He started into the opening and changed his mind. The tunnel might go to the quarry.
It might be a blind pocket. It might have a hundred forks and turns; he could get lost underground. It was not sensible, not even sane, to explore alone. Taking gasps of air, he yelled “Eleanor!” repeatedly. Nothing came back but echoes.
He left the pit and raced toward the house. As he rounded the banyan tree he heard a distant siren.
Mrs. Yates saw him enter and paled. “You’re wet!”
“I’m all right. I was looking in that rock pit in the woods. Nothing. Don’t worry so, mother!”
He changed to dry clothes as rapidly as he could. When he came down, Higgins, with two men in business suits whom he’d never seen and two cops, had just come in. Duff jerked his head at the FBI man and they went to the kitchen, where he told Higgins about the sinkhole.
The men, soaking wet, yelling in the low, rocky passages, found a route to the quarry.
They found ample signs that men had used it — often and for a long time. They found evidence that vehicles had driven up to the quarry at a point different from the one used by dump trucks. But no trace of Eleanor.
Near midnight Higgins sat with Duff in the kitchen. Both were muddy to the waist.
But Higgins had been on the telephone for twenty minutes. He gulped coffee now and wiped a sticky forehead with a sodden handkerchief.