Would Elma receive his message and come to his rescue?
At some moments he gave up the situation as hopeless. His father’s reluctance to tell him the truth concerning Gray and his accomplice, the woman Crisp who was actually on visiting terms with Mr Sandys and his daughter, utterly puzzled him. He had trusted his father before all men, yet the poor old rector had died with his secret locked in his heart.
A thousand conflicting thoughts arose within him, all weird, mysterious, inscrutable. Why should his own father have held back from him the truth? Why should Mr Sandys demand from him the secret of his discovery of the girl in Welling Wood?
What connexion could there be with the City magnate and the girl whom he had believed was dead, but who was certainly still alive?
As the day faded the rain, which had ceased for an hour, again fell heavily, and in the dim grey light he could see the water rising almost imperceptibly, until it had already reached his knees.
He still listened intently, but though he heard a concert sent out from Marconi House, on four hundred metres, gay music which jarred upon the nerves of a doomed man, and also the voices of amateurs in the vicinity, yet no sound was there of Elma.
Would she be able to get the transmission set to work? The thought caused him to hold his breath. Even if she received his message it might be too late if the rain continued and the river rose further!
He recollected how, when at Mr Sandys’ request he obtained official permission and had erected the telephone transmission set, he had given Elma several lessons in its working until once or twice she had spoken to him at the Rectory from the Towers and had once given him a gramophone selection. He knew that the exact filament current on the valves was necessary for clear speech. Would she remember the exact instructions he had given her?
But after all he had merely cast his urgent appeal to the wind. He did not even know whether it had floated upon the water. Perhaps it might have been caught in a tree and would remain unseen until the paper rotted and dropped!
Darkness fell, and the only sound that reached his living tomb was the low lapping of the waters, as slowly but surely they rose.