A DOG DIES GAME
Clambering out of the hold, the three detectives and Cleggett briefly
made their followers acquainted with the extraordinary turn of events.
The Rev. Mr. Calthrop, Miss Pringle's Jefferson, and Washington
Artillery Lamb were detailed to guard the Jasper B. end of the tunnel.
The others, seizing their rifles, raced across the sands towards
Morris's.
In a few moments the place was invested, with riflemen on every side
except the south, which fronted on the bay. The steel-jacketed bullets
from the high-power guns tore through and through the flimsy walls.
Nevertheless the defenders replied pluckily, and the siege might have
dragged on for hours had it not been for the courage and resource of
Kuroki. Gaining the stable, Kuroki found an old pushcart there. He
piled three bales of hay upon it, and then set fire to the hay.
Pushing the cart before him, and crouching behind the bales to protect
himself from revolver shots, he worked his way to the east verandah of
the building and left the hay blazing against the planks. Then he ran
as if the devil were after him, and was almost out of pistol shot
before he got a bullet in the calf of his leg.
The blaze caught the wood and spread. In two minutes the east verandah
was in flames. Loge and his men attempted to pour water on the blaze
from above. But Cleggett's party directed so hot a fire upon the
windows that the defenders were forced to retire.
The main building caught. The road house was old, and was of very
light construction; the fire spread with rapidity. Loge was in a trap.
But that evil and indomitable spirit refused to yield. Even when his
remaining ruffians came out and gave themselves up Loge still fought on
alone in a sullen fury of despair.
Reckless of bullets, he leaned from an open window, a figure not
without its grandeur against the background of smoke and flame, and
shouted a savage and obscene insult at Cleggett.
"Give yourself up," cried Wilton Barnstable.
"Damn it, man, anything's better than roasting to death!"
Loge raised his hand and sped a last bullet at the detective, grazing
Barnstable's temple.
"Come in and get me!" he shouted.
Barnstable fired, just as a whirl of smoke blew in front of Loge.
Cleggett thought the outlaw staggered, but he was not certain.
A moment later a portion of the roof fell; then the east wall crashed
in. Morris's was a blazing ruin.
"He has perished in the flames," said Wilton Barnstable. "So ends
Logan Black!"
"More like he's blowed his head off," said Cap'n Abernethy. "If you
was to ask me, that's what I'd do."
"He has done neither!" cried Cleggett. "He has taken to the tunnel.
That man will fight to the last breath."
And without waiting to see whether the others followed him or not
Cleggett set off at top speed for the Jasper B.
With a dagger between his teeth, his pistol in its holster, and his
electric, watchman's lantern in his pocket he entered the tunnel and
crawled forward on his hands and knees. If Loge were in there indeed
he had the fire at one end and Cleggett at the other. But even at
that, escape was possible, for all Cleggett knew. What ramifications
this peculiar passageway might have he could not guess.
The place was narrow, and in spots so low that it was necessary for a
man to crouch almost to the ground. Cleggett, because he did not wish
to reveal his presence, did not flash his lantern; there were stretches
where he might have stood almost erect and made quicker progress, if he
had found them with the light. The earth beneath him was beaten hard
and smooth.
Cleggett thought possibly that the tunnel had originally led from
Morris's basement to the smuggler's cave which Wilton Barnstable had
spoken of, and that it had been extended later to the ship. He learned
afterwards that this was true from the men who had surrendered. The
Jasper B. had been abandoned for so long, and was so completely
abandoned except for the visits of Cap'n Abernethy, who fished from it
now and then, that Loge had conceived the idea of making it the
back-door, so to speak, of Morris's. In the event of a raid upon
Morris's his "get-away" through the hulk was provided for. He had
intended buying the ship himself; but Cleggett had forestalled him.
From the prisoners Cleggett also learned later that two men had been
concerned in the explosion which had broken the big rocks on the plain.
One of them had won the Claiborne signet ring at poker after Reginald
Maltravers had been stripped of his valuables, and had worn it. They
had been dispatched with a bomb each, which they were to introduce into
the hold of the Jasper B., retiring through the tunnel after they had
started the clockwork mechanism going. It was known that one of them
owed the other money; they had been quarreling about it as they entered
the tunnel from the cellar of Morris's. It was conjectured that the
quarrel had progressed and that the debtor had endeavored, by the light
of his pocket lantern in the tunnel, to palm off a counterfeit bill in
settlement of the debt. This may have led to a blow, or more likely
only to an argument during which a bomb was dropped and exploded,
followed quickly by the other explosion. Dead hand, counterfeit bill
and ring were flung whimsically to the surface of the earth together,
and the leaning rocks had been astonishingly broken from beneath
through this trivial quarrel. Had it not been for this squabble the
Jasper B. and all on board must have been destroyed. Verily, the minds
of wicked men compass their own downfall, and retribution can sometimes
be an artist.
