THE BAAG-NOUK.
The car rushed at the slope, and the shoulder of the cutting hid it from
Melchard the fraction of a second before his next shot was heard.
Amaryllis took the double bend of the little cañon with an assurance
which satisfied Dick of her ability.
The sprint had exhausted his reserve of nervous force, for the moment
slender; and he lay back in the ample seat of the tonneau scarcely more
than half-conscious.
The road straightening before her and still climbing, Amaryllis glanced
at him over her shoulder.
"There's some brandy left," she shouted, her eyes again on her work, "in
your left pocket. Finish it."
Her voice roused him; with an effort he found and unscrewed the flask.
He had hardly drained it before sight came back to his eyes and he
remembered the danger ahead.
Mut-mut!
They had reached a strip of road level and straight, some two hundred
yards in length, which crossed the breadth of the ridge, on its way to a
descent as steep as the climb already accomplished. But even this, the
highest part of their road, ran in a cutting, or natural cleft, in the
spine of the ridge; and rocks and bushes, with a few stunted trees, rose
in jumbled terraces on both sides of the car.
Cover was there for a hundred Mut-muts; and for Dick Bellamy one was
more than enough, while he could not see him.
With his heart in his mouth and Ockley's gun in his hand, he sat
waiting.
But Amaryllis, in the false belief that both enemies were behind her,
and well taught in the handling of a car, was not going to begin an
unknown descent at full speed. About half-way across the level, she
slackened the pace, turning her face a little to the left, as if to
speak to the man behind her.
And in that moment, with the words in his mouth to bid her quicken, not
relax the speed, Dick saw the bestial one-eared Malay, erect upon a
boulder, not more than three feet on the off-side distant from the car.
The brute was on the point of leaping down upon them.
The girl saw Dick's revolver go up, turned, and saw its target.
The horrors of the morning, coming to a climax in this shock like a
nightmare's crisis, seemed to stop her heart. With instinctive memory of
her instructor's, "If you're taken bad, miss, throw out your clutch, jam
on your breaks and faint comfortable," she stopped the car and lost
consciousness.
In the same moment Dick fired.
The bullet was too late to stop that gorilla-like spring, and Mut-mut,
with a glitter of steel flashing in one of his outspread palms, launched
himself upon them, landing, like some huge and horrible cat of dreams,
on all fours in the body of the car.
His left ribs were pressed against Dick's knees, his right hand tearing
at and ripping the cloth and leather of the car's side-linings as he
struggled to rise.
What was fastened in that right hand Dick had seen, and with Ockley's
last bullet he blew out Mut-mut's brains.
Before even freeing himself from the weight of the corpse, he felt for
its hip-pocket, and pushed what he found into his own belt.
Then, cursing himself for having finished the brandy, he searched the
locker under the cushion of the seat and found, amongst a confusion of
odds and ends, a sealed bottle of whisky and a corkscrew.
"Robbie Burns, Three Star, All-malt, Pre-War, Liqueur Highland Whisky,"
said the label, gay with pseudo-tartan colours, which, in happier hours,
would have scared him worse than the words.
When he had stretched Amaryllis, still unconscious, in the road, with a
cushion under her head and two beneath her feet, he let her lie awhile.
Then, encouraged by the faint colour creeping back to her cheeks, he sat
beside her in the road and lifted her shoulders in his left arm, coaxing
her to life and forcing between her pale lips burning drops of "Robbie
Burns."
So that, when her eyes came open, and a little sense into her ears, this
was the kind of thing that she heard:
"Oh, yes, but you must! It's three stars, and there's only a pair of
twins in your eyes. Proof strength, and yours isn't, you darling! Drink,
will you, you wicked girl? I tell you, it's all-malt, and not a jim-jam
to the cask. That's the way, my beauty! Now another! It's
Pre-War--fitting prize for Our Brave Women Who Showed The Tommies How To
Fight!"
"How silly you are, Dick, dear!" she said at last, wiping her lips. "And
what perfectly beastly brandy!"
Dick tasted the stuff, and frankly spat it out.
"I suppose it might be worse, seeing its called whisky, and allowing for
the label," he said. "Young woman, I'm going to kiss you somethin' crool
in a minute. 'Course I'm silly! What was it you did, when I was only
taking a snooze?"
