ONE TOO MANY.
“Oh, I say! It can’t be time to get up yet,” groaned Maurice,
rolling over resentfully on his couch of pine-needles as a hand was
laid on his shoulder. But the hand shook him slightly, and Wylie’s
voice said, “Wake up, and don’t make a row.”
Throwing off the rug, Maurice sat up, blinking in the grey light of
dawn. He and Wylie had chosen their sleeping-places in front of the
hut, so that the girls might know they were at hand in case of an
alarm in the night; but Wylie was now beckoning him away from it. On
the other side of the ashes where the fire had been stood the brigands
in a row, grim and silent, with their rifles ready. Maurice stared.
“What’s up?” he asked in bewilderment.
“We desire not so moch to guard,” responded Milosch. “You too many for
us. Ze women are precious, and zere most be one man for to attend upon
zem. Ze ozer most go. We make you draw ze lot.”
“All right, all right! but you needn’t do it where the ladies can hear
you,” said Wylie impatiently. “Come along, Smith.” Wide awake by this
time, Maurice rose, and they followed the brigands into the wood,
Wylie grasping Maurice’s arm to draw him out of earshot of Milosch.
“Look here,” he said. “If the lot falls upon you, of course I’ll take
it, for your sisters can’t do without you, but I’m pretty certain it’s
only a trick to get rid of me. They’ve been planning this all night.”
“But you don’t think they’d dare--to _kill_ you?”
“Why not? They killed Haji Ahmad without compunction. Their lives are
forfeit already, you see, and so long as your sisters are alive, they
know that no Government will dare to hunt them down.”
“Zese woods of different shortness,” said Milosch, advancing with a
couple of twigs. “You select each, and we tell you which has drawn ze
black ball.”
“But which represents the black ball--the long one or the short one?”
demanded Maurice.
“Zat not for you to know. We tell you when ze lot is drawn.”
“I told you so,” murmured Wylie. “Whichever I draw is the fatal one.
Here, Milosch, let me choose.”
He took one of the twigs, the shorter, and Maurice found himself with
the other in his hand. Stoyan, coming forward, measured their length
with great deliberation, and announced that the lot had fallen upon
Wylie. Maurice sprang forward furiously, but Wylie pinned his arms to
his sides.
“Now don’t let us give ourselves away,” the doomed man entreated. “I
know what you feel like, and what you would like to do, but your
business just now is to think of your sisters. They must not be left
in the hands of these scoundrels without a protector. You’ll have to
look after them both now. Don’t let them know what’s happened to me if
you can help it. Can’t you let them think I have been taken away to be
kept safe somewhere? Remember, they have a lot to bear already.”
“I can’t stand by and see you murdered,” panted Maurice.
“I don’t want you to. Go back to the hut. Your sisters will be
terrified if they wake and find us both gone. Good-bye, and good luck
to you. I wouldn’t ask for a better comrade at a pinch than you have
been all through this.”
“Any messages?” asked Maurice shortly.
“No, I have no one to trouble about me, and my affairs are all in
order. Some day you might tell your eldest sister that I was sorry to
leave without saying good-bye to her.”
“Ze Voivoda say he exhausted of waiting,” said Milosch, coming up with
a handkerchief, which he proceeded to tie over Wylie’s eyes.
“Now go, go!” entreated Wylie of Maurice. “You must think of the
girls, as I ought to have done yesterday instead of playing the fool.”
Maurice wrung his hand and withdrew, slowly and reluctantly. At the
edge of the wood he turned, hearing his friend’s voice raised angrily.
“For heaven’s sake, leave me my hands free!” Wylie cried, but Maurice
gathered that the demand was refused. He went on into the clearing,
and sat down beside the extinguished fire, a prey to the deepest
despondency he had ever known. Without Wylie, how were he and the
hapless girls to face the trials before them? He himself might be the
next sacrifice to the savagery of the brigands, and what would then
become of Zoe and Eirene, since neither fear nor avarice seemed potent
to restrain their captors? Wylie’s resourcefulness, his restless
energy, his cheerfulness, and the underlying force of character which
manifested itself only occasionally, but was therefore all the more
telling, had made him a tower of strength, and Maurice felt bitterly
his own comparative futility. His life had taught him to exercise a
certain amount of initiative, clogged by the habit, inculcated as a
duty, of weighing the merits of a question before deciding on it, but
while he was thinking, Wylie would act--would have acted, rather. The
thought swept over Maurice with desolating effect. The man of action
was taken, the man who could only feel sure of himself in the humdrum
routine of daily life was left. It did not occur to him that Wylie had
not grown to his full mental height in a day, or that he himself might
draw from the depths of his present desolation the experience which
would complete the measure of his manhood.
