LENOIR'S FLIGHT--MURRAY THE TRAITOR--HIS PUNISHMENT AND FLIGHT--A LONG
RUN--THE AUBERGE--A STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE.
There was a pause.
Pierre Lenoir looked like mischief.
His position was desperate, and they judged, and rightly judged, that
he was a man not likely to stick at a trifle.
The men looked at their officer, and the latter, a man of intelligence
and prudence, albeit no coward, reflected seriously.
Several terrible calamities, accidental and intentional, had of late
opened the eyes of the public to the destructive properties of
dynamite, and to that his thoughts flew.
He wavered.
The coiner saw his chance, and quick to act as to think, he made for
the exit.
"Stand back!" he cried, fiercely, to the men who made a faint show of
barring his passage. "I'll finish you all off at a stroke if you
attempt to oppose me?"
They fell back alarmed.
Lenoir darted on through the inner vault, and so on until he gained the
flight of steps.
Reaching the top, he darted through the cottage, and reaching the open,
suddenly found himself in the midst of about a dozen men.
The first person upon whom his glance rested, was the doubly-dyed
traitor who had betrayed him solely to serve his own ends, by
entrapping Jack Harkaway--the Englishman, who must have been recognized
by the reader, in spite of his assumed name, as Herbert Murray.
Instinctively Lenoir divined that his betrayer was the young
Englishman.
No sooner did this conclusion force itself upon him than all thought of
personal danger vanished from his mind, and he was possessed by one
sole idea, one single desire. Revenge!
He lost sight of the peril in which he ran, but with a cry like the
roar of a wounded lion he sprang upon the traitor.
A brawny, powerful fellow was Pierre Lenoir, and Herbert Murray was but
a puny thing in his grasp.
"Hands off!" exclaimed Murray, in desperation.
Lenoir growled, but said nothing, as he shook him much as a terrier
does a rat.
Before the police could interfere in the spy's behalf, Lenoir held him
with one hand at arm's length, while with the other he prepared to
deliver a fearful blow.
The energy of despair seized on the hapless traitor, and wrenching
himself free from the coiner's grasp, he fled.
Pierre Lenoir stood staring about him a second.
Then he made after him.
Away went pursuer and pursued.
The terror-stricken Murray got over the ground like a hare, and
although the coiner was fleet of foot, he was at first distanced in the
race.
It became a desperate race between them.
Lenoir tore on.
He would have his betrayer now or perish.
But before he had got more than two hundred yards the pace began to
tell upon him.
He felt that he would have to give in.
"I must go easier, or I shall fail altogether."
So reasoning, he slackened his pace, and dropped into that slinging
trot that runners in France know as the _pas gymnastique_.
If your strength and wind are of average quality, you can keep up for a
prodigious time at that.
Murray flew on, anxious to get away from his furious pursuer.
He increased his lead.
But presently the pace told upon him likewise.
He collected his thoughts and his prudence as he went, and rested.
Glancing over his shoulder, he saw Lenoir come bounding along, a
considerable distance in the rear.
"Savage beast!" thought Murray. "He means mischief."
Murray meant tiring him out.
This, however, was not so easily done.
The Englishman was a capital runner, and had been one of the crack men
of his school-club.
But his _forte_ was pace.
The Frenchman, on the contrary, was a stayer.
It looked bad for Murray.
On they went, and when a good mile had been covered, Murray, on
glancing back, felt convinced that it was only a question of time.
He must tire out the Frenchman in the end, he thought.
He believed that an Englishman must always be more than a match for a
Frenchman at any kind of athletics.
He reckoned without his host, for while he (Murray) was getting blown,
Lenoir swung on at _pas gymnastique_, having got his second wind, and
being, to all appearance, capable of keeping on for any length of time.
"I shall have to give it up," gasped Murray, when, at the end of the
second mile, he looked over his shoulder again.
An unpleasant fact revealed itself.
While he was faltering, the Frenchman was rather improving his pace.
Yes.
The distance between them was lessening.
And now he could hear Lenoir's menaces quite plainly as the coiner
gained upon him.
"I shall have you directly, and I shall beat your skull in!" the
Frenchman said.
Murray's craven heart leapt to his mouth.
Already he felt as if his cranium was cracked by the brutal fist of the
savage coiner.
Fear lent him wings.
He put on a spurt.
"Oh, if I had but a pistol," thought Murray; "what a fool I was to come
unarmed on such a job as this."
He partially flagged again.
The distance between them was still decreasing.
This he felt was the beginning of the end, but just as he was thinking
that there was nothing for it but to turn and make the best fight for
it he could, he sighted a roadside inn--a rural auberge.
And for this he flew with renewed energy.
Dashing into the house, he pushed to the door and startled the
aubergiste by gasping out in the best French he could command--
"_Un assassin me poursuit. Cachez-moi, ou donnez-moi de quoi me
défendre!_"[3]
[3] "I am pursued by an assassin. Hide me, or give me something
to defend myself with."
The landlord took Murray--and not unnaturally--for a madman.
He did not like the society of madmen.
To give a weapon to a furious maniac was out of all question.
And the landlord had nothing handy of a more deadly nature than a knife
and fork.
Moreover, he would not have cared to place a dangerous weapon in a
madman's hands.
So he met the case by humouring the fugitive with a proposal to go up
stairs.
Murray wanted no second invitation.
Up he flew, and locked himself in one of the upper rooms just as Lenoir
hammered at the door below.
"_Où est-il?_"[4] demanded the coiner, fiercely.
[4] "Where is he?"
"_Qui?_"[5]
[5] "Who?"
"_Ne cherchez pas à me tricher_," thundered Lenoir. "_Il m'appartient.
Où est-il, je vous le demande?_"[6]
[6] "Seek not to deceive me," thundered Lenoir. "He belongs to
me. Where is he, I ask you again?"
The coiner's manner made the aubergiste uneasy, and thoughtful for his
own safety.
So he pointed up stairs.
Up went Lenoir, and finding a room door locked, he flung his whole
weight against the door and sent it in.
This was the room which the fugitive had entered.
But where was Murray?
Gone!
Vanished!
But where?