sign of Luton, nor any message from him at the quarter past the hour.
If he were late, then, she thought, that was the first occasion she
could remember when he had neglected an appointment to his own advantage
and the benefit of his creditors. He had told her that his need was
urgent, and had sent letters from Bothand and Co. confirming his
statements. Nine thousand four hundred pounds must be paid if he would
stave off those "further proceedings" with which they threatened him;
and if he did not pay, then it was clear that the firm would discover at
a later date excellent reasons for a criminal prosecution. In such a
case, extradition would not be refused, nor would it be difficult for
the police to trace a man who was at so little pains to act prudently as
Luton Delayne.
The clock struck the three-quarters, and Lily put on her cloak and went
to the door again. It was snowing heavily by this time, and the wind
almost raging in the pass. Despite the rigours of the night, she
determined to go a little way upon the road in the hope that she might
meet Luton; and she set out bravely, afraid that the wrathful Louise
might detect her and yet determined in her purpose. Two hundred yards
from the chalet, a burst of light upon the hillside marked the spot
where the brothers Benson were living, and by this she must go upon her
way to Vermala. It chanced, however, that Jack Benson stood at the door
of the shed when she approached, and it was natural to ask him how his
brother did. Jack thought little of women, as a rule, and he dreaded
this particular woman's influence with Benny; but he could not answer
her uncivilly, and like the others, he was, metaphorically, at her feet
before she had spoken twenty words to him.
"Is that you, Mrs. Kennaird; what a night, isn't it? Aren't you rather
daring to be out?"
"Oh!" she said, "I had no idea there was such a wind blowing. Will you
let me shelter a moment? I'm really quite out of breath. That's the
shed where your brother keeps his aeroplane, is it not? He told me all
about it, you know. I'm very much interested."
Jack muttered to himself that Benny was losing his wits, or he would
never have talked about the machine to a woman; but a moment's
reflection reminded him that the sex is rarely of a mechanical turn, and
would hardly profit by the confidence. So he threw the door open wide,
and the electric lamps blazing within cast a warm aureole upon the snow
and upon Lily's pale face. Perhaps Jack understood his brother's
infatuation then, if he could not condone it.
"You'll find us rather upside down," he said apologetically. "We're
always like that when Benny's away--we haven't his idea of order. But
we're pretty useful in our way, and the abbe's as good as any mechanic
from Bleriot's. He's just turning up the planes, if you understand what
that is, Mrs. Kennaird; sewing them up with steel wire, so to speak. I
assure you, we'd have gone to pot without the abbe."
The little priest looked up and smiled pleasantly. He wore a white apron
over his cassock, and sat with one of Benny's planes over his knee,
repairing and relaying the canvas with the skill of a trained workman.
Jack himself was enveloped in engineer's overalls, and had been working
at a forge in the far corner; he, too, was liberally decorated with
choice smuts, and had a very chart of carbon upon his cheeks.
"Do you say Mr. Benson is away?" Lily asked him. Jack responded as one
who had a personal grievance.
"He was off before lunch. Wouldn't eat anything for some reason which
he'll have forgotten by the time he comes back. I don't know where he
is, I'm sure. He always goes away just when we want him most."
"But, surely, this is a dreadful night to be out; he should have
returned by this time?"
The abbe nodded his head.
"Madame is quite right," he said; "he should have returned. It is very
necessary for him to be here these days; he will lose a great deal of
money if he behaves so foolishly; would that Madame told him as much!"
"I?" exclaimed Lily, turning her large eyes upon him. "But, surely, Mr.
Benson would not listen to a woman?"
"He would listen to you," Jack rejoined with emphasis. "He thinks a
good deal of your opinion--he told me so."
She smiled, but turned away her eyes nevertheless. "And what am I to say
to your brother?"
"Tell him that he can do it yet, if he will only believe as much. Say
that it's not the game for him to be here, there and everywhere when his
future depends on what we're doing for him. If he wins the ten thousand
pounds put up by the London daily paper, he's a made man for life.