“Maurice, how slack you look!” cried Zoe, putting out a dishevelled
head gingerly at the door of the hut. “Mind you tell Captain Wylie
that he must give us some more kabobs for breakfast.”
“All right. They’ll be ready. Provided,” with a sudden happy
inspiration, “that you promise faithfully to eat them before you begin
to talk. It’s no good my--our cooking if you let the things get cold
when they ought to be eaten at once.”
“I promise, honour bright!” said Zoe, and Maurice began to collect
wood for a fresh fire, half fearing that orders for the march would be
issued before he had time to do any cooking. But the brigands came
back into camp and sat down round their own fire with the evident
intention of taking their ease, and when the girls came out of the hut
they found Maurice busy toasting his face as well as a bountiful
supply of kabobs.
“Where’s Captain Wylie?” they cried.
“What did you promise?” asked Maurice repressively. “Sit down and
begin at once, and I’ll be doing some more.”
“Maurice, you are eating none yourself,” cried Zoe, having kept her
promise until hunger was satisfied. “And where is Captain Wylie? He
didn’t get his face nearly as much burnt as you do.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Somewhere about, I suppose,” mumbled Maurice. “Have
some more?”
“No, thanks; I don’t want any more. Maurice, has anything happened to
him? Do you really know where he is?”
“Can’t you let the poor chap alone?” demanded Maurice desperately. “He
hasn’t escaped by himself and left us in the lurch--I can tell you
that, at any rate.”
“No, but has he been taken away? I believe something has happened.
Tell me honestly, Maurice; where is he?”
“They took him away early this morning,” admitted Maurice. “He thought
himself it was out of spite for his trying to get us rescued. He asked
me to say how sorry he was not to bid you good-bye.”
“Good-bye? Then he thought---- They weren’t going to kill him?”
“How can I tell? They didn’t do it when I was there.”
“But you think they have done it? And you let them?”
“Look here,” said Maurice; “I’d better tell you all I know, and you
can see what you think.” He told his story as fast as he could, with
involuntary pauses here and there.
“Then there can be no doubt,” said Zoe slowly at last. “He is dead
now.”
“I admire you both,” said Eirene, with her gracious air of
distributing praise impartially. “Your duty was to the living, and he
knew it. He could only die, and he did that well. Some day----”
“Eirene,” said Zoe, with concentrated bitterness, “if you say you will
raise a memorial church in his honour, I shall hate you till I die.”
She rose and went into the hut, and Eirene turned to Maurice.
“You think he is dead?” she said.
“Why, of course. What else could I think?”
“I don’t believe it in the least. I think they were trying to frighten
him--as a punishment for yesterday, you know. I think they will
blindfold him and tie his hands and pretend to take him to the edge of
a rock and throw him over, but he will only fall one or two feet.”
“Good gracious, Eirene! how can you think of such diabolical things?”
cried Maurice.
“But it is not as if it would hurt him really. They would wish to see
him show fear; that would be most natural. It would be foolish for
them to kill him. If they found themselves hotly pressed--do you
say?--they might kill one of us as a warning to the pursuers, but to
do it without any purpose would only diminish their power of
bargaining for a ransom and an amnesty.”
“Well, if you’re so certain, why don’t you tell Zoe?”
Eirene shrugged her shoulders. “She is determined that he is dead; how
could my sole opinion change her mind? If I thought it would comfort
her I would tell her; but suppose that we see him no more again until
we are all ransomed and set free? She would determine again that he
was dead, and suffer twice over.”
“I only hope you may be right, and that he is alive,” said Maurice
gloomily.
The brigands had finished their meal, and were peacefully employed in
mending their clothes and moccasins, while the chief was seated under
a tree, in close confabulation with Milosch. A sentry was stationed at
the head of the track leading to the clearing, there was another on
the brow of the mountain above, and a third, as Maurice knew, at the
lower end of the wood. Everything seemed to portend a quiet day,
without further wandering, and Maurice felt the fact an added trial,
welcome though the prospect of rest was. If Wylie was not already
dead, where was he, and what fate was intended for him? It was
maddening to think of repeating these questions for a whole day,
uninterrupted by any possibility of useful occupation.
As Maurice sat engrossed in his dreary meditations, Zoe came out of
the hut, red-eyed and gruff-voiced, but overflowing with nervous
energy.
