THE SHADOW OF HORROR
Leslie Chermside, having taken his seat in the launch, felt more at ease
in his mind than he had done for many a day. Ever since he had been told
of the suspicion that threatened him in respect of Levison's death, he
had been reconciling himself to the loss of Violet. That dream of
midsummer madness had from the first, he realized, from the nature of
the circumstances, been doomed to a rude awakening, in spite of Aunt
Sarah's generosity. The shattering of his ill-starred love idyll might
be borne manfully, as an adequate punishment for his iniquity, and when
time had healed his wound he might even rejoice in his expiation.
But with very different feelings had he viewed the possible revelation
of his misdeed. That simply would not bear thinking about. That Violet
should ever know that he had sought her out in order that her proud
young beauty should be offered as an unwilling sacrifice to a licentious
Eastern prince was an ever-present nightmare that set him trembling like
a frightened child.
And now the strain was over. By his flight he had escaped the terrible
disclosures which would have followed arrest, no matter what the
verdict might have been. That Violet would resent his conduct and
despise him for it he could not help. Even if Nugent kept his promise of
trying to soften it down, the girl's displeasure was inevitable, but it
would be as heaven to hell compared with the ignominy he would have
incurred by full disclosure. And, to do him justice, he had not been
wholly selfish in shrinking from that ignominy. He knew his sweetheart's
pure faith in him, and he had been honestly anxious to spare her
virginal soul the shock of discovering the loathsome thing from which
her short-lived romance had sprung. It might even have been her
death-wound--to find that she, the coldly-critical social queen, had
surrendered, after so brief a wooing, to a miscreant who had set out to
sell her into bondage.
Now, if his luck held, that hideous spectre of disgrace was laid for
ever. He would go forth a lonely and a penniless man, to commence life
afresh with what courage he could muster in some refuge for human
derelicts beyond the seas. If he could not retrieve the past, he might
at least lock it up in his own seared heart, as in a chamber of horrors
to which he alone had access--to be a torment to himself alone.
So, as the launch cleft the calm sea, his troubled spirit caught
something of the influence of the summer night, and he began to take an
interest in his immediate prospects. Before he left London to come down
to Ottermouth on his misguided mission, he had accompanied Nugent
occasionally to the docks where the _Cobra_ was fitting out, and he had
made the acquaintance of Captain Brant. In those reckless days he had
conceived a great antipathy to the crafty and cruel sailor, and he had
reason to believe that the dislike was reciprocated. He wondered how
much Nugent had told Brant of their original scheme, and whether he had
informed him that he was the cause of its failure. If so, he was likely
to be treated with scant courtesy during the voyage.
He was not long left in doubt as to the captain's attitude towards him
when the launch had run alongside the steamer, and he had climbed the
ladder to the deck. Brant met him as he stepped aboard, but ignored his
presence, and called down to Bully Cheeseman and the two men who had
remained in the launch--
"Now turn her right round and go back again to the same spot. You know
what to do. You'll find Mr. Nugent waiting for you, I guess."
"Aye, aye, sir," came out of the darkness, and Leslie heard the
tick-tack of the motor as the little craft sped for the shore. He could
hardly believe his ears. Why should a second trip be necessary, and why
should Nugent, who had declined to accompany him to the beach, be
waiting there now, when his car had left The Hut shortly after his own
departure?
"Good evening, captain," he said, forcing himself to speak civilly. "Is
it not rather risky to hang about off shore now that I am aboard?"
Brant's baleful eyes blazed like coals of fire in the blackness of the
darkened ship. "And who the h--ll are you, sir, to dictate to me what's
a risk and what isn't?" the commander of the _Cobra_ piped in his
shrill falsetto. "I understand that it's your damned foolishness that's
made all this jiggery-pokery necessary. A nice one to talk about risks,
when we're taking them on your account. You just have patience, and
amuse yourself till I have time to attend to you."
He swung on his heel and mounted the stairs to the bridge, where he
entered into a low-voiced colloquy with one of his subordinates. Only a
few words of it reached Leslie, but they were enough to show that a keen
look-out was being kept for the approach of fishing or other small boats
to the steamer. That was all in order. Being engaged in the punishable
offence of assisting a fugitive from justice to escape arrest it was
intelligible that the captain should be anxious to cover the traces of
his misdemeanour. But why the delay? Why the return trip of the launch
to the shore, where, so far as he was aware, she had fulfilled her
mission in bringing him safely off?
