IN the darkness of the hour preceding dawn John Corrie, fully dressed,
lay on his bed listening. The sound he had been dreading yet yearning
for had come at last. His sister was moving in the room above. The
atmosphere was sultry, yet the man shivered. Was Rachel about to attempt
the deed that might save him, or was she only restlessly repenting of her
wild promise? If the former, should he stop her, or let her take her
self-appointed course? One question led to another, but none got an
answer.
At last he was aware that she was cautiously opening her door. He did
not move. He heard her come stealthily down the stair, pausing after
every creak. Presently he caught a glimpse of light under his door. It
vanished, yet not so suddenly as though a candle had been blown out. She
must have turned into the passage leading to the shop. What could she be
wanting there at such an hour? He pretended to himself that he could not
guess.
After a little while the light returned with her footsteps. It remained
in his vision during the short silence that ensued. The silence ended in
a heavy sigh. John Corrie lay very still.
The light went out. He heard her groping her way to the front door. He
heard it open—close—softly. She was gone on her dark errand, and he had
deliberately let her go. Nothing he could ever do or suffer in this
world would redeem his soul from that loathsome disgrace. But John
Corrie was not thinking of his soul then.
He sprang up, lit a candle and ran upstairs; thence he peeped from a
window. He was in time to see a cloaked figure fade into the misty murk.
The cloak bulged at one side. What was she carrying in it concealed?
Again he pretended he could not guess. Returning downstairs he pretended
also not to feel the strong, rank odour of paraffin, nor to notice the
drips on the passage from the shop.
He returned to his bed, but now he kept the candle burning, for he was
afraid of the darkness. And ere three minutes had passed, he rose,
shaken with a new terror. What if the holder of the letter should, in
spite of all, escape with it? . . . For a moment he wavered on the verge
of collapse, then the very terror itself stiffened his nerves, cleared
his mind, and drove him to action.
In an amazingly short time he was following the path taken by his sister.
He wore no cloak, but both his side pockets bulged, and he carried a
club-like staff. He sped swiftly through the slumbering village. He was
sweating and shivering, and once his whole being leapt as if jerked at
the whistle of a distant train. He did not intend to overtake Rachel;
she must do her work deeming herself unobserved; yet he did not wish to
be far behind her. Clear of the village, he began to trot on the grass
at the side of the road.
Years ago a sanguine and enterprising individual had caused to be erected
by the roadside, midway between station and village, a superior sort of
timber shanty, and had labelled it “Cyclists’ Rest—Temperance
Refreshments.” There were plenty of cyclists in the summer, and numerous
pedestrians also, but somehow few of them seemed to be tired or thirsty;
and at the end of the second season the sanguine and enterprising
individual departed, unseen by human eye, leaving a small selection of
aerated waters in the refreshment-room and sundry little debts for
lodging and so forth in the village. Eventually the building fell to the
only bidder, Sam, the postman, who converted it into two apartments, and
a fairly snug home of which he was inclined to be proud.
A mere strip of garden separated the house from the road, but Sam kept it
bright with flowers for eight months of the year. The front of the house
was painted a pale stone-colour; the porch, the door, and the two
quartets of tall, extremely narrow windows were coloured white.
Altogether it provided a gay relief from the sober moorland behind it.
Across the road, and separated from it by a deep ditch usually dry in
summer, lay a strip of moor gently sloping upwards to the wood, through
which a path supplied a short cut from the station to the village. There
was no other dwelling within five minutes’ walk.
When John Corrie’s eyes began dimly to discern the house he slowed his
pace till he was stealing forward with every appearance of caution and
alertness. Suddenly he stopped short, dropped on hands and knees, and
let himself down into the ditch where he crouched, holding his breath.
A vague figure was coming hurriedly from behind the house. On reaching
the road it broke into a shambling run, its dark garment flapping like
the wings of some huge night bird. As it passed the lurking watcher it
panted and sobbed. Presently it disappeared round a bend, and the
watcher heaved a sigh of angry relief. That was the worst of women: they
could do nothing without making a fuss!
He drew himself from the ditch, and now his head and most of his face
were covered with a heavy black muffler. Keeping to the grass, he darted
towards the house. Opposite it, he halted for a moment, almost overcome
by the thudding of his heart. Just then he perceived a thin smoke rising
from the rear of the house—from the attached shed; he guessed that
contained the postman’s store of coal and wood. That nerved him again.
It was now or never.
Dropping his bludgeon, he brought from his pocket a hank of thin, strong
rope, shook it out and tip-toed across the road. He was about to fasten
one end to the door handle with the view to securing it to a pillar of
the porch, when he bethought himself of another, though barely possible
way. With fearful care he turned the handle—and lo, the door gave!
