The Killer Mine

by Innes Hammond

'Turn right outside here,' he said. 'About fifty yards on, the road bends sharp right. That's where 'ee turns off to the left. Thee'll find a track. That'll take ee' down to Botallack. Cripples' Ease is by the mine workings. Thee'll not mistake it — 'edn't nothing else down there, 'cept ruins.'

Outside thick darkness shut in the village and thrust back the light that stole out through the open doorway of the inn. The wind had risen and the roar of it swallowed the sound of my footsteps on the roadway. A fork of lightning ripped open the under-belly of the clouds that hung above the coast. In the flash of it the drab stone of the cottages that edged the roadway stood cut sharp and black, as in a woodcut. The thunder cracked, heavy and close, like a giant whip slashed across the heavens, and then died away in a grumbling murmur over the sea.

I found the track without difficulty. It ran west towards the sea and the great streaks of forked lightning were reflected in the tumbled waters. The roar of the waves beating against the cliffs grew louder as I walked on and soon the flickering light showed me the surf boiling at the foot of Kenidjack Castle. The thunder rolled round the heavens in an almost unbroken orchestra of sound. Tumbled, broken heaps that had once been mine buildings loomed up out of the night, the stone almost white in the dazzle of the lightning. A fine mist of sea spray drove against my face, salting my lips. Old engine houses stood like dilapidated keeps along the clifftop and, between them, were piled broken heaps of crushed stone, tier on tier, like terraces. It was a devil's mockery of the hanging gardens of Babylon where not even thistle and chickweed would grow.

Then, black against a flash of lightning, I saw a building that was whole and intact. It was a gaunt, ugly building standing foursquare to the winds that roared across the top of the cliffs. It was there for an instant, outlined against luminous clouds and still more luminous sea. Then it was gone, swallowed up in the inky blackness that followed each flash. I saw the house next against a crackle of lightning far off along the horizon. It was nearer and seemed to crouch like some animal bunched to withstand the impact of the storm. Then suddenly a great flare of lightning split the sky right over my head. The jagged rent of crackling light sizzling in a single streak to stab the hills inland. The thunder was instantaneous. The clouds seemed to split with light and sound at one and the same time. And in that vivid flash I saw the windows of the building shine, cold and dead, like a blind man's eyes. The face of the house was black with a weather coating of pitch. Beside it was the remains of a garden, a poor broken thing of hydrangeas and foxgloves all choked with thistles. There were several little fruit trees, too — gaunt, wasted things whose branches flared away from the wind as though in mad flight for shelter.

With that splitting crash of thunder, the heavens seemed ripped open. The rain swept down in a solid, sodden curtain, driven in flurries by the wind, which now blew in heavy gusts. I ran, stumbling, to the door of the building and beat upon it. A flash of lightning showed me two lines of writing above the lintel. Several coats of more recent paint had flaked away to reveal the old lettering. In the next flash I was able to read it, 'James Nearne, licensed to sell wines, spirits and tobacco.'

Nearne. James Nearne. It was a strange coincidence. Nearne wasn't such a common name. Nor, for that matter, was Cripples' Ease. A gust of wind blew a chilling sheet of rain against me. I lifted the latch and threw myself against the door. It was locked. There was no knocker so I beat upon it with my fists. But the sound of my knocking must have been lost in the roar of the storm for nobody came. The water was pouring off the slates on to my neck in a steady stream. I flattened myself against the door, rattling at the latch. The rain was seeping through to my underclothes. I felt damp arid chilled. In the incessant flicker of the lightning the rain showed like a dull tin-plate curtain. Violent gusts drove it across the broken mine workings and beat it into the sodden ground.

I turned the collar of my jacket up and splashed my way round the walls of the house. At the back a chink of light glimmered from a curtained window. I sloshed through more puddles and grasped the sill. The rain beat against the window, washing in solid water down the panes. Through the chink I looked in upon a small, low-ceilinged room lit by lamplight. The walls were of a brown, glossy paint and that had peeled away in places to show a gay powder-blue underneath, or had disintegrated so completely with age and neglect to reveal the mouldering white of old plaster. A cheerful fire blazed in a cheap Victorian grate.

It was not the room that attracted my attention but the man seated behind a big desk near the fire. He was broad in the shoulders and powerfully built. His head was small and rather square, the skin dark and lined with little wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, and he had a moustache. Above a rather high, lined forehead his short hair stood up almost straight. This and his high cheek bones gave him the appearance of a character from Grimm. He was talking to somebody I could not see and at the same time counting notes from a thick wad oft the desk. At his elbow was a bottle and a glass full of some yellowish liquor. Beside the desk, against the wall, stood a big safe. The door of the safe was open.

Had I known who the other occupant of the room was I should not have tapped on that window. I should have stepped back into the deluging blackness and tried to find my way back to the inn. One glimpse of the other occupant of that room would have told me the sort of set-up I was getting mixed up with. That would have been enough for me. I'd have cleared out.

But I could only see the one man. I could see he was talking to someone. But I couldn't see who. And because I was wet through and cold and this was the place Dave had told me to come to, I tapped on the window. The man at the desk looked up. His eyes had narrowed and his head was cocked a little on one side. He had stopped talking and was staring straight at the window. I tapped again with the tips of my nails.