"Cried," she answered.
"And I laugh to see you all right again."
But Amaryllis was looking about her.
"Is it gone, that awful thing?" she asked, whispering.
"Gone for good," said Dick.
"And, oh! the car? How did you ever stop it?"
"You stopped it, you wonder-child. And there's a great deal more 'how'
about that."
"Then--then it's the same thing as last time?" she said, her face paling
once more.
"The same thing," admitted Dick. "It was him or us, you know. And
there's not much egoism in saying we're better worth keeping, is there?"
Though she shuddered again and bore a grave face, he could see that she
was relieved.
Rising with the help of his hand, she tried to smooth her rumpled
feathers, and said:
"Hadn't we better go on?"
"I've got to move something from the car first," he replied, with
ambiguity merely euphemistic. "You stand here and keep a look-out
towards Harthborough."
"All right," she answered, understanding very well what he had to do.
She turned away, and then, with an effort, her face still averted,
"Can't I help you, Dick?" she asked.
"Yes--by sitting on that stone and not turning round till I let you."
And he went back to the car, taking the "Robbie Burns" with him.
In his shaken and exhausted condition, the task of dragging that
revolting corpse from the car was not easy. Heavy he had known the body
would be, but when he had opened the door on the off-side, and would
have pulled the dead thing out by the heels, he was surprised to find
that he could not move it. On a second effort the slight yielding of the
mass was accompanied by a sound of rending and he remembered Mut-mut's
right hand, armed with a weapon of unspeakable cruelty, which only once
before in his life had he seen--the Mahratta baag-nouk, or Tiger's Claw.
He went round to the car's-near side, and there found, as he had
expected, the dead right hand anchored to the lining-cushions by what
was, he supposed, a unique specimen, made to the fancy of the creature
that wore it; for, in addition to the leather strap across the back of
the hand, two rings were welded to the instrument, through which to pass
the second and third fingers, thus keeping in position the four short,
razor-edged steel claws hidden in the palm.
Dick loosened the buckle of the strap, and drew the hand, already cold,
from the rings; picked the baag-nouk from the cushion, wrapped it in a
greasy cloth out of the tool-box, and hid it under the seat.
The thought of that gruesome weapon, more frightful than the unsheathed
claws of the royalest Bengal tiger, hanging over the head of his chosen
among women, stung Dick Bellamy to very unceremonious removal of the
body, which, after rifling it of a handful of cartridges, he flung by
the roadside; and then, lest Amaryllis should see the awful head again,
even in death, he covered the whole corpse with an overcoat of
Melchard's from the car.
The engine had run down. As he cranked it up, Dick was seized by a
sudden savage desire to have in his hands the man who had brought all
his outrage, suffering and terror to the girl whose uncovered head and
patient back he could see waiting for him down the road.
A fierce rage, such as he had seldom felt, and never since boyhood,
flooded his body with a dry heat, and stimulated his intelligence.
For with these thoughts of the evil Melchard came sudden insight into
the man's purpose at the foot of the Bull's Neck, and his probable
action at the present moment.
"He was shooting to drive us into Mut-mut's arms, and to make us believe
our danger was all behind us," he reasoned. "And it's a white elephant
to a dead rat he's trudging up this road now to find what Mut-mut's left
of us. Perhaps he's heard the two shots, and me cranking up."
Not daring to call Amaryllis, he trusted her precise obedience to his
orders, and sank, almost as swiftly as Pépe into the landscape.
Crouching, crawling, worming himself on his belly from tree-stump to
boulder he mounted some ten feet above the road on the side away from
the car, and then, invisible from the road level, continued his course
until he had retraced about fifty yards of the way they had travelled.
Then he stopped, lying prone where two rocks, standing so little apart
that they seemed long years ago to have formed a single mass, gave him
view of the road's whole width.
He laid one ear against the rock, and over the other a hand.
After a minute's waiting, footsteps; three more, and a weary figure came
in sight where the level road began.
The joy he felt kept him patient until Melchard, unmistakable, was right
beneath him.
"Hi! Melchard!" he cried.
