THE PUNISHMENT
"Good evening, Mrs. Ranger!"
Sylvia started at the sound of a cool, detached voice as she
re-entered the hotel. Two eyes, black as onyx and as
expressionless, looked coldly into hers. A chill shudder ran
through her. She glanced instinctively back at Kelly, who came
forward instantly in his bulky, protective fashion.
"Hullo, Kieff! What are you doing here? Gambling for the diamond?"
"I?" said Kieff, with a stretching of his thin, colourless lips
that was scarcely a smile. "I don't gamble for diamonds, my good
Kelly. Well, Mrs. Ranger, I hope you had a pleasant journey here."
"He gambles for souls," was the thought in Sylvia's mind, as with a
quick effort she controlled herself and passed on in icy silence.
She would never voluntarily speak to Kieff again. He was an open
enemy; and she turned from him with the same loathing that she
would have shown for a reptile in her path.
His laugh--that horrible, slippery sound--followed her. He said
something in Dutch to the man who lounged beside him, and at once
another laugh--Piet Vreiboom's--bellowed forth like the blare of a
bull. She flinched in spite of herself. Every nerve shrank. Yet
the next moment, superbly, she wheeled and faced them. There was
something intolerable in that laughter, something that stung her
beyond endurance.
"Tell me," she commanded Kelly, "tell me what
these--gentlemen--find about me to laugh at!"
Her face was white as death, but her eyes shone red as leaping
flame. She was terrible in that moment--terrible as a lioness at
bay--and the laughter died. Piet Vreiboom slunk a little back, his
low brows working uneasily.
Kelly swallowed an oath in his throat; his hands were clenched.
But Kieff, in a voice smooth as oil, made ready, mocking answer.
"Oh, not at you, madam! Heaven forbid! What could any man find to
smile at in such a model of virtuous propriety as yourself?"
He was baiting her openly, and she knew it. An awful wave of anger
surged through her brain, such anger as had never before possessed
her. For the moment she felt sick, as if she had drunk of some
overpowering drug. He meant to humiliate her publicly. She
realized it in a flash. And she was powerless to prevent it.
Whether she went or whether she stayed, he would accomplish his
end. Among all the strange faces that stared at her, only Kelly's,
worried and perplexed, betrayed the smallest concern upon her
account. And he, since her unexpected action, had been obviously
at a loss as to how to deal with the situation or with her.
Single-handed, he would have faced the pack; but with her at his
side he was hopelessly hampered, afraid of blundering and making
matters worse.
"Ah, come away!" he muttered to her. "It's not the place for ye at
all. They're hogs and swine, the lot of 'em. Don't ye be drawn by
the likes of them!"
But she stood her ground, for there was hot blood in Sylvia and a
fierce pride that would not tamely suffer outrage. Moreover, she
had been wounded cruelly, and the desire for vengeance welled up
furiously within her. Now that she stood in the presence of her
enemy, the impulse to strike back, however futile the blow, urged
her and would not be denied.
She confronted Saul Kieff with tense determination. "You will
either repeat--and explain--what you said to your friend regarding
me just now," she said, in tones that rang fearlessly, echoing
through the crowded place, "or you will admit yourself a
contemptible coward for vilely slandering a woman whom you know to
be defenceless!"
It was regally spoken. She stood splendidly erect, facing him,
withering him from head to foot with the scorching fire of her
scorn. A murmur of sympathy went through the rough crowd of men
gathered before her. One or two cursed Kieff in a growling
undertone. But Kieff himself remained absolutely unmoved. He was
smoking a cigarette and he inhaled several deep breaths before he
replied to her challenge. Then, with his basilisk eyes fixed
immovably upon her, as it were clinging to her, he made his deadly
answer: "I will certainly tell you what I said, madam, since you
desire it. But the explanation is one which surely only you can
give. I said to my friend, 'There goes the wife of the Rangers.'
Did I make a mistake?"
"Yes, you damned hound, you did!" The voice that uttered the words
came from the door that led into the office. Burke Ranger swung
suddenly out upon them, moving with a kind of massive force that
carried purpose in every line. Men drew themselves together as he
passed them with the instinctive impulse to leave his progress
unimpeded; for this man would have forced his way past every
obstacle at that moment. He went straight for his objective
without a glance to right or left.
Sylvia started back at his coming. That which her enemy could not
do was accomplished by her husband by neither word nor look. The
regal poise went out of her bearing. She shrank against Kelly as
if seeking refuge. For she had seen Burke's eyes, as she had seen
them the night before; and they were glittering with the lust for
blood. They were the eyes of a murderer.
Straight to Kieff he came, and Kieff waited for him, quite
motionless, with thin lips drawn back, showing a snarling gleam of
teeth. But just as Burke reached him he moved. His right arm shot
forth with a serpentine ferocity, and in a flash the muzzle of a
revolver gleamed between them.