There's nothing Benny could not do with capital, nothing on earth, I do
believe. Why, he's invented a dozen machines as clever as this, and all
of them are just so many drawings, because he hasn't got the money to
build them. And here's ten thousand going begging, so to speak, and
he's dreaming all the time; acting like some moonsick shepherdess, and
got just about as much sense in his head. If you'd tell him that, you'd
be doing him a very great kindness, Mrs. Kennaird. There's no one else
at Andana who could do it, I assure you."
Lily looked from one to the other: her face was very pale, her manner
unusually earnest.
"And what does Monsieur l'Abbe say?"
The abbe ceased to work at the canvas upon his knee.
"I think that Madame is the only person who could help us," he said at
length; and having said it he cast down his eyes and went on with his
work. She was a clever woman, and she would understand that, he
thought. Nor was he mistaken. Madame understood him perfectly.
"I see Mr. Benson so rarely," she said. "Now that I have left the hotel
my opportunities will be fewer. But that is not to say that I will not
do my best when I do see him, if you care to tell him so."
Jack was delighted.
"I'll send him down to your place in the morning," he exclaimed; "that
is, with your permission, he shall come directly after breakfast.
Perhaps you will be going skating or something. If so, he might meet
you on the rink?"
She smiled at his eagerness.
"I shall be pleased to see your brother any time. Now I fear I must go.
Is not that eight o'clock striking? My cook will never forgive me."
A miserable cuckoo-clock shrieked the hour with intolerable emphasis,
and reminded them all of the flesh-pots. Jack, however, remembered his
manners sufficiently to escort her down the hillside, and it was a
quarter past eight when he left her at her own door. The snow still fell
fast, and the wind howled dismally up the valley. It was going to be a
dreadful night.
"You won't forget," he said as he turned at her gate and drew the collar
of his heavy coat about his ears. She answered that she would expect
Benny sometime during the morning, and immediately went in to ask her
servant if anyone had come. When Louise retorted with a shrug of the
shoulders and the inquiry, "Who would come upon such a night?" Madame
had nothing to say.
The hours were making it very difficult for her to believe the best.
The dawn found her still awake, and quite prepared for that hour of
crisis which such a life as Luton's had made inevitable.
*CHAPTER XII*
*FLIGHT*
The Abbe Villari slept at Benny's chalet that night, fearful of the
storm, and not a little concerned at the absence of its master. This
anxiety he shared with Jack, who suggested a hundred reasons which might
have taken Benny to Sierre, but none which could have kept him
there--unless it were the storm, which in the case of such a man seemed
altogether insufficient.
"He'll have gone down to see if the stuff has come," Jack declared with
conviction; "they say at the stables that he engaged a sleigh shortly
after ten o'clock. I know he's ordered a lot of things, and he was
particularly anxious to have the new steel arms for the frame. If the
snow's very bad down there, the fellow who drives the sleigh may have
refused to come up, and then Benny would be on his own. That wouldn't
matter much to him, though, for he's as tough as old leather, and would
just as soon walk up as ride. I can't think why he hasn't done it,
Abbe."
The abbe agreed, although he had a poor opinion of some of the coachmen
at Andana.
"The fellows like to spend a night in the town," he said, with a
suggestion of ascetic regret. "It is difficult for a stranger to think
of Sierre in such a light, but, after all, these things are a question
of opportunity. A showman with a bear is a great person in a village
where they have never seen bears, and so a man with a fiddle is an
orchestra for people who have no music. I should imagine that Andre has
refused to come back, and that your brother will remain at the Terminus
Hotel. If so, he will be very comfortable, for the wines are excellent,
and nobody would quarrel with the cooking. I think we had better say
that he has done so, and go on with our work. There is nothing so
unprofitable as speculation when time alone can tell us the truth."
Jack admitted the good sense of it, but he did little work, and after
they had supped he went some way down to the road toward the village of
Andana in the hope that he might discover Benny and the sleigh. It was
a vain quest, however, and he returned to tell the abbe that the wind
had nearly blown him off his legs, and that if Benny had refused to
return from Sierre, he was no fool for his choice. Thereafter they
ceased to speak about it, but neither suggested bed; and although they
slept a little after twelve o'clock, the dawn found them wide awake and
alert for tidings of the wanderer.
