—was blown to pieces."
Lord Ellersdeane took a firm grip of Betty's arm and turned her round.
"That was not—Mr. Neale?" he asked.
"No!" she said faintly. "No!"
"Then leave them to deal with that, and let us look elsewhere," he said. "Come—after all, you don't know that he would be here."
"Where else should he be?" she answered. "I'm sure he's here, somewhere. Help me!"
She turned away with him in another direction, and the two detectives, with some of the firemen helping them, got to work on the place which she had pointed out. Presently Polke directed the light of a bulls'-eye on the dead face beneath them. He broke into an exclamation of amazement.
"Who's this?" he demanded. "Look!"
One of the firemen bent closer, and suddenly glanced up at the superintendent.
"It's young Chestermarke, sir," he said. "He must have shaved his beard off. But—it's him!"
They took out what was to be found of Joseph Chestermarke at that particular spot, and went on to search for the rest of him, and for anything else. And eventually they came across Neale—unconscious, but alive. His partial protection by the projecting iron walls of the furnace had saved him; he had evidently been carried back with them when the explosion occurred and wedged between them and the outer wall of the laboratory. He came round to find a doctor administering restoratives to him on one side, and Betty Fosdyke kneeling at the other. And suddenly he remembered, and made a great shift to speak.
"All right!" he muttered at length. "Bit knocked out, that's all! But—Horbury! Horbury's—somewhere! Get at him!"
They got at the missing bank manager at last—he, too, had been saved by the thick wall which stood between him and the explosion. He was alive and conscious when they had dug down to him—and his rescuers stared from him to each other when they saw that the broken links of a steel chain were still securely manacled about his waist.