“Please do,” said Lady Armstrong. “There’s a network of tunnels and galleries here like a honeycomb under the hills, but most of them are too narrow to go down very far. Don’t squeeze through anything tight and you can’t get lost. If your lantern should go out”—Mrs. Lambdon moaned—“just call out and stay still. It’s very easy to get disoriented underground, or in the dark.”
The party spread out. Curtis, intrigued and not burdened with a woman who wanted his support, headed down a wide tunnel into what turned out to be a small gallery, its walls an icy white compared to the brown and yellow of the main cave. He paced its edges, examining the rippled walls, imagining the age of the extraordinary creation. At the end of the gallery was a small wall of rocks, man made, and as he peered over he saw that it marked a pit, almost perfectly round, utterly black, nearly six feet wide.
He held out his lantern and peered down, but saw only the void gaping beneath. It was an unsettling sight. He dropped in a pebble experimentally and listened out, but heard no rattle as it hit bottom.
Footsteps sounded behind him.
“Good, isn’t it?” Holt had come in alone. “Watch out for that pit. Nasty little trap. You wouldn’t want to fall in.”
Curtis straightened. “I wonder how far it goes down.”
“Nobody knows. They’ve lowered ropes with lanterns on, but they’ve always run out of rope before they run out of hole. It’s some kind of sinkhole. A bottomless pit, straight down to the bowels of the earth.” Holt spoke with relish.
“Good Lord.” Curtis stared into the abyss a moment longer. “Have you lost Miss Carruth to Armstrong?”
“To her bulldog.” Holt pursed his lips, making a face intended to evoke Miss Merton’s severity. Curtis had no patience with those manners; one did not speak of women like that. He gave the fellow a disapproving look and turned again to the weird walls.
Holt didn’t seem to take the hint. “I say, quite seriously, what did you make of that business with our Hebrew friend this morning?”
“He beat you fair and square. What else is there to make of it?”
“Oh, come. That was professional play. Didn’t you think? Have you ever seen a gentleman play like that?”
Curtis hadn’t. If da Silva wasn’t a professional sharp it wasn’t for lack of ability, or an excess of morals either. It was quite obvious that he wasn’t a gentleman. Holt was right.
Curtis couldn’t bring himself to say it.
“He’s a fine player,” he said instead, defensively. “He didn’t play for money. I don’t see any reason to do the chap down. He may not be our sort but he’s not so bad as all that.”
“He’s a blasted Jew.”
“Well, yes, but what of it? That was a game of billiards, not a religious discussion.”
Holt shook his head, annoyed at Curtis’s lack of understanding. “You were a soldier. You must have some interest in protecting your country.”
“Against da Silva?”
“Against his sort.” Holt must have read Curtis’s incomprehension in his face, because he went on, “This country is in the doldrums. Decadence is rotting us from within. We’ve a king who only cares for pleasure, and a set of adulterous commoners and wastrels and rootless cosmopolitan money-grubbers around him. Decent Britons scarcely get a look-in, nobody gives a curse for the people who make up the backbone of the Empire. The people who are supposed to set an example are all swept up in rackety living, or talking airy-fairy tripe about being sensitive, and the people with a bit of moral backbone are called old-fashioned. Well, I’d rather be old-fashioned if da Silva’s an example of the modern type. I’d have hoped you were the same.”
“I’ve no opinion on His Majesty’s conduct and I’m not acquainted with his set,” said Curtis stiffly. “As for the rest, I dare say you’ve a point.” A fair point, he might have thought a few days ago, and perhaps nodded along, but it was ringing rather hollow now. “Nevertheless—”
“Nevertheless what? You don’t approve of this sort of thing, do you?” Holt swept a hand, indicating the other members of the party, spread through the caves. “Blind pursuit of pleasure and self-indulgence, without a thought for their country. I should like to see them get what’s coming to them.”
“What is coming to them?” Curtis didn’t quite like the look in Holt’s eyes, which suggested the political fanatic, or possibly the religious kind.
“Oh, none of this will last. This country is heading for a crash, mark my words. There are other nations rising, ones with stronger, purer ideals and men who are prepared to work, to aspire. If we don’t set ourselves to join them now, it won’t be long before we face them on the battlefield. And we’ll be better off doing either without parasites sapping our strength from within.”
Curtis had heard this kind of talk a few times, and never from men who had actually put on a uniform. Normally a patient man, he had found armchair warriors almost intolerable since Jacobsdal, and there was a snap in his voice as he replied, “Yes, jolly good. So, when that conflict comes, will you be joining the army? Or, why not now, if you’re so keen?”