THE DEATH-TRAP.
In the wild panic that had overtaken her, Salome ran on and on,
crashing in bewilderment through the thick scrub without knowing or
caring where she was going. Fat as she was, she got over the ground
with marvelous speed, till she tripped on a tough vine and fell
sprawling.
The jar and shock brought back her senses. At first she shook where she
lay, lest the beast she had seen might leap on her and tear her life
out, not caring if she were black or white. But as the minutes passed
and nothing stirred anywhere, the stout colored woman scrambled up, and
stood quivering and panting.
She could hear nothing, though she listened with all her might; those
horrible, snarling cries no longer made the woods ring. Stupefied, she
felt her arms and legs, as if to make sure they were whole, and then
slowly and falteringly began to make her way back to the house with the
instinct of a lost dog.
“Dey got him dat time, sure!” she thought, stumbling through the hot,
dark undergrowth, a ludicrous fat figure in stained white clothes,
crowned with a frizzy mop of hair that would have humiliated her, could
she have seen it.
“I’ll go back to de big house; if dey ain’t gone I kin hide, and dey
can’t lock me in so I can’t get out again. And I ain’t got nowhar
else to go. Dese woods ain’t wholesome at night; black meat and white
looking mighty like in de dark!”
But as she came cautiously out on the hillside and could see the bay,
she flung herself down behind some bushes and crept on all fours into
thicker cover.
The yacht was going. She could see it rounding the point.
“Glory, glory!” said the woman soberly. “Dey’s gone. I kin go up to de
house and get rested, and to-morrow I’ll tramp through de woods to dat
place Mr. Heriot’s went to. I guess I kin take in washing wid de best
of ’em, and dey ain’t no one going to know me, neither. ’Cause a man
dat’s inside a jaguar ain’t goin’ to talk--and der ain’t no one else!”
She walked on wearily to the great hall door, and was just closing it
behind her when, from the hillside behind the house, the dreadful cry
of a hunting jaguar brought her heart to her mouth. With frenzied haste
she bolted the heavy door and the lower windows; but there came no
sound of padded feet in the garden, no soft, heavy tread against window
or door. Only that wailing cry rang out insistently, as if some beast
called to its mate in vain.
Salome, safe in her fortress, had time to listen; and knew in another
instant that it was no beast that called. The imitation was good enough
for Egerton, but not for Salome, who knew the real thing.
“’Pears like de end o’ de world!” she said to herself; but, with the
end of Egerton, her heart had an end of fear. “Dat crazy man’s on top
dis time, but de Lawd be praised, I ain’t out on no sea dis day! Oh, my
poor ladies, my poor ladies! But you’re free dis minute same as me. De
master’s dead!”
She said it with a shudder, for the beast that had passed her with
long, noiseless bounds had not gone so quickly that she had not had
time to see the dreadful teeth in its red, drooping jaw.
From very force of habit, she turned and went round the house,
inspecting each bolted door. She must sleep in here to-night, for she
was too shaken to cross the courtyard with that snarling whine ringing
in her ears.
She was dizzy, too, with her long run in the heat, and she climbed
up-stairs painfully. It would feel safer to sleep up there, but her
trembling legs would scarcely carry her.
The room at the head of the stairs had been the governess’, and the
exhausted Salome turned into it, only to sink on her knees with a groan
of superstitious terror.
The governess had gone. Then, who was this who lay like a log on the
floor, face down?
“Lawd, Lawd!” moaned Salome, her eyes all whites in her ashy face.
“Missus, missus!”
But the white thing on the floor never moved. Only the rising afternoon
breeze came through the open window and lifted the long locks of loose,
ruddy hair, and through the silence came that endless, blood-curdling
wail of the madman outside.
Inch by inch the black woman crawled nearer, her eyes standing out with
terror.
If this thing on the floor should leap up and spring at her, as ghosts
and haunts were well known to do!
But it never stirred.
With the last remnant of her waning courage, Salome stretched out a
shaking, black hand, and then recoiled with a yell of sheer horror. It
was no ghost, but the governess herself; but, whether dead or alive,
the servant could not tell. Her weariness all forgotten, she lifted the
quiet body in her arms, and saw why it had lain so motionless.
On one temple was a dark bruise, a deep, oozing cut, such as might
be made by the sharp edges of a man’s signet ring. And a man’s
handkerchief had bound the slack wrists together; a man’s clumsy,
hurried hand tied a thick, wet bath-towel over the unconscious face,
and knotted the cord from the curtain cruelly tight around the slim,
bare feet.
