A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH
When the chief engineer of the _Olive Branch_ at last put off from the
ship for the shore in response to Captain Dove's second and still more
peremptory message, he took the tiller of the boat himself, and steered
straight for the water-gate of the castle. In one of his pockets he had
a rusty key which presently served to turn its creaking lock.
He had left his coat in the boat and ordered the boat's crew to await
his return. And he made his way with accustomed steps, almost
noiselessly in his rubber-soled shoes, up the sloping underground
passage which leads from the long-disused water-gate toward the gun-room
which long ago was the armoury of the castle.
Once he halted to strike a match. Its feeble light showed him the rough
rock walls and roof of the tunnel, the uneven slope underfoot worn
almost smooth by nefarious traffic long since at an end.
He advanced again, cautiously, till he came to the brink of a broad,
gaping chasm, which, but for a couple of carelessly carpentered
fir-trunks stretching across it, would have closed that pathway
effectually against him or anyone attempting to enter the castle by
stealth, as he was doing.
He tested that makeshift bridge as well as he might before crossing it.
Half-way over, a cold, damp breath from the depths beneath blew out
another match he had struck as he started. A muted gurgle and squatter
that came uncannily to his ears told of the subterranean tide crawling
in to cleanse again the far floor of the pit below which had so often in
the past served for a charnel-house. Creeping over the tree-trunks, he
shrugged his shoulders as that thought passed through his mind, and drew
a breath of relief as he stepped on to the solid rock on the other side.
From there, the way to the steps at the gun-room entrance was clear and
the old iron gates above and below were both wide, as he discovered by
sense of touch. He set an ear to the panel beyond, to find out whether
the gun-room was occupied, and heard only a long-drawn groan. That
seemed to come from somewhere behind him. He descended the steps again,
listening intently.
Another safety-match sputtered and broke into a blue light in his
tremulous fingers. He saw that the bolt on the outside of the cell door
at the foot of the steps was shot and judged that there must be some one
within. For a moment, he hesitated; and then he pulled the bolt free.
"Who's there?" he asked of the darkness that gave him back only another
low groan for answer.
The heavy hinges of the door creaked as he thrust it open and entered.
His last match showed him a huddled white heap in one corner, two hands
tied behind it, a grey-haired and bleeding head. He turned back and
pushed up into the gun-room without more ado. It was empty.
He looked dazedly about him in the bright lamplight, and his eyes fell
on a couple of candlesticks. He picked one up and found a full box of
matches beside it. From the decanter on the table before the fire he
partly filled a glass, and disappeared down the steps again with his
candle to show him the way, drawing the panel back into place behind
him.
Within the cell door he set down the glass he was carrying and, pulling
out a pocket-knife, cut through the cord which secured the wrists of the
prone figure in the corner. Its hands fell limply apart and lay palms
upward. He did not at once release its ankles, but, stooping over it,
pulled it round on to its back--and sprang away from it in such frantic
haste that the candle jumped from its holder and left him in darkness
again.
He all but brained himself as he rushed for the door, but he got outside
and, stunned as he was, set his shoulder to it. It closed with a clang
and, as he shot the bolt home, he sank to his knees, breathing brokenly,
his forehead on its rusty iron. He righted himself with an effort, but
stayed where he was, sitting huddled together against the rock wall, his
face damp with cold perspiration. He was blind in the blackness about
him and could hear nothing but the trip-hammer beat of his own strained
heart.
Its turbulence began to die down by degrees and in time he regained some
command of his stupefied faculties.
"It couldn't possibly be," he kept on assuring himself. "I must have
been mistaken. It couldn't possibly--"
He pulled his slack limbs up under him, and rose, slowly, forcing them
to obey him.
"But I must make sure," he muttered, and still let himself linger
outside the cell door, to listen for any sound from within.
A groan, fainter than the first he had heard, encouraged him.
"Pretty far through, whoever he is," said he to himself, and with
another effort of will-power once more pulled back the bolt.
The fresh match he struck, before going further, showed him that the man
inside had not moved, and he found his candle where it had fallen, in
time to light it before his match burned out. With it in one hand he
went forward on tiptoe, to study the other's features intently, his own
expressing fear, absolute disbelief, doubt, a growing conviction in
turn.
"It is M'Kissock!" he cried finally, and at the words unconsciously
uttered, the other's eyelids began to flicker in the candle-light until
at length they opened and remained open at their widest. And for a long
time they two stayed thus, regarding each other as if bereft of power of
movement or speech.
