"Do I drive to the front door--I'm thinking not?"
"You drive to the edge of the spinney which you'll find directly you
turn the corner. Wait there until Miss Davenport comes. Then drive
her straight here and your money is earned. I'll answer for the rest
and she shall answer for herself."
I nodded my head, and, folding up the note, I put it in my pocket. The
night was clear when I drove away from the inn, but there was some mist
in the fields and a goodish bit about the spinney they had pointed out
to me. A child could have found the road, however, for it was just the
highway to Newmarket; and when I had cruised along it a couple of
hundred yards, to the very gates of Lord Hailsham's house, I turned
about and stood off at the spinney's edge, perhaps three hundred yards
away. Then I just lighted a cigarette and waited, as I had been told
to do.
It was a funny job, upon my word. Sometimes I laughed when I thought
about it; sometimes I had a bit of a shiver down my back, the sort of
thing which comes to a man who's engaged in a rum affair, and may not
come well out of it. As for the party Lord Hailsham was giving, there
could be no doubt about that. I had seen the whole house lighted up
from attic to kitchen, and some of the lights were still glistening
between the pollards in the spinny; while the stables themselves seemed
alive with coachmen, carriages, and motor-cars. The road itself was
the only secluded spot you could have pointed out for the third of a
mile about--but that was without a living thing upon it, and nothing
but a postman's cart passed me for an hour or more.
I should have told you that I had turned the car and that she now stood
with her headlights towards home. The mists made the night very cold,
and I was glad to wrap myself up in one of the guvnor's rugs and smoke
a packet of cigarettes while I waited. From time to time I could hear
the music of fiddles, and they came with an odd echo, just as though
some merry tune of long ago chided me for being there all alone. When
they ceased I must have dropped asleep, for the next thing I knew was
that some one was busy about the car and that my head-lamps had both
gone out. Be sure I jumped up like a shot at this, and "Hallo," cried
I, "what the devil do you think you are doing?" Then I saw my mistake.
The new-comer was a girl, one of the maids of the house, it appeared,
and she was stowing luggage into the car.
"Oh," says I, "then Miss Davenport is coming, is she?"
The girl went on with her work, hardly looking at me. When she did
speak I thought her voice sounded very odd; and instead of answering me
she asked a question:
"Do you know the road to Colchester?"
"To Colchester?"
"You take the first to the left when we leave here--then go right ahead
until I tell you to stop. Understand, whatever happens you are to get
ahead as fast as you can. The rest is with----"
He came to an abrupt halt, and no wonder. If you had given me ten
thousand pounds to have kept my tongue still, I would have lost the
money that instant. For who do you think the maid was? Why, no other
than the starchy valet, Joseph, I had seen at Mr. Colmacher's flat.
"Up you get, my boy," he cried, throwing all disguise to the winds,
"Don't you hear that noise? They have discovered Miss Davenport is
going and the job's off. We'll tell Benny in the morning--the thing to
do to-night is to show them our heels and sharp about it."
He bade me listen, and I heard the ringing of an alarm bell, the
barking of hounds, and then the sound of many voices. Some suspicion,
ay, more than that, a pretty shrewd guess at the truth was possible
then, and I would have laid any man ten pounds to nothing that "love"
was not much in this business, whatever the real nature of it might be.
For that matter, the fellow had hardly got the words out of his mouth
when the glitter of something bright he had dropped on the ground,
caused me to stoop and to pick up a gold watch bracelet set in
diamonds. The same instant I heard a man running on the road behind
me, and who should come up but the very "ne'er-do-well" who helped me
to wash down my car but yesterday morning.
"Hold that man!" he cried, throwing himself at the valet. "He's
Marchant, the Yankee hotel robber--hold him in the King's name--I'm a
police officer, and I have a warrant."
Now, this was something if you like, and I don't think any one is going
to wonder either at my surprise, or at the hesitation which overtook
me. To find myself, in this way, confronted by two men who had seemed
so different from what they were, and that not twenty-four hours ago;
to discover one of them disguised as a woman and the other saying he
was a police officer--well, do you blame me for standing there with my
mouth wide open, and my eyes staring with the surprise of it? Pity I
did so, all the same, for the "ne'er-do-well" was on the floor next
moment, and it didn't need a second look to tell me that it would be a
long time before he got up again.
I shall never forget if I live a hundred years (which would be pretty
lucky for a man who thinks less than nothing of speed limits and is
known to all the justices in Sussex), I shall never forget the way that
valet turned on poor Kennaway (for that was the detective's name) and
laid him flat on the grass. Such a snarl of rage I never heard. The
man seemed transformed in an instant from a silent, reserved, taciturn
servant to a very maniac, fighting with teeth and claw, cursing and
swearing horribly, and as strong as a gorilla.
