Gypsy - Lesley Pearse [94]
Jack quickly followed him, calling back to Pasquale to get the others and bring the lantern. He dropped down into the tiny yard between the two buildings.
The space was only about four feet square, and ankle-deep in rubbish, fortunately frozen solid. The doors to both houses were padlocked, and all the windows boarded up save one by the door to the front house. The board there had been wrenched off, revealing glass which was partially broken.
Theo lifted his walking stick and smashed out the remainder of the glass.
‘Wait for the others to get here,’ Jack called out, but Theo took no notice and climbed in.
Jack was just about to follow him when he heard Karl yell that he was coming over with the lantern, so he waited until his friend was on the wall and had passed the lantern down to him.
Theo’s heavy boots were making a racket on the bare boards inside the house, but as Jack climbed in through the window, he thought he heard something.
Asking Theo to stand still, he listened, and they both heard a faint cry.
‘Beth?’ Theo bellowed. ‘Is that you? I’ve come to rescue you!’
The two men stood stock still, straining their ears to hear.
Then, just as Jack began to think they had imagined the cry, he heard Beth’s voice.
‘I’m below you,’ she called, her voice tinny and weak. ‘There’s a trapdoor in the floor.’
‘I’m just lighting a lantern to see,’ Theo shouted back, indicating to Jack he was to do it. ‘Hold on, I’ll have you out in a trice.’
Once the lantern was alight they could see an old table and a few chairs to one side of the room, several large wooden crates and a quantity of empty bottles strewn around them. It looked as if men had been coming here for card games.
But they could see no trapdoor in the floor.
Karl came in, quickly followed by Pasquale, and all the men pushed at the packing cases to see what was beneath them.
As they moved the last one, which was heavier than the others, they finally saw the trapdoor. ‘We’ve found it, Beth,’ Theo shouted, and Jack pulled it open.
‘There’s a ladder here,’ Pasquale called, dragging it along the passageway.
Jack moved to be the first one down the ladder, but Theo elbowed him out of the way and disappeared down into the darkness.
‘I’ve got you now,’ they heard him say above the sound of Beth crying.
Theo brought her out over his shoulder, and as he set her down at the top of the ladder, Jack thought he had never seen a sadder sight. Her face was black with dirt, her eyes red and swollen, and tears had made white tracks down her cheeks. Her skirt and boots were soaked and she was so stiff with cold she stumbled when she tried to walk.
‘I thought I was going to die,’ she said, and her voice was little more than a croak.
Theo picked her up in his arms. ‘We must get her away from here and into the warm quickly,’ he said.
Sam and the others were just coming over the wall, and for a few moments everyone was talking at once, jubilant that their mission had been accomplished. Beth seemed scarcely aware of anyone but Theo, and as they all worked together to lift her over the wall and away to safety, Jack felt a sharp stab of jealousy.
He had been her real rescuer. He’d planned it, got the men and organized it all. But Theo, who had done very little, had taken over once they’d found her, and to Beth it was going to seem as if he was her saviour.
Chapter Nineteen
The coffee shop where they had taken Beth was warm and steamy. She was flexing her fingers and examining her knuckles which were raw from banging on the walls.
‘We should get you to a doctor,’ Jack said.
‘Don’t fuss,’ she replied, smiling weakly. ‘I’m getting warmer now and I’ll be fine once I’ve had a wash and a sleep. I just wish your friends hadn’t disappeared before I could thank them.’
It had been as though her mind was as frozen as her body when Theo got her out of the cellar.