Then Farish M'Kissock's slack jaws took to twitching convulsively. A low
moaning broke from his mouth. A film came over his dreadfully staring
eyes. He would have fallen unconscious again had not the engineer
snatched up the glass at one side and poured down his throat a few drops
of the spirit it held. His teeth closed with a snap and he groaned
again, heartrendingly; but, in a little, he had so far benefited by that
hurtful remedy as to recover the use of his voice. His lips moved and
his rescuer leaned forward to catch the hoarse, agonised whisper that
came from them.
"You were always--a cruel devil, Lord St. Just," gasped Farish
M'Kissock, "even when you were alive. It should be my right--to torment
_you_ now, and not--you me!"
The engineer drew back a little. He knew then that he had not been
mistaken.
"You're not dead yet, M'Kissock," said he soothingly, in his voice of a
gentleman, "although--I'll be damned if I can understand how that is!"
And then, suddenly realising a little of all it must mean to him that
his old enemy was still living, "If I had only known--" he murmured with
exceeding bitterness. "Oh, my God! Think of all those awful years!"
Farish M'Kissock attempted to laugh, with a very horrid effect. He
raised a trembling hand to his head, and looked at its fingers, all
smeared with red. His rolling eyes tried to pierce the obscurity of the
vault in which he was lying. Remembrance of the more immediate past
began to stir in his mind. He drew a long, deep, painful breath.
"I thought--I thought--" he mumbled brokenly, and his eyes closed. He
was once more insensible.
The engineer of the _Olive Branch_ looked round for the candlestick he
had dropped, and, finding that, made his light safe. Then he kneeled
down beside the other and raised his head and lifted him so that his
shoulders should rest on the rock behind. Another teaspoonful of the
stimulant in the glass flogged his patient's flagging heart into further
effort, and Farish M'Kissock opened his eyes again.
"Loose my feet," he begged brokenly, and the engineer did so: but he lay
still where he was, too weak to move. For a time, the only sound to be
heard was his hurtful, irregular breathing. Then he glanced curiously,
for the first time, at his rescuer's threadbare blue uniform.
"You're just in time, Lord St. Just," said he, his voice clearer and his
ideas beginning to gain some coherent shape. "Though that's not the name
I should be calling you now, since you're still living in spite of me,
and Earl of Jura by all the laws of the land.
"But--where have you come from so late-along? Where have you been
since--They hold it against me here to this day that I murdered your
lordship; and--there was your body found later on at the foot of the
cliffs in front of your hut."
The other sat down by the doorway, with a limp shrug of the shoulders
that spoke a weariness beyond words.
"I didn't fall very far, M'Kissock," he answered presently. "And--I
thought you must have slipped over too as we fought there--for I saw a
body sunk among the rocks in the water below; it was a still day, you
remember. But--where were you?"
"I took to my heels through the woods, thinking it would go ill with me
when what I believed had happened to you came out; for it was known that
I had gone to your hut to seek you, and why." His voice grew very hard,
and he shot a glance of unquenchable hatred at his companion. "So I lay
hid in the hills till nightfall, and then fled the countryside. I heard
afterwards that they had found your body, although it was scarcely more
than a rickle of bare bones by then, and of course they put the blame of
it all on me without more ado."
The engineer of the _Olive Branch_ who was also the Earl of Jura sighed
drearily. The best years of his life had gone to pay the penalty fate
had exacted, through that mistake, for a fault he had almost forgotten.
And now, desire had failed him; his spirit was utterly broken.
"I was just such another fool as yourself, M'Kissock!" said he in a
hopeless tone. "I was afraid they would lay your death at my door,
and--I bolted too; without a word to a living soul. I've been afraid
ever since, because--I've been told that the police were always looking
for me."
M'Kissock's jaw dropped. He looked again at the other's torn uniform.
"Who was it told you that?" he asked, almost in a whisper.
"The Old Man on the _Olive Branch_. I've been chief engineer on his ship
for five or six years, and before that--I shipped as a stoker at first,
M'Kissock, at Yedo, in Japan. I was starving there. And I've worked for
him all that time like a slave--on the strength of a groundless lie!"
"Had he any idea who you were?" the other demanded.
"I thought he must know; but I can see now that he was simply making a
fool of me for his own ends. If he had known, he surely wouldn't have
sent for me to come ashore here."
"He certainly would not," agreed his companion with grim assurance, and
they both fell silent again, each engrossed in his own overwhelming,
embittered reflections.
"Dove knows nothing at all about you," said Farish M'Kissock presently,
and Lord Jura looked up as if astonished at the sound of his voice.
