THE HAG TO THE RESCUE
I knew enough of the methods of the police not to lay too much emphasis
at the outset upon the fact that they had blundered. The police are
pretty much the same all the world over. Charge them with blundering,
and they will exhaust every resource to disprove the charge; and in the
meantime, you who have made it are getting badly squeezed.
Moreover, I was not certain that it was a blunder. I hoped they were
after the villainous couple who lived in the house, and that in the
haste and confusion of the moment we had been mistaken for them. But it
was quite possible Volna and I had been tracked, and were really the
prisoners they sought.
In any case it was highly dangerous for us to be in their hands, and
we should need to keep cool heads to get out again, without the fact
becoming known that we were fugitives.
As it was, only an accident prevented the incriminating papers from
being immediately found. Just the luck that I had told Volna to try and
burn them and had not taken them back from her. The search to which she
was subjected was little more than formal; but my pockets were all
overhauled, and my papers taken out and examined.
I was not so foolish as to resist; but I began to feel pretty indignant
when papers, money, and all, were retained by the leader.
“How did you get this?” he asked, holding up the police revolver.
He appeared to attach great importance to my possession of it. This
interested me greatly. That I had taken it from the police agent on the
Devil’s Staircase would certainly be known; and if he was in search of
us, it was a sufficient proof that we were the persons wanted. I had to
get at that indirectly.
“If you will permit me I will give you an exact report of what has
happened here, and that will account for everything.”
“All I want is a plain answer to my question. No long round-about,
lying story.”
There was no help for it. I must lie. So I did it boldly. “Most
fortunately I got the revolver here,” I said.
“You’re a cool hand,” was the sneering reply. “But it won’t do you any
good to lie to me.”
“Fortunately, I mean, because it saved my life and that of my sister
here. We were attacked----”
“Do you mean there are any others in the house?” he broke in.
“Certainly I do. The two wretches who appear to have been living here
are in a room above.”
Both the man and his wife had kept as quiet as mutes all this time.
But they had evidently been listening, for at that moment the door
above was opened, and the two came out.
“Is that the police? Is that the police?” cried the woman. “Heaven, and
the blessed Virgin above be praised. We’ve been nearly murdered by the
two villains there. You’ll protect us now, won’t you? Praise to the
Holy Saints for having sent you to our assistance.”
“What’s all this?”
The couple came running down the stairs and threw themselves on their
knees; the woman pouring out a voluble account of how they had been
attacked by us and their lives threatened, mingled with thanks for
their deliverance, entreaties to protect them, and an urgent warning to
pay special attention to me as a dangerous and murderous villain.
I foresaw a very awkward complication. When two parties accuse each
other, the police rule is to arrest both.
The leader was obviously perplexed. “What is your name?” he said to me;
and before I could reply the woman burst in.
“Ivan Krempel, and that’s Nita, his wife,” she cried. “They’ve been
using the house for days and days past.”
I attempted to deny this; but he silenced me. “And your names,” he
asked the woman.
“This is my husband, Peter Vranowski, the woodcutter; I am Anna his
wife. We came last week from Potzden in Silesia, and have been lodging
here with these Krempels. We thought they were honest folks like
ourselves.”
“You are the man I am searching for,” he said, turning to me. “Ivan
Krempel, and his wife, Nita.”
This was good news in a way. He was not after the Garretts, and I could
safely use that name.
“I can understand your perplexity,” I said calmly. “But this woman is
lying. We are English; Robert Garrett and Margaret Garrett, brother and
sister. Caught by the storm to-night, we came here for shelter, and
narrowly escaped death at the hands of these two.”
“But these people say you are the Krempels.”
“So they are. So they are. The holy Virgin knows I speak the truth,”
protested the old hag.
“The proof is in your hands. Our passports are among the papers which
you have taken from me.”
“Go into the room there, all of you,” he answered, after a pause. I led
the way with Volna and the rest followed. “Get a light,” he said to
Volna, the candle having been extinguished in the former scrimmage.
“I don’t know where to look for one. There was a lamp here, but the
woman took it away.”
“Listen to her. Listen to her. Oh, the liar, when she carried it
upstairs with her own hands,” cried the hag.
“Go upstairs and see if it’s there,” he told his man, who went and
returned carrying it.
“The woman was right in that,” said the officer significantly.
