So it came about that when the tunnel portal was reached, and Callahan and his firemen were helping her down from the high cab, common sense and clarity of mind fled away, and she was once more only an incoherent and badly frightened young woman. A gang of workmen waited at the tunnel mouth; dimly she realized that this was the night shift, preparing to go in when the day men should come out. One glance showed her that there was no member of the engineering staff with them; no one in authority save the burly Cornish drill-boss. “Mr. Vallory!” she demanded; “where is he?” The Cornishman knew the president’s daughter by sight. He pointed into the dark depths of the tunnel. “If ye’ll wait just a minute; it’s time for the shift to be coomin’ out, and he’ll be----” but the remainder of the sentence was lost upon the young woman who had darted into the black depths with neither light nor guide, stumbling blindly over the cross-ties of the spoil-track in her flight, and following the lead of the wide-spaced line of electric bulbs into the grim heart of the mountain. * * * * * A scant margin of two minutes after his daughter had halted and boarded a construction engine to be whirled away to the tunnel, Eben Grillage, who had been across to the commissary to put in a call for Plegg, returned to his desk in the _Athenia_ and once more began the reading of his neglected mail. A matter of three-quarters of an hour later, while he was still immersed in his correspondence, the swing-door of the forward corridor flew open as from the impact of a heavy projectile and Silas Plegg staggered into the office compartment. His lips were drawn back and he was shaking like one in an ague fit. “The roof in Heading Number One!” he jerked out. “It’s down, damn you, do you hear that?--it’s down, and the day shift is behind it!” Eben Grillage’s heavy face went purple, and for an instant his jaw sagged and he gasped for breath. Then the strong will triumphed for the moment over the failing body and he sprang out of his chair to catch the news-bringer in a grasp that threatened to crush muscle and bone. “Vallory--where’s David Vallory?” he stormed. “He’s--he’s in there with the men--and--and that isn’t all: your daughter’s there, too--if she isn’t buried under the slide!” Slowly the big man’s grasp upon Plegg relaxed and the veins in his forehead swelled to whip-cords. Eben Grillage’s day of reckoning had come. Before the first assistant realized what was happening, the gigantic figure of the contractor-king swayed like a toppling tower and would have fallen with a crash if Plegg had not braced himself and caught it. XXVI The Heart of Qojogo