“Do let us find something to do, Maurice, if we are to stay here all
day,” she said. “Let us make a hut for you. I’m sure it will be better
for you than sleeping in the open another night.”
Maurice rose at once, receiving a wholly unnecessary glance of advice
from Eirene, which said, “Humour her; she needs something to divert
her mind,” and going into the wood, began to choose fresh branches,
and cut them down with the useful knife which served so many purposes.
Zoe threw herself into the work with determination, and Eirene sat
enthroned on a hillock at the foot of a tree and gave counsel.
“Make it large enough for Captain Wylie as well,” she said, as
Maurice, thinking he had cut enough twigs, was gathering them into a
bundle to carry back to the clearing; “he may be back to-night.”
“Eirene, how can you?” cried Zoe indignantly, and stopped, unable to
say more.
“Look here, Eirene,” said Maurice, exasperated, “can’t you get
something to do? It’s all very well to sit there looking on----”
“Oh, she can’t,” broke in Zoe. “Her arm got strained again in crossing
that awful place yesterday, and it was rather bad when I dressed it
this morning. Let her alone; I suppose she has her own idea of a
joke.”
Eirene’s glance at Maurice said, “What did I tell you?” as she rose
and picked her way daintily back to the clearing. When they returned
thither with their burdens, she retired to a rock at some little
distance, with an ostentatious air of leaving them to their obstinate
ill-humour in peace. Finding that they took no notice of her, however,
she came gradually nearer, in order to give them the benefit of her
valuable advice, which proved more useful than might have been
expected, since, as she said, she had often watched her father’s
foresters build huts of birch-boughs in her childhood. When she
repeated her suggestion that the hut should be made large enough for
two, however, Maurice felt obliged to intervene with a pacific
compromise.
“We have all day to spend over it,” he said, “so we can make a better
job of it than the one we ran up in a hurry last night. You girls
shall move into it, do you see? and I’ll succeed to the old one.”
Zoe accepted the suggestion in silence, and they went on with their
work, interweaving the slanting branches which formed the sides with
smaller boughs and twigs. They worked hard most of the day, and talked
so little that Eirene found them very dull company. At last she left
them in despair, and wandered up the hill towards the rock where the
sentry stood, taking care to keep within sight of the clearing. They
saw her seat herself on a convenient stone and begin to study the
landscape, and then they forgot all about her until an exclamation
from her, simultaneously with a shout from the sentry, made them start
to their feet and the brigands grasp their rifles.
“Can we have been traced after all?” cried Maurice.
“A day too late!” murmured Zoe. “Oh, if they had only come up with us
last night!”
“Well, all our work won’t be much good, for they’ll be sure to hurry
us away somewhere else,” said Maurice, noticing that the brigands were
hastily cramming their possessions into their sacks. But presently
another shout from the sentry, following on a faint hail from the
distance, announced that only three men were in sight, and they were
friends. Almost at the same moment, Eirene came rushing frantically
down the hillside.
“It is himself! I told you so!” she cried. “It is Captain Wylie and
two of the brigands. I was sure of it. They were only trying to
frighten him, and he is coming back.”
“Oh, let us go and meet him!” cried Zoe.
“Let Maurice go,” said Eirene primly. “Your eyes are so red, Zoe,” she
added in a low voice.
“Don’t be Early-Victorian, Eirene,” was the crushing reply. “Do you
think I mind his seeing that I cried because I thought he was killed?
I should be ashamed if I hadn’t!”
They went down the track in the wake of the brigands, who were
jostling one another in mingled surprise, irritation, and alarm. The
two members of the band who accompanied Wylie began to pour forth
explanations and excuses at the top of their voices long before any
words could be clearly distinguished, and while they were seized and
cross-examined by their fellows, Wylie was able to reach his friends.
“You haven’t quite done with me yet!” he said, giving one hand to Zoe
and the other to Maurice, while Eirene waited for a more ceremonious
greeting. “I shall be able to cook one more supper for you before I am
sent off.”
“Then it was all a trick?” asked Maurice.
“Well, in a way. You would have been left to think that I was dead, as
a warning to you against playing the fool, I suppose, but what I was
really picked out for was a very serious matter--getting your ransom.
The brutes over-reached themselves utterly in the way they went to
work, and the result is that here I am.”
“What a lot you must have to tell us!” said Zoe. “Wait till we get to
the camp, so that we can listen comfortably.”
“Why, you must have spent the day in house-building!” said Wylie, as
they reached the clearing.