Benny was at Sierre--their guess was perfectly correct. Where they were
at fault was in the matter of motive, which they failed entirely to
comprehend. Which mystery is the better understood by harking back to
the bridle track below Vermala, at an hour when a certain foreigner
spoke of a strange affair upon the hillside, and those two masters of
idiomatic but obsolete French, Bob Otway and Dick Fenton, responded
incoherently to his vain appeals.
Benny, it will be remembered, had heard the Frenchman's story, and
immediately understood its meaning. His knowledge of Luton Delayne
convinced him that such an act of folly was to be expected from a man
famous in two counties for the violence of his temper. He perceived that
some scandalous affair had set the police upon the baronet's track, that
one of them had been set to watch him and had been detected in the act.
There had been an exchange of angry words, of abuse upon the one hand
and of insolence upon the other--and then the blow. Just as Luton
Delayne had invited the contempt of his neighbours at Holmswell by
descending to a vulgar arena in which a butcher figured not
ingloriously, so here in Switzerland had his temper got the better of
him and this blow been struck. What the consequences might be, Benny
did not care to ask himself; but he realised that they might be
momentous, and remembering that the man was Lily's husband, he went up
to Vermala at once and began to search the hillside. Was it possible
that the affair had been nothing but an idle fracas after all? Had the
gendarme gone off to report the matter to his superiors, as one calling
for a prosecution which would amuse the community? It might be that, he
said, and disbelieving it utterly, he turned to the heights.
The snow was firm and hard upon the narrow track, and revealed little
even to his keen eyes. He perceived that luges had gone up to the
hotel, and he could almost say how many. The track itself disclosed but
gentle slopes, and none which could be called a precipice even by an
imaginative person. The woods harboured deep drifts of snow, and were
scarred here and there by the trails of skis; but at one spot alone was
there any possible scene for such a drama as the Frenchman had
described. This lay immediately below the hotel; a plateau upon which
two men could stand side by side, with a sheer wall of rock falling
fifty or sixty feet away from it and an arbour of the pines, which the
sun could hardly penetrate, at its foot.
Benny climbed to the plateau, and kneeling there he peered down to the
depths. A great drift of snow had culminated about the trunks of three
trees which appeared to grow straight out of the hillside. On the
plateau itself there were footprints which clearly indicated that two
people had faced each other, and that a scuffle had taken place. But,
and this was the more remarkable thing, save for a curious wraith of
snow some twenty feet down the abyss, there was no scar upon the
unbroken sheet of white which stretched from the plateau to the trees;
not a mark which would have invited the suspicions of the most watchful.
Many men, satisfied with the scrutiny, would have gone on at once,
convinced that the glen could tell them nothing; but Benny was not that
kind of man, and when he had reflected upon it a little while, and had
made sure that his acts would not be observed, an idea came to him, and
he put it into practice immediately. It was nothing less than this: to
descend the precipice by the help of the trees, and to discover for
himself the secret of the snow wraith, if secret there were.
The feat was not a little difficult, perhaps really dangerous. But here
was a man who had ploughed the "roaring forties" in an old Scotch brig,
and had the foot of a goat upon a height. Swinging himself out upon a
branch, to which he leaped, Benny climbed over to other branches; then
he slid down the trunk of a pine as a sailor down a pole. He was five
minutes in the hollow below the plateau, and a quarter of an hour making
his way back through the heavy drifts to the path he had quitted. Then
he went straight on to the hotel at Vermala--a silent man, with set face
and eyes which saw nothing but the track before him.
To the porter who told him that the Englishman, Mr. Faikes, was engaged
in his private room Benny merely replied: "Go back, and say he'll have
to see me." Thereafter, he waited, standing immobile in the hall, and
quite unconscious of the guests who studied him with critical eyes.
Some of these knew him for the winner of the Grand Prix down at Andana,
and wondered that such a man should interest himself in Alpine sports;
but others made a jest upon his earnestness, and said, behind their
papers, that he looked like the impersonification of tragedy.
Luton Delayne had a sitting-room looking over toward the Weisshorn, and
here Benny discovered him a few moments later. A whisky-and-soda stood
at his side, and the ends of innumerable cigarettes lay in a tawdry
Swiss ash-tray. Evidently he had but recently returned from the open,
for he still wore heavy boots and puttees, and these were wet with the
snow. His manner was characteristically aggressive, and his question,
"Well, what the devil do you want with me?" quite in the expected tone.