Chance had favoured him! Sam had forgotten to lock it—not for the first
time.
Sweating, John Corrie opened the door about a foot, put round his hand
and removed the key from the lock. Then with infinite gentleness he drew
the door shut, inserted the key, turned it and withdrew it. Almost
fainting he recrossed the road, took up his staff, and fell rather than
descended into the ditch.
A faint breeze was stirring at last. Smoke blown over the tarred roof of
the shanty drifted to his nostrils. For a while, fingering the key, he
seemed to hesitate; then, turning, he tossed it from him among the
heather. The rope he coiled up and let fall at his feet. He crouched,
staring at the house.
And presently a spark floated up, hovered and died. But others followed,
thicker and thicker, and a glow appeared under them. Crackling sounds
broke the silence, softly, timidly at first, but soon with noisy
boldness. The breeze gained in strength. A fiery tongue waved above the
roof, subsided, rose again and licked the tarry surface; ere long it was
joined by others. A low roaring mingled with the crackling. The narrow
windows were still dark, but smoke began to stream from the ventilator
over the door. Woe to the sleeper if he did not waken now!
Cold with terror, fascinated by horror, Corrie knelt in his lair and
gazed and gazed. Suddenly a light sprang into being in the room on the
left—a small light that lasted but a moment. The sleeper had wakened and
struck a match. Corrie wondered if he would wait to light a candle, but
in the next moment the windows went dark. Sounds followed: a cry, the
noise of a chair overturned, hurried footfalls on a bare plank floor.
Then Corrie put his hands under the muffler and thrust his fingers in his
ears. For the inmate was trying to open the door.
The flames were now rising high above the roof; smoke was pouring from
the ventilator, trickling from under the door and through crevices about
the windows and walls. A reddish glow behind the windows on the left
caused the watcher to shut his eyes. But he could no longer close his
ears to agony, for the prisoner was raining blows with some heavy
implement on the door and lock. Once more Corrie was roused to action.
What if the holder of the letter should escape with it after all? He
readjusted the black muffler about his head till little more than his
eyes remained uncovered, took a fresh grip on his staff, and held himself
in readiness. The blows became frantic.
* * * * *
Up yonder in the wood, Colin Hayward, fagged with the long railway
journey and much thinking, had thrown himself down to await the morning.
He was almost asleep when the sound of knocking made him raise his head
from his arms. As he did so he became conscious of a strong smell of
burning timber. The sound, coupled with the odour, struck him as odd at
that hour. He got up and crossed the few yards which lay between him and
the verge of the wood. From there he looked down on fire and smoke, and
quickly realized that the burning thing was the abode of his old friend
Sam, the postman. He descended the slope as swiftly as the darkness, the
treacherous ground, and the slippery heather permitted.
At last the lock was shattered, the door torn inwards. The hatchet fell
from Sam’s hand as, spent and coughing most grievously, he staggered
forth to reel across the road, bare-footed, in a long grey night-shirt.
At the grass he stumbled and fell helplessly, in the heaving torment of
smoke-charged lungs.
He was beginning to revive, when behind him, rising from hands and knees,
John Corrie clubbed him over the head—once—twice—and would have struck
again but that there was no need. Sam lay on his face, one hand
clutching grass, the other under him, clenched against his breast. With
a sob of terror, Corrie threw his cudgel into the ditch and turned his
victim over. And now the back of the house was well ablaze, and in the
yellow light even small things became plain. The clenched hand, for
instance, held a crushed piece of paper—the little, terrible thing, the
recovery of which meant salvation to Corrie. He went down on his knees
to prise open the grasping fingers, but they fell apart of their own
accord. He took the letter. He gloated over it. The latter proceeding
was folly; his moment of exultation was to cost him dear. Hearing dulled
by excitement and the thick muffler did not warn him until too late. He
scrambled to his feet only to be seized viciously from behind by the
collar and shaken like a rat. Then a cruel grip on his wrist caused him
to drop the precious letter, and a savage kick sent him five yards beyond
it on his face.
“You beastly coward!” cried a voice he knew, and all panic-stricken he
picked himself up and fled.
Colin had started to pursue, when a groan from the stricken one recalled
him. He picked up the letter, deeming that it must be of importance,
stuffed it into his pocket, and proceeded to do what he could for Sam.
Perhaps, after all, his student days had not been wholly wasted. But Sam
was sore hurt. His home was a fiery furnace, and he neither knew nor
cared.