He could find no satisfactory answers to the questions, and, giving up
the attempt, he tried to accept the situation philosophically. Not
knowing what accommodation had been allotted to him, he could not seek
his cabin; so he put his handbag down on the deck and set to pacing to
and fro. It was so dark that it was almost impossible to distinguish
objects close at hand, and though the crew were evidently alert and at
their stations, he could make nothing of them individually. The
discipline was perfect.
He passed and repassed ghostlike figures on his promenade, sometimes
singly and sometimes in groups, but they never spoke in so much as a
whisper. The silence of the dead reigned over the ship.
He tired of walking at last, and, leaning over the stern-rail, let his
eyes range towards the twinkling lights of distant Ottermouth. At this
late hour they were momentarily growing fewer, only the larger
residences on the hill behind the town showing up in bold relief, and
the row of lodging-houses on the parade flanked by the more brilliant
glow from the billiard-room of the club. The sight of the quiet haven
which had yielded him a short and fickle respite renewed his remorse and
filled him with regret. Such joys as the placid little pleasure-haunt
had to offer were not for him. His proper place was on the scrap-heap of
human failures.
The depression found vent in a sigh that was more than half a groan, and
he was immediately surprised to hear it echoed near by. Turning sharply,
he discerned the dim outline of a woman also leaning over the stern-rail
within a few feet of him.
"Don't mind me," she said, noticing his start. "I expect I shouldn't
have made any sound if you hadn't let on that you had the blues too.
Sighing is pretty near as catching as yawning, I've been told, and now I
know it's true."
Leslie could not see her features--only that she was tall and
finely-built. He wondered who the woman could be, for he had not been
informed by Nugent of the engagement of any female attendants.
"Perhaps your case is the same as my own--that you are not looking
forward to the voyage with pleasure?" he said kindly.
Miss Nettle Jimpson uttered a short laugh. "At any rate, you are
starting of your own free will," she said. "At least I suppose so, for I
was watching you when you came aboard just now, and you didn't make any
bones about it. It's different with me. That monkey-faced little devil
on the bridge never gave me the option, but just shipped me like a bale
of goods to suit his own convenience."
"But surely----" Leslie was beginning.
"Oh, don't make any mistake! I was a consenting party as soon as I heard
the terms," Miss Jimpson cut him short, drawing a little nearer. "I'm an
avaricious sort of beast, and the prospect of a quick haul tempted me to
take Captain Brant's practical joke lying down. You see, I've got a
young man in the navy, and it seemed a shorter cut to setting up
housekeeping than serving behind the counter in a draper's shop. I acted
on the spur of the moment, as I always do, and lucky for the captain I
did, or he'd have got his ugly face scratched."
"May I ask what position you hold on board--for what duties you were
engaged?" asked Leslie. The voluble young person puzzled him.
"Oh, I'm a kind of mix between a stewardess and a maid to the lady
passenger, I believe, though that old rascal baited the hook by calling
me a companion."
"The lady passenger?" Leslie repeated blankly.
"Yes, and that leads up to what I wanted to ask you. Why didn't she come
out to the steamer with you? You see, if it's an elopement, it will
smooth it down for me a lot. I'm that romantic I shall be really
interested, instead of grizzling all the time till we get back. Some
hitch in your young lady's getting off, I suppose, as the launch had to
go back to fetch her? Brant has been like a cat on hot bricks ever since
we sighted that little town yonder, lest something should go wrong. I
hope it hasn't, for your sake. I should be sorry for anything in the
shape of an angry parent to break the spell of love's young dream,
having been there myself."
Leslie thought he understood. His dimly-seen companion at the stern-rail
had been "shipped," as she called it, while the ship was lying in the
London docks weeks before, when the original plot for the abduction of
Violet Maynard held good. She had been informed of half the vile plot in
which he had then been an accomplice--that the yacht belonged to him,
and that it was being used for an elopement. She was still in that
belief, the darker side of the story having been kept from her, and she
was under the delusion that she would have a lady to wait on during the
voyage.
