Mystery at Geneva: An Improbable Tale of Singular HappeningsMacaulay, Rose
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Mystery at Geneva: An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings
Macaulay, Rose
Detective and mystery stories; Geneva (Switzerland) -- Fiction
Henry crossed himself, muttered a prayer and advanced down the
passage, his torch a lantern before his feet, his nerves shivering
like telegraph wires in a winter wind, but fortunately not making the
same sound.
37
On and on and on. It was cold down there, like death, and bitter like
death, and dark. Rats scuffled and leaped. Once Henry trod on one of
them; it squeaked and fled, leaving him sick and cold. His imagination
was held and haunted by the small quiet pastor; he seemed, on the
whole, the worst of the four miscreants. A sinister air of deadly
badness there had been about him.... Lines ran in and out of Henry's
memory like cold mice. Something about "a grim Genevan minister walked
by with anxious scowl." ... Horrid.... It made you sweat to think of
him. Then on the passage there opened another passage, running sharply
into it from the right. That was odd. Which should be followed?
Henry swung his flashlight up each in turn, and both seemed the same
narrow blackness. He advanced a few steps, and on his left yet another
turning struck out from the main tunnel.
"My God," Henry reflected, "the place is a regular catacomb."
If one should lose oneself therein, one might wander for days, as one
did in catacombs.... Having no tallow candle, but only an electric
torch, one might eat one's boots ... the very rats....
Not repressing a shudder, Henry stood hesitating at the cross-roads,
looking this way and that, his ears strained to listen for sounds.
And presently, turning a corner, he perceived that there were
sounds--footsteps and low voices, advancing down the left-hand passage
towards him. Quickly shutting his light, he stepped back till he came
to the right-hand turning, and went a little way up it, to where it
sharply bent. Just round the corner he stopped, and stood hidden. He
was gambling on the chance that whoever was coming would advance, back
or forward, along the main tunnel when they struck into it. If, on the
other hand, they crossed this and turned up his passage, he could
hastily recede before them until perhaps another turning came, or
possibly some exit, or until they turned on him that horrid moon of
light and caught him....
Well, life is a gamble at all times, and more particularly to those
who play the spy.
Henry listened. The steps came nearer. They had a queer, hollow sound
on the earthy floor. Low voices murmured.
It came to Henry suddenly that these were not the voices of Charles
Wilbraham, of Sir John Levis, of M. Kratzky, or, presumably then, of
the little pastor. These were voices more human, less deadly.
The footsteps reached the main passage, and then halted.
"Here's a puzzle," said a voice. "Which way, then? Will we divide, or
take the one road?"
And then Henry, though he loved not Ulster, thanked God and came
forward.
At the sound of his advance a flashlight was swung upon him, and the
Ulster voice said, "Put them up!"
Henry put them up.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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