There were scissors on the toilet-table, and it took Salome no time to
cut the double-knotted towel from Andria’s head and face. But it took
minutes before the almost suffocated lungs did their work again. Salome
was frightened as she dashed water on the swollen, crimson face.
“Set up, my lamb!” she cried quickly, when the first struggle for
breath was over. “You ain’t hurt. Wait, ole Salome’ll cut your hands
an’ feet loose!”
To her unutterable joy, Andria began to move. Presently, she lifted her
hand to the cut on her head, but it fell again, limply.
“Dat’s right,” said Salome, fanning her, “dat’s just right. You’s
coming round, honey. Lean against Salome!” She looked down at the face
on her knee, and the torn, white dressing-gown, and poured eau de
cologne with a lavish hand on the bare, white throat.
At the pungent scent of it, Andria’s eyelids flickered.
“Beryl,” she said, “Beryl.”
Salome nearly dropped her.
“Ain’t she here?” she cried, and something in her voice roused Andria
more than all the restoratives in the world. “Oh, missus! Ain’t she in
her room?” for if they had not taken one, surely they had not taken the
other.
Dizzy and sick, Andria clutched at her.
“They took her,” she said thickly, as if her throat hurt her. “Salome,
where are they? Why do you look like that?” She raised herself till she
could see the dark face.
“Oh, missus, dey’s gone!” Salome cried wildly. “Dey’s gone in de
steamer, all but him; and he’s et. De jaguar done got him.”
She pointed out the window. “Hark at dat!” she whispered. “De ole man’s
singing ’cause master’s dead.”
“Gone!” Andria got somehow to her feet, and nearly fell with the pain
in her swimming head. “Quick, when--did they go?” It hurt intolerably
to speak, but the dizziness was passing.
Salome told her, but to the story of Egerton’s race with death Andria
hardly listened. Raimond had got Beryl, and would have killed her to do
it.
Mad with rage at seeing her, he had struck her down on the floor; and
then, for fear of what she might come to herself and do, had tied her,
hand and foot, and left her to the jaguars. She was a woman, and too
faithful. There is no sin on earth a man resents so much.
“Go look through the house!” she cried, holding her aching head and
feeling her hand, wet with her blood from the cut Raimond’s ring had
left. But she knew the search was useless. And Egerton’s death was
neither here nor there. He might have been murdered before his son’s
eyes, but Raimond would not let the girl go on account of it.
“I fought so badly,” she thought, in wild self-reproach. “I made him
furious. And I knew, if he were angry, he would stop at nothing. Oh,
Beryl, Beryl!”
Sick at heart, with the knowledge of what lay before the girl when
Raimond should tire of her--for a legitimate wife can be neglected as
well as another when her novelty palls--she leaned against Salome,
utterly motionless and despairing.
“If I’d a gun,” said the woman, suddenly and savagely, “I’d kill dat
ole man out dere! Standing yelling at de house like a meowing cat.”
“Which man?” but, as if new life had sprung in her, Andria sat erect
and listened. The cry that was enough like a jaguar’s to deceive most
people, rose across the stillness, and the sound of it made the slow
blood come into her pale cheeks.
Just so, Beryl had told her, would the old man make his cats cry when
Heriot and he came back. But for Beryl Corselas they had come too late.
“Salome!” Andria exclaimed, and for the first time there were tears in
her hopeless eyes. “It’s Mr. Heriot, he’s come back! Come, help me. We
must go out, or he won’t know we’re alone.”
“Go out--and it gettin’ on to sundown! Lie down, my lamb,” said Salome
coaxingly, “and rest your head.” For the poor soul could only think the
blow had taken her mistress’ wits.
“No, no!” said Andria. Between laughing and crying she poured out all
that Salome did not know, and saw, even then, that the woman did not
believe her. “You can stay here,” she ended. “I’ll go. You know the old
man won’t hurt us now.”
“Not wid little miss at our backs, p’r’aps,” said Salome grimly. “How
do you know he won’t say we’ve took and killed her? Where’d we be den?”
But she followed Andria down-stairs, helped her across the garden, too
stanch to leave her alone, though great beads of sweat rolled off her
forehead in her fright.
“Mr. Heriot!” Andria called, leaning against Salome’s terrified bulk.
“Mr. Heriot!”
But nothing answered, till, in the sudden silence that had fallen as
those beastly cries ceased, her own voice echoed back to her from the
wooded hillside.
“Heriot, Heriot--Heriot!” it mocked, thin and clear; and died away.
With a sob that choked her, Andria remembered that to call the old man
she must croon like Beryl had done, and she could not remember the
weird tune, or sing it if she could.
“Stay here,” she said. “I must go to them.”