Benny shut the door of the room carefully behind him, and then crossed
it on tip-toe, an unnecessary proceeding, but one in keeping with his
own desire for secrecy. His hands were thrust deep in his trousers
pockets, and he had quite forgotten to take off the old Alpine hat
without which his best friends at Andana would not have recognised him.
Delayne could not but see that this man had a right to come to him as he
did, and his face blanched suddenly.
"You know why I have come here, Sir Luton--none but a d----d fool would
ask that question. I've come to save your neck!"
Delayne puffed hard at his cigarette, and then laid the end of it down
with the others.
"Oh," he exclaimed in the grand manner; "so you know about the row,
then?"
Benny went to the window and looked out. The plateau lay a hundred
yards from the hotel, but was hidden by a belt of trees. He wondered if
others had already made their way there--searching for what he had
found. The minutes were precious if he would save this madman for a
woman's sake.
"Yes," he said, swinging round on his heel, "I know about the row. Half
the place is talking about it. I suppose you'll be joining in yourself
just now--when the police come along. That should be before morning
with any luck--it won't be much later anyway."
The baronet rose and walked across to the window. Benny could see that
his hands were twitching, while his eyes almost danced in his head.
"The man followed me," he said inconsequently. "It was the most damnably
impertinent thing I ever saw in all my life. When I asked him what he
wanted, he wouldn't say a word. I warned him to keep off, and he was on
my heels again in five minutes. Would you stand that yourself? You're a
man, and can judge between us? Would you stand it?"
Benny shrugged his shoulders.
"What we have to stand depends on our footing. The man who grubs in
dirty soil mustn't complain that his hands are black. You came to
blows, I suppose, and he went over. Is that what you would say?"
"I struck him on the face, and he tried to draw a revolver on me--we
were on the plateau, and he went over. If he's hurt, I'll pay
compensation. What more do you want?"
Benny looked at him curiously. Was he lying outright, or merely
reciting a defence he had rehearsed in the interval? It was difficult
to say. The truth must be told without delay, for the truth alone could
move him.
"You say the man went over. Did you see him after he fell?"
"See him! What do you mean?"
"I ask if you saw him after he fell--he might have been injured, you
know?"
Delayne returned to the table, and took a deep draught from the tumbler
there.
"You know something," he said, averting his eyes. "Well, I'm not a
child; tell me."
Benny crossed over, and looked him full in the face.
"It's a pity you didn't stop," he said quietly--"the man's dead--!"
Delayne began to tremble, a little at first and then as one stricken by
an ague. Reaction had come in an instant--the man's hands were as cold
as ice, he could not keep still.
"How do you know he's dead?"
"I have seen him, touched him! He's stone dead at the foot of the clump
of pines: that's what I came here to tell you."
Delayne said: "My God!" and sank into the chair. He began to blubber
like a child; his whole body twitched in a nervous collapse to be
expected of such a temperament. The truth had stricken him; it
prevailed above any thought of his own safety, which was left to the man
who had come to him with so little ceremony.
"You have twenty hours at the best, six at the worst," Benny said,
ignoring the outbreak and knowing that it would pass. "If the little
Frenchman who saw him fall doesn't blab, the police may not be here
until the morning. You'll have to answer for this sooner or later, but
you'll answer it better across the frontier. Are you going to start at
once, or wait for them to come for you? Take another drop of that
whisky, and then tell me. I can give you that long."
The man obeyed him like a child. He was already trying to excuse
himself, to make a case which might be put to a jury subsequently.
"It's no more than mischance, look at it how you like. He provoked
me--I had no intention to kill him. If he'd have gone away, it would
have been all right. What business had he to follow me, I ask you, what
business had he? Is this a free country? Then why did he spy on me?
Let the police answer that: what right had he to spy on me?"
Benny became contemptuous now.
"They'll answer it sharp enough when they are here. You'll learn pretty
quick whether it's a free country or not. If I were you, I would choose
another, and let my lawyers do the talking from there. You could catch
the afternoon train through the tunnel, if you were quick about it.