“She would very naturally know where she herself took it,” I exclaimed;
but he was as pig-headed as his class, and repeated his statements,
adding to my concern, “I don’t see how I can decide this. It’s beyond
me.”
“There are my papers,” I reminded him. “But surely you have only to
look at that man and his wife, and contrast them with my sister and
myself to see the difference. You must have some description of them.”
He mumbled to himself and began to finger my papers. “I don’t see
anything here to guide me.”
“Those are the passports;” and I pointed to them.
He unfolded them. “I don’t read English,” he said.
“You can read the names at any rate and, of course, as a responsible
official so near the frontier you know a passport by sight.”
“He stole that from an Englishman. He boasted of it to us,” interjected
the woman, who had been watching closely.
“How am I to know this is yours?” he asked immediately, taking the cue
suggested.
“There are twenty proofs in those papers, that I am an Englishman; as
well as on myself. See, the pocket book there has the address of a
London maker. Here, the tab on my coat has my tailor’s name in London.
Don’t you hear that I speak with a foreign accent?”
He examined the pocket book, and the tab on my coat; and appeared to
be impressed. “They seem right; but you may have stolen them,” he said
grudgingly.
I pressed the advantage. Picking out a couple of Sylvia’s letters I
shewed him they were in English, and addressed to me.
“That is not Robert--that is B-o-b,” he said suspiciously.
“Robert in England is shortened into Bob,” I explained; but he shook
his head.
“Here is one on the same paper, Wyrley Court, Great Malverton. It is
from my mother, ‘My dear son Robert.’ You can read that?” and I stuck
at him until I had deepened the impression. Then I told him briefly
what had happened in the cottage, pointed to the heap of soaked
shavings, the two ropes and a cask of petroleum.
This was not done without many interruptions from the woman, who
vociferously denied the whole story.
“You say you were to be drugged? How do you know?” I told him of the
attempt to make the man drink a cup of the coffee. This appealed to
him; and he smiled grimly.
“Have you still the cup you saved?”
Volna got it and handed it to him.
“The woman shall drink it now,” he declared. But the old hag swore that
it was we who had made the coffee, not she; and that we had tried to
rob her.
“Why should we wish to rob a woodcutter,” I asked. I had his ear now
and he began to have a glimmer of reason. “Besides, our horses are
outside in the shed.”
“They are our horses,” asserted the woman.
“Go and look at them. See if a woodcutter, just a week here from
Silesia, as she says, would possess two such animals and saddles. One
is a side saddle, too.”
He sent his man out; and sat silent. Matters were going better, so I
left him to absorb the points I had made.
“Will you drink that coffee?” he asked the woman suddenly, very sternly.
“Why should I drink the poison we refused before?” she cried, and
pointing her scraggy finger at Volna added: “She made it, let her drink
it.”
“You see,” I said; and he nodded in agreement.
Then his man came back and reported that the horses were two good ones
and that the saddles were soaked as if they had been exposed to the
fury of the storm; thus bearing out my story.
But at that point I made a serious blunder. As he turned to listen to
his man’s report I picked up the passports. He saw me, and snatched at
the rest of the papers.
“You mustn’t touch those,” he said angrily. “Return me those two you
have taken.”
Instead, I put them back in my pocket. “They are our passports,” I
answered; “I am an Englishman, and have a right to retain them.”
“Give them to me,” he repeated.
“They are necessary to me, and I must keep them. I am doing no more
than is my right.”
Just then his man bent, and whispered in his ear. “I had forgotten,” he
said. “My man here reads English well. Let him see them.”
“They have already been examined, and I must keep them.”
“We shall see,” he exclaimed very angrily. With that he gave the rest
of the papers to the man who went through them carefully.
“I am inclined to believe your story, but your conduct is in some ways
very suspicious. Will you return me those papers?”
“No. I have shown them. That is enough.”
Then the man drew his attention to a paper.
“Ah! What do you say your name is?”
“Robert Garrett, an Englishman.”
“Then who is Robert Anstruther?”
In a moment my heart fell. I knew what was coming.
“I don’t understand you.”
“Here is a letter of credit for a large sum of money, the name on it is
Robert Anstruther. Explain your possession of it.”
I tried to affect indifference. “Oh, that!” I exclaimed. “Robert
Anstruther is my cousin, and I am taking it to him to Cracow.”