“That’s exactly what we did--to drown our misery,” said Maurice. “Now
begin. Did they pretend to shoot you, or any vile trick like that?”
“No, only cuffed and hustled me down these goat-tracks for ever so
far, which was no joke with my eyes covered and my hands tied. I
really do wonder that I’m here to tell the tale, for I did more
slipping than walking. At last we seemed to come to a comparatively
level place, and they took the handkerchief off my eyes and set me
free, and instructed me to make the best of my way back to
civilisation and tell your friends to send fifteen thousand pounds by
this day month if they wanted to see you again alive.”
“Fifteen thousand pounds!” gasped Zoe.
“Yes, it sounds a large order, but that wasn’t what stumped me. It was
that I really know nothing about you, except that I gather you have a
place in Homeshire. I know that Smith was at Cambridge and won a prize
for poetry, but I could hardly go there and open a subscription list,
or ask the Dons to mortgage the college revenues for his ransom, could
I? It sounds absurd that after all we have gone through together we
should know so little about each other, and I couldn’t make my guards
believe it. They evidently thought that we lived next door to one
another at home, or something of that sort, and laboured to explain to
me that if there had been only three of us they would have made us
write a letter, but as there were four, they sent one of us instead.
But at last I managed to make them understand that nothing could
induce me to show my face in Therma without proper credentials, and
that unless I knew who to apply to, there would be no chance of their
getting the money, so they decided to send back here for instructions.
But when it came to the point, neither of them would be left alone
with me, and as I declined to remain where I was and wait for them,
the only thing to do was to bring me back.”
“You said you were no longer blindfolded?” said Eirene, for Maurice
and Zoe were looking at one another in consternation. “Ah, yes, that
is it. The guards were afraid of you--of your eyes. They hate them.”
“Horribly bad taste in them,” said Wylie lightly. “Why, here’s our
friend Milosch coming--bringing us something for supper, I see.”
A sheep had been procured during the day--by nefarious means, of
course--and Milosch brought a portion of its flesh for the captives;
but he carried also Zoe’s safety inkstand, a leaf torn out of one of
her note-books, and a pen of unknown origin.
“You write now, before ze sun falls,” he said to Maurice, “a letter
signified by all of you. Ze ransom we demand is fifteen sousand
Ingliss pounds, to be placed in gold zis day month on a spot zat will
be indicated to your messager. If ze ransom comes not forth, or if
deception is adventured, we shall kill you, beginning wiz”--he looked
round with a calculating eye upon the three, who all afterwards
confessed to feeling cold shivers down their backs, and then
laughed--“No, I say not who we begin wiz. Perhaps we let you draw ze
lot again. From zis time you hold no communion wiz your messager but
in my presence; zerefore seek not to cook up fraud among yourselves.”
Maurice looked at Zoe in despair. How could they let Wylie proceed on
his quest in absolute ignorance of their real name? and yet, how could
they reveal it in the hearing of Milosch, who possessed the
disconcerting faculty of being able to understand English much better
than he spoke it? Zoe came to her brother’s help.
“Captain Wylie had better go to Professor Panagiotis,” she said.
“Professor Panagiotis!” said Eirene sharply. “What do you know about
him?”
“He is the friend we were going to stay with,” answered Zoe, in
surprise. “Do you know him?”
“He was an acquaintance of my father,” said Eirene, with some
hesitation. “I don’t remember that I have ever seen him.”
“Well, if he wouldn’t remember you we needn’t mention you separately,”
said Zoe quickly, wondering if Wylie was trying once more, as she
herself would have done, to reconcile the relationships of this
remarkable family. “If you will just say that we are all here
together?” she added to Wylie.
“Yes, I think the letter had better go to the Professor,” agreed
Maurice, “and then he can post you up, Wylie. There are some things
that can’t very well be explained here, but that have a tremendous
bearing on the case.”
The letter was written, duly signed by Maurice Smith, Zoe Smith, and
Eirene Smith, and addressed to the Professor at his villa at
Kallimeri. Milosch was highly entertained by the idea that the head of
the Greek party in Emathia should find himself compelled to finance
his Slavic opponents to so large an extent, and shouted the news to
the rest of the brigands as a huge joke. They chuckled over it without
him, for he did not quit the prisoners again. It was evidently his
business to see that no one exchanged a word with Wylie that might
cover any suggestion designed to cheat the band of their destined
spoil, or lead to their being hunted down, and even when Maurice and
Wylie rolled themselves up in their rugs to sleep, he sat between
them, revolver in hand.