Again and again he struck at his victim, the heavy blows sounding like
the thud of iron upon a carpet; and long before I got my wits back and
leaped to Kennaway's assistance, that poor fellow was insensible and
moaning upon the grass at the roadside. The next thing that I knew
about it was that I had a revolver as close to my forehead as a
revolver will ever be, and that the man Joseph was pushing me toward
the car, the while he said something to which I must listen if I would
save my life.
"Get up, you fool," he cried. "Do you want me to treat you as I've
treated him? Get up, or by the Lord I'll blow your brains out!"
Well, judge me for it how you will, but I obeyed him as any child.
What I had tried to do for poor Kennaway was shown by the cut across my
forehead, which I shall carry to my dying day. Such strength and such
temper I have never known in any man, and they frightened me beyond all
words to tell you. There are human beings and human animals, and this
fellow was of the latter sort. No raving maniac could have done worse
to any fellow creature; and when I got up to the driver's seat and
started the engine, my hands trembled so that I could hardly keep them
on the wheel.
We jumped away, a roar of voices behind us and the alarm bell of the
house still ringing. What was in my head was chiefly this, that I was
going out upon the road with this madman for a companion, and that
sooner or later he would make an end of me. Judge of my position,
knowing, as I did, that a murderer sat in the tonneau behind, and that
he held a revolver at full cock in his hand. My God! it was an awful
journey, the most awful I shall ever make.
He would kill me when it suited him to do it. I was as sure of it as
of my own existence. In one mile or twenty, here in the lanes of
Cambridgeshire, or over yonder when we drew near to the sea, this
madman would do the business. More fearful than any danger a man can
face was this peril at the back of me. I listened for a word or sound
from him; I tried to look behind me and see what he was doing. He
never made a movement, and for miles we roared along that silent road,
through the mists and the darkness to the unknown goal--a murderer and
his victim, as I surely believed myself to be.
There is many a man who has the nerve for a sudden call, but few who
can stand a trial long sustained. All that I can tell you of what fear
is like, the fear of swift death, and of the pain and torture of it,
would convey nothing to you of my sensations during that mad drive.
Sometimes I could almost have wished that he would make an end of it
then and there, shooting me in mercy where I sat, and sparing me the
agony of uncertainty. But mile after mile we went without a sound from
him; and when, in sheer despair, I slowed down and asked him a
direction, he was on me like a tiger, and I must race again for very
life. Through Haverhill, thence to Sibil Ingham and Halstead--ay,
until the very spires of Colchester stood out in the dawn light, that
race went on. And I began to say that he might spare me after all,
that I was necessary to him, and that his destination was Harwich and
the morning steamer to Holland. Fool! it was then he fired at me, then
that the end came.
I thought that I heard him move; some instinct--for there is an
instinct in these things, let others say what they please--caused me to
turn half about, and detect him standing in the tonneau. No time for
prudence then, no time for resolution or anything but that fear of
death which paralyses the limbs and seems to still the very heart.
With a cry that was awful to hear, he fired his pistol, and I heard the
report of it as thunder in my ear, the while the powder burned my face
as the touch of red-hot iron. But a second shot he never fired. A
sudden lurch, as I let go the wheel, sent the car bounding on to the
grass at the road-side, threw the murderer off his balance and hurled
him backwards. There was a tremendous crash, I found myself beneath
the tonneau, and then, as it seemed, on the top of it again. At last I
went rolling over and over on to the grass, and lay there, God knows
how long, in very awe and terror of all that had overtaken me.
But the valet himself was stone dead, caught by the neck as the car
went over and crushed almost beyond recognition. And that was the
judgment upon him, as I shall believe to my life's end.
* * * * *
They never caught old "Benny," not for that job, at any rate. He
turned out to be the head of a swindling crew, known in America and
Paris as the "Red Poll" gang, because of his beautiful sandy hair. He
must have been wanted for fifty jobs in Europe, and as many on the
other side. As for his supposed son, Mr. Walter, and the valet
Marchant, they were but two of the company. And why they came to
engage me was because of a motor accident to the man Walter, which put
him out of the running when the burglary job at Lord Hailsham's was to
be undertaken.
Kennaway, the detective, was three months in hospital after his little
lot. It was clever of him to make me post a telegram on the road, for,
directly he got it, he wired to the Chief Constable at Cambridge, and
came on himself by train. The local police furnished a list of all the
house-parties being held about Royston that week-end, and, of course,
as Lord Hailsham was celebrating his silver wedding, it didn't need
much wit to send Kennaway there; the valet, meanwhile, being already in
the house, disguised as a maid.
We were to have had a bit of a silver wedding ourselves, it appears,
for I doubt not "Benny" would have led all the silver, to say nothing
of the gold and precious stones, to the altar as soon as possible. But
the best laid schemes of mice and men gang aft agley, as do motor-cars
when the man who's driving them has a pistol at his head.