"But--how do you know that, M'Kissock?" the latter inquired in a
querulous tone, pulling nervously at his under-lip. "What are you doing
here, in that queer rig-out? I don't understand. Where have you--"
"I've been just such another fool as yourself, my lord," said Farish
M'Kissock, his voice vibrant with impotent, irrepressible anger. "It's
worse than damnable to think--You'll scarcely believe that I've served
under Dove in my time, but it's true enough. I was second mate on the
_Fer de Lance_, long ago, when he called himself Captain Brown. And--I
owe him a score as heavy as yours, ay, and heavier; a score I came here
to pay. But I was too hasty, and--he got the better of me at the start;
I was no match for the two of them--he had the man Slyne on his side."
His breath almost failed him and he fell to coughing convulsively.
"And--what has brought them to Loquhariot?" the other asked in utter
amazement as soon as he could make himself heard. But Farish M'Kissock
sat wheezing and gasping for some little time before answering that.
"They have come with one whom they call the Lady Josceline Justice,"
said he at length, glancing askance at his companion. "Slyne's minded to
marry her now--and so lay hands on all that is yours."
The Earl of Jura gazed blankly at his burst boots. His mind was all in a
muddle. The stokehold of the _Olive Branch_, and then its engine-room,
seemed to have sapped whatever intelligence he might once have
possessed. His belated release from slavery had left him with his wits
benumbed and torpid.
"But, of course, they don't know that I--" he began, his face
brightening, and then broke off. "Where did they get hold of her,
M'Kissock?"
"Dove's had her on board his ship for years," said Farish M'Kissock
brusquely.
"Is it Sallie you're talking about!" he exclaimed. "Good God! Can it be
possible that--But never mind now. I must--" He made as if to rise.
"Wait a minute, my lord," requested Farish M'Kissock in a tone which
compelled his attention. "You've got two desperate men to deal with
above-stairs. You've seen how they've handled me, and they would think
nothing of throwing the two of us, neck and crop, into the drowning-hole
in the tunnel behind you. You will be very ill-advised to beard them
alone. I can help you--"
"How?"
"You'll see when the time comes."
"But I can't stay squatting here like a rat in a drain while they--I'm a
free man--now that I know you're alive after all," declared the ragged
scarecrow with the eye-glass, as if to encourage himself. "And I'm Earl
of Jura; there's no getting out of that. I must put a stop to Slyne's
villainous scheme at once, M'Kissock. He's a rotten bad egg; _I_ know
him. It would never do to let him get--her into his infernal clutches."
Farish M'Kissock eyed him with no good will.
"Ay," he agreed reluctantly. "Your lordship's a belted earl now, by all
the laws of the land. And Farish M'Kissock that was a king is fated to
die a beggar.
"But, first,--and it's hard, dooms hard!--I must help you--so far at
least. It's the two of us against those other two, for the moment.
Afterwards, we will talk of--yon old matter between us; for, mind you!
Lord Jura, I neither forget nor forgive."
The Earl of Jura shrugged his shoulders again. He had almost forgotten
the cause of his old quarrel on the cliffs with the gamekeeper's son. He
had more than enough to think about in its seemingly endless outcome.
And his apparent indifference seemed to inflame the hatred the other
still bore him.
"I will help you--but only because I _must_," said Farish M'Kissock
harshly. "And you must help me to help you--to your own hurt."
He leaned forward, panting, as if enraged over his own weakness of body.
The engineer rose, regarding him as if not very sure of his sanity,
and, having picked up the candle, assisted him to his feet. He stood for
a moment supporting himself by the wall, his knees giving and recovering
under him, and then the giddiness passed. He took a tentative step or
two and presently was able to follow his rescuer from the cell.
"Is there anyone in the gun-room?" he asked in an anxious whisper at the
foot of the steps. Lord Jura listened closely for a moment or two at the
panel above, drew it open a little, and looking down again, shook his
head. He pulled the panel wide and then held out a hand to his follower;
who took it very reluctantly and, with its aid, reached the room above,
step by slow, uncertain step.
"Sit down and rest for a minute or two," suggested the engineer.
"Not here," he demurred. "It wouldn't be safe--too near the tunnel. We
must have help at hand when we meet them. What time is it? They'll be at
dinner now. Take me along the servants' passage and by the terrace to
the Pipers' Port: we should meet no one that way."
But the other, a hand at his tremulous lips, was looking with mazed eyes
about the remembered room that he had so often seen in his dreams during
the age-long time of torment he had endured. His rods lay ready for use
in the long rack where he had left them. A pair of guns his father had
given him stood in their usual place at one end of the full stand
adorning one wall. The head of his first stag still hung above the
mantel, and the big wild-cat he had killed in the wood behind his hut on
the cliffs glared at him out of its glass eyes from over the door
leading to the pantry. That corner at least of the castle was quite
unchanged.