But Cleggett, as he crawled forward through the darkness and the damp,
thought little of these things that had so mystified him at the time.
He was alert for what the immediate future might hold, not doubting
that Loge had retreated to the tunnel. He had too strong a sense of
the man's powerful and iniquitous personality to suppose that Loge
would kill himself while one chance remained, however remote, of
injuring his enemies. Loge was the kind of dog that dies biting.
Suddenly, after pressing forward for several minutes, he ran against an
obstruction. The tunnel seemed to come to an end. He did not dare
show his light. But he felt with his hands. It was rock that blocked
his way. Cleggett understood that this barrier was the result of the
explosion. Groping and exploring with his hands, he found that the
passage turned sharply to the left. It was more narrow and curving,
for the distance of a few yards, and the earth beneath was fresher.
When the tunnel had been blocked by the explosion, Loge and his men had
burrowed around the obstruction.
Cleggett judged that he must be at about the middle of the tunnel. He
felt the more solid earth beneath his hands again, and knew that he had
passed the rock. The passage now descended deeper into the ground,
slanting steeply downward. This incline was twenty feet in length;
then the floor became horizontal again on the lower level. At the same
time the passage widened. Cleggett stretched one arm out, then the
other; he could not touch the wall on either hand. He stood erect and
held his hand up; the roof was six inches above his head. He was in a
room of some sort. Wishing, if possible, to learn the extent of this
subterranean chamber, which he did not doubt had at one time been used
as a cave and storehouse of smugglers, Cleggett began to sidle around
walls, feeling his way with his hands.
He dislodged a pebble. It rolled to the ground with what was really a
slight sound.
But to Cleggett, who had been getting more and more excited, it was
loud as an avalanche. He stopped and held his breath; he fancied that
he had heard another noise besides the one which his pebble made. But
he could not be sure.
The sensation that he was not alone suddenly gripped him with
overwhelming force. His heart began to beat more quickly; the blood
drummed in his ears. Nevertheless, he kept his head. He took his
pocket lantern in his left hand, and his pistol in his right, and
leaned with his back against the wall. He listened. He heard nothing.
But the eerie feeling that he was watched grew upon him. Presently he
fancied that the darkness began to vibrate, as if an electrical current
of some sort were being passed through it, and it might forthwith burst
into light. Cleggett, as we know, was not easily frightened. But now
he was possessed of a strange feeling, akin to terror, but which was at
the same time not any terror of physical injury. He did not fear Loge;
in dark or daylight he was ready to grapple with him and fight it out;
nevertheless he feared. That he could not say what he feared only
increased his fear.
Children say they are "afraid of the dark." It is not the dark which
they are afraid of. It is the bodiless presences which they imagine in
the dark. It was so with Cleggett now. He was not daunted by anything
that could strike a blow. But the sense of a personality began to
encompass him. It pressed in upon him, played upon him, embraced him;
his flesh tingled as if he were being brushed; he felt his hair stir.
One recognizes a flower by its odor. So a soul flings off, in some
inexplicable way, the sense of itself. This force that laid itself
upon Cleggett and flowed around him had an individuality without a
body. Not through his senses, but psychically, he recognized it; it
was the hateful and sinister individuality of Loge.
With choking throat and dry lips Cleggett stood and suffered beneath
the smothering presence of this terror while the slow seconds mounted
to an intolerable minute; then there burst from him an uncontrollable
shout.
"Loge!" he roared, and the cavern rang.
And with the word he pressed the button of his electric pocket lamp and
shot a beam of light straight in front of him. It fell upon the
yellowish brow and the wide, unwinking eyes of Loge. The eyes stared
straight at Cleggett's own from across the cave, thirty feet away.
Loge's teeth were bared in his malevolent grimace; his head was bent
forward; he sat upon a rock. Cleggett, unable to withdraw his eyes,
waited for Loge's first movement. The man made no sign. Cleggett
slowly raised his pistol....
But he did not fire. The open, staring eyes, unchanging at the menace
of the lifted pistol, told the story. Loge was dead. Cleggett crossed
over and examined him. Clutched on his knees was a bomb. He had been
wounded by Barnstable's last shot, but he had crawled through the
tunnel with a bomb for a final attempt on the Jasper B. His strength
had failed; he had rested upon the rock and bled to death.
As for his last thought, Cleggett had felt it. Loge had died hating and
lusting for his blood.