how they got ’em. I’m going to find out where they went.”
Slipping between the spiles with their slimy, weed-grown surfaces, Rawlins, holding to Tom’s hand, struggled forward into the lighter water. Beside them rose a dark wall of masonry and reaching this Rawlins proceeded to feel his way along it. Before they had traveled ten feet the diver uttered a sharp ejaculation. Beside them in the wall, loomed a huge, black hole, the mouth of a great sewer.
“They went in here,” whispered Rawlins. “Come on!”
A moment later they were in utter blackness, feeling their way forward along the walls.
And now, very thin and faint, Tom heard Frank’s voice again. “What on earth’s the matter?” he asked. “I haven’t heard a word from you two for five minutes. Can you hear me?”
Tom was about to answer for they were evidently at nearly the limit of receiving range and his mouth opened, his lips formed the words of his reply, but no sound issued from them. Clear, loud and harsh, guttural words rang in Tom’s ears.
This was not Frank’s voice nor Henry’s; the words were not even English. Amazed and uncomprehending Tom was speechless and then, among the incomprehensible foreign syllables, came a word he recognized, the one word “Oleander!”
Instantly he knew that by some strange freak, by some mystifying coincidence he was again hearing that unknown man to whom he had so often listened. It seemed strange, weird, uncanny to have it coming to his ears here in the old disused sewer, but after all, he reflected, why not? Rawlins had heard it once before, there was nothing remarkable about it and he was on the point of asking his companion if he had heard and of trying to tell Frank, when once more his words were stayed. Before him the stygian darkness suddenly grew light, a brilliant beam stabbed down from overhead and through the strangely illuminated water Tom saw the two men in diving suits standing beneath a square opening down which a ladder was being thrust. But why, he vaguely wondered, was the water so transparent? How was it that he could now see clearly for many yards? And then, with a start, it dawned upon him that he was not looking
through water, that there was nothing between him and the trap save air. He was standing with head and shoulders out of water.
And now the gruff, guttural words were once more beating in his ears and the next instant he saw the strange divers seize a dangling rope, tipped with a great iron hook, dip it under the water and then, as the hook again ascended, he saw a dripping, cigar-shaped object like a torpedo slowly rise from the water and disappear in the opening above. Close behind it the two divers followed up the ladder, the ladder was drawn up, the light snapped out and the next instant Tom and Rawlins were once more in absolute darkness.