But why, Leslie asked himself, had the delusion been fostered so long
after Nugent, and through him, of course, Brant, had been aware of the
breakdown of the conspiracy? Why, for the matter of that, was the woman
on board at all, since there would be no unhappy captive for whom her
services would be required? The obvious thing to have done would have
been to put her ashore at Weymouth directly the wicked project was
abandoned.
"There must be some mistake," he said. "I am sorry to spoil your
romantic anticipations, but I am certainly not eloping with anybody. So
far as I know, I am to be the only passenger."
"Then what's that old liar's game?" blurted Miss Jimpson. "Only this
morning, when he had the cheek to keep me aboard, he said----"
"Only this morning," Leslie interrupted in dull amazement. "Do you mean
that only to-day for the first time you made the acquaintance of Brant?"
"That is precisely what I do mean. I never saw him or his ship till this
morning at eleven o'clock in the harbour at Weymouth. The yarn he
pitched me then was that he was going to pick up a lady down along the
coast, and that he wanted one of her own sex to keep her company. 'Tis
true he did not say anything about an elopement. It was me who figured
that out after you came aboard alone and the launch went back for the
lady."
"Went back for the lady!" gasped Leslie, a lurid light beginning to dawn
upon his dazed senses.
"Well, I expect it's one of my own sex; I don't suppose all the pretty
frilly things Brant ordered and paid for, and which I brought on board,
were for you or any other gentleman," was Miss Nettle Jimpson's pert
rejoinder. "That's what gave me the elopement notion, don't you see--a
girl running away on the quiet, and in too much of a pucker to bring her
own trunks. And I'm right, after all! Here's the launch back again, and
just listen to that!"
Leslie had been conscious of the clack of the electric motor for the
last thirty seconds, but now, as it sounded close under the side of the
steamer, slowing down at the foot of the accommodation ladder, it was
supplemented by the clear tones of a woman's voice--the well-loved
tones which he had never thought to hear again, and which rather than
hear in that place he would gladly have died a hundred deaths.
For it was the voice of Violet Maynard, self-possessed and confident,
assuring the crew of the launch that she was quite accustomed to
climbing up the side of a yacht in the dark, and that she would need no
help but that of her own hands to scale the dangling rope-ladder.
The truth in all its naked horror burst upon Leslie at last. The
original object of the plot had been gained in spite of his own
defection. Travers Nugent had been playing a deep and subtle part, and
by some trick had prevailed on the girl to place herself in the power of
her enemies. In another minute she would be hopelessly in the toils, and
the _Cobra_, having gorged her prey, would be steaming at the full speed
of her powerful engines on her long voyage to distant Sindkhote.
His memory flew back to the tinselled splendour of the Maharajah's
palace, then to the satanic countenance of its owner, and to all the
terrors that these implied for the girl in whose foul betrayal he was at
any rate a link in the chain. He turned in despair to the odd young
woman whose narrative was now quite intelligible.
"I don't know your name, but you sound honest and true, and I'm going to
appeal to you," he whispered hoarsely. "They have lured that lady to the
ship in ignorance that she is to be kidnapped abroad. I am going to try
to prevent it, but I shall probably fail and be killed in the next few
minutes. If so, I beseech you to be this poor girl's friend to the best
of your power. The vessel is manned by reckless outlaws."
Without waiting for a reply, he sprang forward to the head of the
accommodation ladder and shinned down it into the launch. There was not
much sense in the forlorn hope--only a wild longing to do something, and
to stake all, life itself, on the chance that he might prevail by
surprise. If he could disable the crew of the launch before they
realized that they were being attacked he might sheer off and get away
in the darkness.
Violet was reaching for the rope rungs of the ladder as he half fell
into the little craft, nearly knocking her down in his staggering
onrush. Then, steadying himself, he sent his fists crashing right and
left into the faces of two men who clutched at him, ducked to avoid a
third, and in doing so tripped and fell headlong to the bottom of the
boat.
Before he could recover himself a heavy knee was grinding into his
chest, and the muzzle of a revolver made a cold circle on his forehead.
"What in thunder is all that racket about?" came down Captain Brant's
squeaky hail from the bridge.
"It's the cove we brought off last trip making a bid for freedom, but
I've fair downed him," went up Bully Cheeseman's reply. "Shall I shoot?"
"No," said Brant. "I want him for something better than that. I'll send
a hand down with some rope. Then you can truss him up, and we'll hoist
him aboard."