"Hands up, if you please, Mr. Ranger!" he said smoothly. "We shall
talk better that way."
But for once in his life he had made a miscalculation, and the next
instant he realized it. He had reckoned without the blunderer
Kelly. For a fierce oath broke from the Irishman at sight of the
weapon, and in the same second he beat it down with the stock of
his riding-whip with a force that struck it out of Kieff's grasp.
It spun along the floor to Sylvia's feet, and she stooped and
snatched it up.
Burke did not so much as glance round. He had Kieff by the collar
of his coat, and the fate of the revolver was obviously a matter of
no importance to him. "Give me that horse-whip of yours, Donovan!"
he said,
Kelly complied with the childlike obedience he invariably yielded
to Burke. Then he fell back to Sylvia, and very gently took the
revolver out of her clenched hand.
She looked at him, her eyes wide, terror-stricken. "He will kill
him!" she said, in a voiceless whisper.
"Not a bit of it," said Kelly, and put his arm around her. "These
poisonous vermin don't die so easy. Pity they don't."
And then began the most terrible scene that Sylvia had ever looked
upon. No one intervened between Burke and his victim. There was
even a look of brutal satisfaction upon some of the faces around.
Piet Vreiboom openly gloated, as if he were gazing upon a spectacle
of rare delight.
And Burke thrashed Kieff, thrashed him with all the weight of his
manhood's strength, forced him staggering up and down the open
space that had been cleared for that awful reckoning, making a
public show of him, displaying him to every man present as a
crawling, contemptible thing that not one of them would have owned
as friend. It was a ghastly chastisement, made deadly by the
hatred that backed it. Kieff writhed this way and that, but he
never escaped the swinging blows. They followed him
mercilessly,--all the more mercilessly for his struggles. His coat
tore out at the seams and was ripped to rags. And still Burke
thrashed him, his face grim and terrible and his eyes shot red and
gleaming--as the eyes of a murderer.
In the end Kieff stumbled and pitched forward upon his knees, his
arms sprawling helplessly out before him. It was characteristic of
the man that he had not uttered a sound; only as Burke stayed his
hand his breathing came with a whistling noise through the tense
silence, as of a wounded animal brought to earth. His face was
grey.
Burke held him so for a few seconds, then deliberately dropped the
horse-whip and grasped him with both hands, lifting him. Kieff's
head was sunk forward. He looked as if he would faint. But
inexorably Burke dragged him to his feet and turned him till he
stood before Sylvia.
She was leaning against Kelly with her hands over her face.
Relentlessly Burke's voice broke the silence.
"Now," he said briefly, "you will apologize to my wife for
insulting her."
She uncovered her face and raised it. There was shrinking horror
in her look. "Oh, Burke!" she said. "Let him go!"
"You will--apologize," Burke said again very insistently, with
pitiless distinctness.
There was a dreadful pause. Kieff's breathing was less laboured,
but it was painfully uneven and broken. His lips twitched
convulsively. They seemed to be trying to form words, but no words
came.
Burke waited, and several seconds dragged away. Then suddenly from
the door of the office the girl who had received Sylvia the
previous evening emerged.
She carried a glass. "Here you are!" she said curtly. "Give him
this!"
There was neither pity nor horror in her look. Her eyes dwelt upon
Burke with undisguised admiration.
"You've given him a good dose this time," she remarked. "Serve him
right--the dirty hound! Hope it'll be a lesson to the rest of
'em," and she shot a glance at Piet Vreiboom which was more
eloquent than words.
She held the glass to Kieff's lips with a contemptuous air, and
when he had drunk she emptied the dregs upon the floor and marched
back into the office.
"Now," Burke said again, "you will apologize."
And so at last in a voice so low as to be barely audible, Saul
Kieff, from whose sneer all women shrank as from the sting of a
scorpion, made unreserved apology to the girl he had plotted to
ruin. At Burke's behest he withdrew the vile calumny he had
launched against her, and he expressed his formal regret for the
malice that had prompted it.
When Burke let him go, no one attempted to offer him help. There
was probably not a man present from whom he would have accepted it.
He slunk away like a wounded beast, staggering, but obviously
intent upon escape, and the gathering shadows of the coming night
received him.
A murmur as of relief ran round the circle of spectators he left
behind, and in a moment, as it were automatically, the general
attention was turned upon Sylvia. She was still leaning against
Kelly, her death-white face fixed and rigid. Her eyes were closed.
Burke went to her. "Come!" he said. "We will go up."
Her eyes opened. She looked straight at him, seeing none beside.
"Was that how you treated Guy?" she said.
He laid an imperative hand upon her. "Come!" he said again.
She made a movement as though to evade him, and then suddenly she
faltered. Her eyes grew wide and dark. She threw out her hands
with a groping gesture as if stricken blind, and fell straight
forward.
Burke caught her, held her for a moment; then as she sank in his
arms he lifted her, and bore her away.