But he didn’t believe me.
“You say you are English, and this lady your sister?”
“You have seen our passports proving that.”
“Now you can speak to her,” he said to his man. I saw the scheme of
course, instantly.
“You are Miss Garrett?” the man asked in excellent English.
Lies, like curses, have a nasty habit of coming home to roost; and for
the moment I was at the end of my wits. The game was nearly up.
“Yes,” said Volna, very nervously.
“My superior doubts that you are English; just tell me anything you
please that I may hear you speak English!”
“Don’t bother with him, Peggy,” I declared in English, putting up a
last bluff of indignation. “I’m not going to have my sister bullied.
Put your questions to me.”
“It is a very simple test.”
“Hang your simple tests. We’ve had more than enough of your tomfoolery.”
“You refuse to speak?” he asked her again.
“Yes. At all events I refuse to allow you or any one else to browbeat
her. We have nearly lost our lives here; and now, when she is all to
pieces, you not only take us for a couple of murderous ruffians and
want to arrest us, but you try this sort of infernal nonsense.”
I left him in no doubt that I was English, and voluble enough, too. He
shrugged his shoulders, and told his chief the result of the test; and
they whispered together.
“You are Robert Garrett of Wyrley Hall, Great Malverton?” he asked me
then in English.
“I’ve told you who I am.”
“Then how is it that Robert Anstruther in the letter of credit, is
described as of that address?”
“Can’t one relative live with another?” I laughed.
“Permit me to see the address on the passport.”
“There is none. You ought to know that;” and with a scoff I unfolded it
and shewed him.
“I don’t mean there. I mean on the outside, where the name and address
are both written.”
“I am going to be baited no longer,” I rattled back sharply, and was
putting the papers away again when he snatched them from me. A glance
was enough to prove the inconsistency of my statement; and he reported
this to his chief, who put my papers away and rose.
“We shall take you all four to the police office at Schirmskad,” he
decided.
I had not the least intention of letting him do anything of the kind;
but my unwillingness was as smoke to fire compared with that of the
woman and her husband. She broke out into a violent tirade swearing she
was innocent and would not go.
“Resist at your peril,” cried the chief in a loud ringing tone; and he
and his man drew their revolvers.
There was a moment of dead silence. My eyes were on the chief, and I
saw a shadow of perplexity cloud his face. I read it to mean that he
had his doubts how to get us all four away if we resisted.
It was a queer turn of the wheel that Volna and I should have to make
common cause with the wretches who had attempted our lives. I did not
wish them to escape; but our own escape was much more to us than their
capture at that moment; and like the chief I was thinking intently what
to do.
Glancing round the room his eye fell on the two ropes.
“Hand me those cords,” he said to me, curtly.
“I am no police agent,” I shot back.
“I call on you to help me.”
“You forget; you have arrested me. You must do your own work.”
The old hag’s eyes were on us as she drank in every word; and she
nudged her husband and whispered to him.
“Don’t you mean to charge them with attempting your lives?” asked the
chief.
“You have arrested me,” I returned, shortly.
“Tie those two together,” he said, turning to his assistant.
To get the cords the man had either to pass the woman or drive her
before him to the end of the room. He tried the latter course and
pushed her violently. She fell to the ground, and, letting out a yell
shrill enough to wake a cataleptic, clasped his legs, and pulled him
down; and in a moment, a noisy rough and tumble scuffle was set going
between the three.
The chief ran to help his man, and I took advantage of the moment to
open the door and put Volna outside.
“Stop there,” cried the chief, holding me up with his levelled revolver.
“I am merely putting my sister out of the way of trouble.”
“Move an inch and I shall fire,” he shouted.
But the words scarcely passed his lips before he came staggering wildly
toward me; his arms went up and his pistol was fired in the air. The
woman had in some way extricated herself from the struggle on the
floor, and his back being turned to her as she rose, she pushed him
violently toward me. I caught him and helped myself to his revolver.
We were struggling together when the woman, who had seized hold of the
lamp, passed us and dashed it violently into the heap of saturated hay
and shavings.
The effect was instantaneous. A blinding flare of flame burst out,
almost like an explosion, and a volume of pungent suffocating smoke
filled the place.
Volna, quick-witted as ever, wrenched the door open, and I staggered
out after her into the night, dragging the chief with me.