Melchard started, stopped, and looked anxiously round.
"Never heard the voice before? You'll hear it often, and lots of it,
soon, Melchard. Pull out your gun."
The man in the road made no attempt to obey. From Mut-mut's revolver
Dick sent a bullet which threw up the dust at Melchard's feet.
"Two inches to the right of your feet."
He fired again. Again the little puff of dust.
"An inch and a half to the left of your feet," he sang out cheerfully.
"The next'll be half-way between and three feet higher. Put down your
gun."
Melchard produced his automatic and dropped it.
"Kick it away from you."
Melchard obeyed, and his weapon lay three yards out of reach.
"Move an inch, and I'll put a hole in your slimy heart."
Melchard stood, still game enough to control in some measure the
trembling which had seized him.
Then Dick raised his voice.
"Miss Caldegard!" he shouted.
"I'm coming," came the clear voice in reply, and a patter of light feet.
Dick could just see the car, and Amaryllis when she reached it.
"Where are you?" she called, bewildered.
"Keep straight on. You see a thing something like a man, standing in the
road, don't you?"
"Yes," answered Amaryllis.
"Near it you will find an automatic pistol, on the ground. Pick it up,
please, and go back to your seat," shouted Dick.
Amaryllis obeyed him. But, after going a little way, she called back to
him and instinctively she imitated his formality in presence of the
unclean.
"Mr. Bellamy!" she cried. "Please--not this one."
To this allusion Melchard had no clue. But there was in her tone
something which turned the blood cold in him.
The invisible Dick, however, answered in a laughing voice so joyous that
Amaryllis was vaguely distressed.
"Rather not," he replied. "I've something much better for this guy."
With intense pleasure, while his observation-slit gave him sight of her,
he watched the girl returning to her post.
Then he shot a fresh order at the prisoner.
"Turn round," he said.
Melchard obeyed.
"If you move a foot or lift a hand before I speak again, it's a bullet
between the shoulders."
Judging this to be the position most demoralizing, Dick descended with
more haste than precaution. Melchard, his entrails shaking, stood, to
all appearance, firm as a rock. When Dick tapped his shoulder, he
turned, showing a face white and drawn.
"The man Bunce!" he exclaimed.
"Silly liar!" said Dick. "You knew who I was the moment you saw my
cheek--guessed I was the man who was queering your game. I have queered
it, and I'm going to queer you. Walk in front of me, and don't forget,
that, if I have to disappoint myself by killing you, I shan't lose any
sleep about it."
Melchard walked silent and erect, with the unseen pistol-barrel behind
him.
Dick could see even in the shoulders before him the ripple of fear
controlled, but not conquered.
And the sight brought, not indeed compassion, but a separated measure of
respect.
When they had almost reached the car, he called a halt.
"I shan't keep on threatening you," he said "You're down and out.
Understand, once for all, that, on the least movement, I shoot to kill."
He pointed to the coat spread over what had been Mut-mut.
"That's yours," he said. "Put it on."
The man was reeking with sweat, exhausted and in mortal fear. A chill
might endanger the success of Dick's design.
Melchard, guessing well what it covered, lifted the fawn-coloured
overcoat with resolution; but the earless side of that frightful head,
with another and bloody hole making a pair of dead eyes to stare up at
him, was too much for the shaken nerve, and Alban Melchard collapsed on
his face in the road.
Dick turned him over, lifted an eyelid, and, convinced that the man was
unconscious, fetched from the car his bottle of the strange device, and
poured a stream from its neck into Melchard's half-open mouth.
For some moment's after, he was afraid that the fit of choked coughing
his rough remedy had caused would compel him to leave a second corpse by
the roadside.
When it was over, however, it appeared that the stimulant had been
partly assimilated, for Melchard was able to stand. When he had got his
arms into the overcoat, Dick led him to the car.
From the locker under the seat he produced a thick tumbler.
"Get in," he said, and half-filled the glass from the bottle.
Melchard lay back exhausted in the near-side corner, examining with dull
eyes the havoc made by Mut-mut's claw.
"Drink that," said Dick.
Melchard shook his head.
"I hate spirits," he objected feebly. "That's his stuff--Mut-mut's."
