"Yes. We shall have done our part. The rest will lie with him. I wonder what old Mac has been doing all this time?"
CHAPTER XVI
THE HOLE IN THE WALL
Mackenzie, meanwhile, had been playing a very busy and at the same time a very discreet part above ground, with timorous but efficient assistance from Hamid Gul. It was the latter who, at night, when all was quiet, stole from the kitchen into the passage, and tied the string to a bar of the golden grating, so cleverly that only the closest scrutiny could have detected it. Having ascertained by means of this device the whereabouts of Forrester, and the burrowing in which he and Beresford were engaged, Mackenzie, in his calm sagacious way, set himself to think out a plan for turning that work to account.
At first he decided to employ Hamid Gul only as postman. It was of vital importance that the Old Man should entertain no suspicion of his cook. There seemed little risk of Hamid's night-work at the grating being detected. An Indian servant moves more silently than a cat. On the other hand, if he pried and prowled in the pagoda or its precincts, for the purpose of discovering the means of access to the rift, or the other particulars about which Mackenzie was curious, he would almost certainly attract the notice of the Chinese, and ruin everything. For the same reason Mackenzie took care that his necessary meetings with Hamid should take place at different times of the day, at different spots, and in the utmost secrecy.
His own actions were dictated by shrewd policy. To begin with, he told Jackson no more, not that he distrusted him, but that he feared the possibility of his disclosing something if for any reason the priests should again practise their hypnotic powers on him. Then, he assumed in public the mien of a slave, utterly cowed, bereft of will power, who lived only to get through his appointed task, and had no other aim than to merit his masters' approval. So well did he act his part that after a few days' observation, the priests concluded that their taming process had been thoroughly effective, and paid no more attention to him than to any other of the men who toiled and sighed on the plateau. That the dejection which Mackenzie feigned was in Jackson's case real confirmed them in their delusion. Sher Jang, meanwhile, went about his tasks with philosophic submissiveness; but in his heart of hearts he believed that the sahibs, whose movements he watched unobtrusively, would some day get the better of the Chinese dogs, and he was ready instantly to obey the call which he felt would surely come.
When Mackenzie was satisfied that he was accounted well broken in, he took to roaming at night about the precincts of the pagoda. He had already settled in his mind that the way to the rift could lie only through the pagoda or one of the neighbouring buildings, and his chief aim must be to discover that. It was also of vital importance to find as nearly as possible the spot where the chimney would cut through the earth; one step towards that discovery was the knowledge that its base was fifty yards from the cleft, and therefore presumably from the grating in the passage. He had been much puzzled by the almost incessant knocking that proceeded in day-time from the low building behind the orchard, but dismissed that matter as of no account so far as he and his friends were concerned.
The wall enclosing the pagoda and its appurtenances was twelve feet in height: too high to look over, too smooth to scale. The gate by which Hamid issued to the fields was unlocked for him by a priest, and locked after him. Mackenzie meant to get inside the wall. It would not be difficult, perhaps, to make a ladder, but before taking this in hand he might as well see if there was a less ostentatious mode of entry.
Strolling at the rear of the orchard late one dark night, he was guided by the sound of running water to the stream which he and Forrester had observed on their first day upon the plateau. He followed the course of this, and discovered that it entered the enclosure on the north side by a culvert beneath the wall. The darkness rendered it impossible to measure with the eye the width and depth of the arch, but on stooping and feeling along the stonework, he found that the stream poured through an iron grating. Since the water was perfectly clear, the grating must have been designed, not as a strainer, but as a defence against intrusion. The Old Man was obviously a stickler for privacy.
Mackenzie pushed and shook the grating, to ascertain whether it was firmly fixed. It held fast, but slipping his hand under the water, he discovered that the submerged part was worn thin with long corrosion, and that there were several gaps in it where the iron had been completely rusted away. With a little exertion he managed to break off a considerable portion of the grating below water, leaving a space large enough for a man to crawl through. It had occurred to him at once that this was a safer means of getting inside than by a ladder, which would always make him a conspicuous object to anyone who chanced to be looking that way from the buildings.