He caught sight of his own reflection in the plate-glass casing which
covered another full stand of guns, and turned away from it with a
grimace of distaste. He had certainly changed, and very much for the
worse, himself, since he had last seen Loquhariot. He glanced at Farish
M'Kissock, the gamekeeper's son with whom he had fought, as he almost
blushed to remember, about a girl, and was still more shocked to see the
skeleton-like, decrepit-looking old man regarding him with hot, inimical
eyes from under shaggy down-drawn white eyebrows above which hung long
matted locks of grey hair darkly discoloured with drying blood; for they
two had been headstrong lads together, friends in some sort, companions
at least in many a scapegrace prank.
"Ay," said Farish M'Kissock unpleasantly, as though reading the thought
that ran through his mind. "I'm far worse-looking than you are, my lord.
And something of that I am owing your lordship. But never mind now; we
have other matters before us first, and it will be well to attend to
them before it may be too late."
The engineer started at that. His head was not very clear and he had for
the moment almost forgotten--
"Come on, then, M'Kissock," said he, and blew out the candle he was
still unconsciously carrying and led the way through the little pantry
behind.
The two of them emerged from that into a dimly lighted passage along
which they proceeded without a sound as far as another door which opened
outward on to the lower battlements at the seaward front of the castle.
"Let me through first," requested Farish M'Kissock, after his companion
had made sure that there was no one beyond it, "and mind that the wind
doesn't drive it shut with a clash." He was firmer upon his feet now and
seemed to have gained some measure of strength from the stimulus of his
stubborn purpose. Bare-foot as he was, he took no notice of the driving
snow on the terrace outside, although his companion shivered as they
turned along the wall in the teeth of the blast that was blowing.
"Get inside, for God's sake!" Lord Jura begged of the ghostly figure in
front of him as it stooped to set an ear to the keyhole in the portico
at the other end of the terrace, and his teeth were chattering when he
entered the dark, empty closet behind it.
He had to set his shoulder to it to shut it against the storm. As soon
as he had accomplished that, he shook the snow from his ragged coat and
struck a match and glanced stupidly about him.
"Put that out," ordered Farish M'Kissock in a suppressed, angry whisper.
"They'll maybe see some glimmer--they're all inside."
The other obeyed him meekly, and for a space the two of them stood there
in the darkness, on the alert, drawing quick, restricted breaths. They
could hear the echo of voices from the banquet-hall. These gradually
died away, all but one which seemed to be telling some story. A distant
crash, as of a dish dropped on the floor, alarmed the two listeners, but
after that the conversation and laughter within went on again. The
engineer crossed the closet noiselessly on his rubber soles, and, "What
next, M'Kissock?" he whispered, as if content to resign himself to the
guidance of the more masterful will.
"You will go in to them," the other instructed him. "Hear what you can
before you declare yourself, and--you must judge for yourself what to
say and do. I'll wait behind for a bit--Dove and Slyne believe that I'm
safely out of the way--but, as soon as it's needful, I'll face them
too. Till then, never mention my name nor any word of what I have told
you.
"Pluck up some heart!" he hissed savagely. "This is the Castle of
Loquhariot--and you're the Earl of Jura. But they'll out-match you yet
unless you stand your ground against them."
The engineer humbly attempted to square his shoulders, and, fumbling,
found the latch of the door. He opened it very quietly, enough and no
more to see through into the banquet-hall: and stood there for a time
studying the scene at the table. Farish M'Kissock, at his elbow, was
staring out at it too, with fierce, eager eyes. He pulled the door
slowly back, and Lord Jura passed through, unnoticed among the shadows
in that obscure corner.
A cork popped explosively, and the butler came forward from the buffet
with a big, golden-necked bottle. The engineer paused. He had recognised
Captain Dove in the distance and notwithstanding the old man's unusual
garb and black glasses.
He caught sight of Sallie, bewilderingly beautiful in a costume such as
he had not set eyes upon since--he had last dined there himself. He
squared his stooping shoulders again, and saw Slyne rise from his seat,
the wine-glass the butler had just filled for him in one hand.
The talk and laughter gradually subsided and silence ensued. Lord Jura
took a tentative step toward the table, and stopped again as Slyne's
careless, smiling glance suddenly met his and changed to a rigid scowl.
Then Captain Dove looked round, and, after a breathless interval, "What
the devil do _you_ want here, Brasse!" he cried explosively.
At the sound of that harsh, hated voice, all the uncertain presence of
mind the intruder could boast deserted him. He stood as if rooted
there, a shrinking, irresolute figure, until the old factor came
shuffling across the floor toward him and some one else lifted the shade
off one of the lights on the candelabra so that it shone full on his
drawn, haggard face.