You'd be in Italy to-morrow, and in my house opposite Magadino the day
after. There's nobody there but an old Italian woman, and she couldn't
pronounce your name if she knew it. I have the shanty until the
winter--the hydroplanes I was running in the fall are still there, and
some other stuff. Say you come on my business, and no one will question
you. That's what I would do if I were you, and I wouldn't be long in
doing it either."
He stood waiting for an answer, his arms still thrust deep into his
trousers pockets and his hat awry. The expression of low cunning which
crept upon the baronet's face did not deter him in any way. He cared
not a straw for any imputations of motive, whatever they might be. A
determination to save Lily Delayne from the shame of this madness drove
him as a spur. Had it been otherwise he would not have crossed the
street at this man's beck.
Delayne understood the situation perfectly, and was upon the point of
confessing as much. He knew how sure was his wife's influence over men,
and for an instant a savage impulse of jealousy impelled him to turn on
the man who would have befriended him for his wife's sake and to say all
that was in his mind. From this an instinct of prudence saved him at the
last moment. He remembered the words: "The man is dead," and began to
shudder. Yes, flight was his only chance--but flight must imply guilt!
"Oh," he exclaimed, after a moment's hesitation, "that's all very well,
but if I go, what will they say? And my valet, Paul--what of him? Is he
ready to hold his tongue, do you think?"
"I think nothing. Send him to Paris by the Simplon to-night. Tell him
you're following later. You're not going to say that you've been mad
enough to take him into your confidence?"
"Nothing of the kind; but he's a Swiss. They may question him about
me?"
"In Paris--"
Delayne shrugged his shoulders.
"If I go, I admit that the police had the right to molest me."
"If you stay, by God, they'll guillotine you. Don't you understand
that--don't you see that this man was in the service of the State?
Lord, a child would know better. And you're losing the minutes. I say,
the minutes; and every one may be the most precious you'll ever live."
Delayne still hesitated, pacing the room, and muttering all the jargon
of defence he had recited a hundred times since the instant of his
passion. Despite his dilemma, certain instincts of his pride remained.
How should he tell this bull-dog of an engineer that he was at his wits'
end to pay his hotel bill? He would never have told him had not Benny
guessed it from the first.
"You want money, perhaps?" he said, speaking in a new tone, which a
sense of delicacy forced upon him. "Well, I'll see you through this,
and you can pay me when you like. I'll give you a hundred at Brigue,
and you can run the shanty with that until I come. Ten pounds should
see your man to Paris--let him go to a back-street hotel until you come.
You know the place well enough for that, and can direct him. I'm going
down to order the sleigh. It'll be at the cross-roads above the Palace
in half an hour. If you're not there when I bring it, a telegram will
go to Sierre. As sure as I stand here, I'll dispatch that if you keep
me waiting five minutes. Now go, and do what I tell you--you've played
the fool long enough."
He strode from the room and the hotel. Half an hour afterwards, Luton
Delayne and the valet, Paul, met him at the cross-roads above Andana,
and stepped aboard the sleigh he had hired from Karl Meyer, the
jobmaster at the Park. Benny's excuse, that he wished to go down alone
to bring up "stuff" from Sierre, satisfied the phlegmatic German, who
had a good customer in this active Englishman. He promised to telephone
for a second horse to be at the Terminus Hotel in the valley that night,
and gave no further thought to the matter.
Benny, in the meantime, discovered powers of prevision which were quite
remarkable. His immediate object was to get this madman across the
Pass, and to harbour him in his own shanty on Lake Maggiore without the
loss of an hour. He foresaw that the departure of a certain Mr. Faikes
from the hotel at Vermala, and the journey of that worthy's valet to
Paris, would be in his favour. Luton Delayne must take his own name at
Domo d'Ossola, where his presence would be of no concern to the Swiss
authorities, and would never be associated with such a crime. The
better to attain this object, he set down the valet, Paul, at the
station in Sierre, and then, under the pretence that he himself and Sir
Luton were to pass a few days at the Terminus Hotel, he returned at once
to the great high road through the valley of the Simplon, and set out
boldly for Visp.