"You'll hate it worse soon," was all the answer he got; and drank,
gasping between gulps.
Knowing that the man had not a kick left in him, Dick ventured, rather
than fetch Amaryllis into sight of the uncovered corpse, to mount the
front seat and drive the car to the place where she sat waiting.
When she was beside him, he asked if she were fit to drive.
"Yes," she answered. "But I nearly went to sleep waiting for you, Dick."
"I don't think either of us is fit to drive her to town," he said,
looking at his watch. "I'm pretty tough, but I'm nearly all in. How
you've stuck it as you have, I can't understand. So we'll have a shot at
that five-fifteen. We've about seven miles to go. Thirty m.p.h.--that's
fourteen minutes. Bar hold-ups, that's good enough. It's just five to
five now, but I must fix up my passenger."
Amaryllis looked round at Melchard.
"What are you going to do with him?" she asked, turning back upon Dick a
face of disgust.
"Take him up to town," said Dick.
"How beastly!" said Amaryllis.
"Doped, my child--most royally doped--with a kindly poison that he
loathes."
He left her and took his seat beside the prisoner. Amaryllis, not a
little vexed by the addition to their party, started the car.
As they glided down the wide bends of the descent, Dick plied the
wretched Melchard with dose after dose of throat-rasping spirit. After
the second half-tumbler the man wept, sobbing out entreaties for mercy.
And Amaryllis felt a wave of cold fear run down her spine when she heard
the voice and words of her lover's reply--words not meant for her
hearing she knew for the voice was so low that it was only the precision
of the speaker's passion which carried them, against the wind, to her
ears.
"Pity! Pity on a filthy creature that never felt it--not even for his
own filthy servants! Pity for a lickspittle parasite that battens on the
passions and vices of hopeless gaol-birds, abandoned women, jaded
pleasure-hunters and terrified neurasthenics! Pity on a speculator
calculating huge revenues from the festering putrefaction of human
disease! I haven't hit you yet, because your flesh is foul to
me--but--drink that down, or, by God! I'll smash every bone in your
face."
A gasp, a spasmodic sound of gulping, another gasp--and silence.
Two-thirds of the bottle's contents was down the man's throat. Dick
poured the remnant into his flask and sat watching the effects.
Satisfied at last that he had induced complete alcoholic coma, he
touched Amaryllis on the shoulder.
"Stop her as soon as you can," he said. "I'll drive now."
When they were off again, she asked, in a voice none too steady, what he
had been doing to the wretched man behind her.
"Made him absolutely blind--blotto," he answered.
"You sounded rather dreadful, Dick," she said; adding, after a
hesitation, "Cruel--almost."
His face was set on the road ahead of him, and his profile, she thought,
though not definitely vindictive in expression, was hard as stone.
"Cruel?" he asked.
"You said awful things in a very dreadful voice."
"The awful thoughts I had account for the voice, beloved," he explained.
"They couldn't be said to him. I thought of his hands touching you--his
voice speaking to you--you, young as an angel, as beautiful as the
goddess that floated in upon the world in a mother-of-pearl dinghy! As
clever as that other one with the fireman's tin hat, as game as Jimmy
Wilde, and as kind as Heaven. Spoke to _you_--touched you--looked at
you--blasphemy, profanation and sacrilege! And barged into your bedroom,
when--. My God! woman," cried poor Dick, as if a flame came from the
marble lips of him, "I could have watched him through an hour of rack
and thumbscrew, when I thought of you up in that room of his. It's the
cruelty I haven't done that's my claim to the next vacancy in halos.
Cruel? Just for pouring down him a few tumblerfuls of a mixture of
arrack and spud-spirit that he'd bought for his damned Caliban! And I
only did that because there weren't any handcuffs handy."
Uttered in a voice wonderfully soft, yet vibrating with a quality which
thrilled him like some tone of a celestial violin, her answering
question reached him through the rush of their speed.
"Do you love me like that?" she asked.
To the short nod of his white silhouette he added curtly:
"Be quiet, please. I'm driving."
She chuckled softly to herself, thinking how well already she began to
understand his ways--ways so odd and dear, she told herself, that never,
she was sure, would she tire of them.