But Salome’s heart was white.
“Might as well die as be scared to death,” she answered, with
chattering teeth, and, with her arms round the swaying figure of her
mistress, she walked on--to death, for all she knew.
“Mr. Heriot!” Andria called again, as they reached the outlying fringes
of the impenetrable scrub. The old man’s name--if he had one--she did
not know. But as she thought it, he stood before her, come out of the
bushes as if by magic.
Salome groaned as only a black person can. But Andria saw the man’s
face, and, for the first time, there was no fleering mockery in it. In
the low sunlight he looked not the madman she had fought with in the
night, but an old, miserable creature, wizened and bowed, and clothed
in rags that were strangely clean. And yet she recoiled involuntarily
against Salome as he ran to her, bent forward in the old way, so that
his lean, knotted hands almost touched the ground.
To her utter amazement, he fell at her feet and kissed the hem of her
gown. The next minute he stood up and began to talk very slowly in
Spanish. What he said she could not tell, but she knew it was a string
of questions. She touched her own breast with a quivering finger, then
Salome pointed, as his wild eyes met hers, with utter despair, to the
sea.
He understood her, for his face grew fierce, and his cry of mad rage
turned her cold. To her ears, he seemed once more to be jabbering
at her, but, to her wild surprise, Salome answered him. Salome, an
ignorant black woman, a minute ago palsied with fright, had gone boldly
to his side, and was talking swiftly enough in a strange bastard
Spanish.
The old creature hid his face in his hands with a pitiful, smothered
cry as he heard. Then he turned to Andria with what--if she had known
it--were miserable wails for pardon, wretched gratitude that she had
at least tried to save the girl whom his crazed brain still took for
another.
Salome, the respectful, shook Andria as if she had been a child.
“Missus, he won’t hurt us! I told him all we knows, and he say to come
to his place in de woods. Mr. Heriot dere wid him. And he say his cats
is tame, ’cept when he makes dem hunt. You hear him call out when I say
master’s dead? He say: ‘De vengeance o’ God!’ Just dat, over and over.
Missus, de black work dat I knows been here ain’t nothin’ to what’s
been done to dis poor ole man!”
“Why is Mr. Heriot in the woods?” cried Andria. “Ask him.”
“Because dey shot him; shot him like dey’d shoot a dog!” she answered
bitterly. “Come, missus, come! We got to get him to de big house before
dark.”
Great tears pouring down her black face, she walked on, not daring to
tell that the old man had said Heriot was dead.
It had seemed a long, rough way last night in the dark to that rocky
gully for the two men who sweated under their burden, with eyes
everywhere for the dangers they must dare if Heriot’s end were to be
sure. It was a risky thing--for the throwers--to cast an insensible man
down into a jaguar’s den, and they ran for their lives afterward for
what seemed miles--would have run vainly if chance had not taken the
old man and his beasts to sleep elsewhere.
But it was really no distance, even for a woman swaying with pain and
dizziness, by the smooth, narrow track the old man took. There was no
room for two to walk abreast, and the black woman put her strong hands
under Andria’s arms from behind and steadied her, for pain made her
reel.
In between two high rocks they passed, and then squeezed through a
narrow passage that wound and burrowed like the dried-up brook it was,
between two high cliffs. Over their heads the blue sky showed like a
narrow ribbon; the dark air of the passage felt like a cellar, and,
with each step they took after the crazy man, a strange, wild smell
grew pungent in their nostrils.
“It’s de cats,” began Salome disgustedly, and then yelled in Andria’s
ear, and nearly threw her down with her start. Something had touched
her skirts, and over her shoulder she saw at her very heels, what
seemed an endless procession of wild beasts, walking softly in her
footsteps.
“Oh, my soul!” Salome yelled again, and scuffled wildly to pass Andria.
“Dey’s got me.”
The old man turned with a grin.
“Be quiet, woman!” he said, in his guttural Spanish. “Those are my
sisters and brothers and their children. They will not touch you till
I say--kill!” but at the word the nearest beast gave a whining snarl,
and Salome, with one bound of terror, passed their master, nearly
squeezing him to death, and out of the passage into a round, open space
like a quarry that narrowed up into the rocky gully, where last night a
murderer had thrown his victim.
But Andria cared nothing for Salome or the jaguars. Straight opposite
the rocky wall of the queer place was undermined into an overhanging
cave, and under it, rolled in a ragged blanket, was the motionless
figure of a man.
“Heriot!” she sobbed, and ran to him. But he did not open his eyes, as
she knelt beside him, and the hand she seized in hers was stone-cold in
the hot, close air.