"Check number two, Master Grit Lawless!"
Van Bleit stood over his victim with a smile of satisfaction widening
his features, the end of the long rope which he had used to such purpose
coiled upon his arm. He took a shorter length from his pocket and
tossed it to Denzil, who, in thorough appreciation of the trick, was
still laughing immoderately over the discomfiture of the man who had
believed himself upper dog. Lawless sat up and swore vigorously.
"Fasten his wrists," Van Bleit commanded.
He twirled the ends of his moustache complacently while he watched the
execution of this order, and offered a few suggestions for the more
efficacious tightening of the bonds.
"Oh! you can squirm as much as you like," he said. "You are about as
helpless as a trussed fowl."
When Lawless' hands were securely bound behind him, Van Bleit loosened
the noose that had tightened until it stopped the circulation, and drew
the loop over the captive's head. Then he picked up the revolver that
lay on the veld and sat down facing him. He was enjoying himself
immensely. The security of his position as captor, Lawless' utter
helplessness, and the certainty of no outside interference, completed a
situation which, having no element of risk about it, appealed to him
amazingly. He rested his right elbow on his knee, and levelled the
revolver at Lawless' breast.
"It would be so simple and so safe to settle you for ever," he remarked
pleasantly, "that I wonder I don't do it... Denzil, just hobble those
left-overs from the Ark. We shall need them presently. They look as
though they'd stand till the crack of doom, but there's just a chance
that if this revolver should happen to go off we might lose them, and
that would be awkward. When you have done that you can relieve
long-eared Grit of what he sneaked from you."
Lawless set his teeth and said nothing. He was beginning to understand
that while he had been busy trying to devise a trap for Van Bleit, the
Dutchman had got ahead of him, and that in so wily a manner that he had
not had the faintest suspicion of trickery when he had listened at the
partition with his eye to the crack. And yet the mere lighting of the
candle should have warned him... There would have been no need for a
light had it not been intended that he should see. He cursed his folly
for tumbling into a pit the digging of which he had been permitted to
witness. And the letters! ... The letters that he had been allowed to
handle, that he believed he had got so secure...
When Denzil bent over him and drew the sealed packet from his pocket, he
made a frantic but futile effort to burst the bonds that fastened his
wrists. The rope, already uncomfortably tight, cut into the flesh and
caused such pain he was fain to desist. Denzil dangled the packet
before his face, jeering, then he gripped it tighter and struck him with
it across the eyes.
"One day," Lawless said grimly, "when my hands aren't tied, you'll pay
for that."
Van Bleit laughed loudly. The bully in him enjoyed watching aggression
that feared no retaliation. To strike a man with his hands tied was
infinitely amusing.
"Thought you had a wonderful find in that packet, eh?" he sneered.
"Going to make your fortune--were you?--in another man's gold mine."
"I shouldn't have objected to that idea so much," Denzil interposed in a
tone of deep disgust. "But he wouldn't confess to that... He was
posing virtuous."
"Ah!" returned Van Bleit, grinning. "Looks virtuous, don't he? ... Job
on his rubbish heap! Well, it may ease his virtuous mind to know that
so far as the value of that packet is concerned he might be allowed to
keep it. It's a fake, old man... got up for your amusement, and that of
other fellows of an inquiring turn of mind. Almachtig! you don't
imagine I'm so green as to carry around letters that are worth a
fortune?" He snapped his fingers in derision. "For a cute boy, Grit,
you are surprisingly credulous. Those letters that so many mouths are
watering for are safe--where you won't get them. I don't cart them
round in my suit-case."
He laughed again at the expression of Lawless' face.
"Sold all round, eh? Lord! ain't it funny?"
Then, his mood changing suddenly, he fell to scowling, and eyed Lawless
malevolently above the revolver that still pointed direct at his heart.
"You fancy because Tom Hayhurst got hold of them once, it's any man's
job. Well, it isn't. And Tom wouldn't have had the chance, only I was
fool enough to bring them from Jo'burg to Cape Town. I deserved to lose
them for not leaving them safe where they were. But I'm not taking any
further risks. That packet of dummy letters is all I carry about...
And I carry them with a purpose--the purpose of discovering such
treacherous scoundrels as yourself. You're in Grey's pay. I know
that... I found it out long ago. And you profess friendship for me...
start out to win my confidence with the intention of robbing me--killing
me, perhaps. You deserve to pay dearly for that. I've half a mind to
shoot you... I'll punish you somehow."
He got up, and, pocketing the revolver, approached menacingly. Lawless
watched him in silence. Van Bleit, it was clear, meant mischief; and he
was powerless to defend himself, incapable of hitting back. The
knowledge of his helplessness galled him unspeakably. To have had his
hands free! ... just his bare hands, and nothing more...
"It's a safe game you're playing," he observed drily. "If I faced you
with my bare fists you wouldn't take this tone."
"Safe game or not," Van Bleit shouted, "I'm going to punish you, my boy.
There's a treatment for treachery that has been found efficacious
before."
He snatched at a riding-whip which one of the men had dropped, and
struck the strong quiet face he hated again and again with it, raising a
dozen weals on the thin tanned cheeks. One blow cut Lawless' lip open,
and the blood spurted out and ran down his chin, and stained the blonde
moustache. At each blow he winced though he made no sound, but the
wince gave Van Bleit immense satisfaction. The score he had to pay off
against this man was heavy. To his influence he attributed the coldness
of Zoe Lawless... That could only be expatiated with his life; but the
taking of human life meant a risk Karl Van Bleit would not again lightly
undertake. He had a morbid horror of the hangman's rope since it had
dangled so perilously near his own neck.
When he had flogged Lawless in the face, he flogged him again across the
shoulders with even greater venom. This being borne without flinching,
soon ceased to amuse him, and he flung the whip from him with an oath.
"That's enough for the present, damn you! If we meet again you'll know
what to expect. I shan't spare your life a second time... It's almost
a pity," he reflected, inclination weighing against discretion, "to lose
this chance of quieting you. Who's to know if I settle your account for
ever?"
For the next few seconds Lawless felt his life hung in the balance. His
whole being revolted against the thought of death at this man's hands
without ever a chance of repaying the insult he had suffered. If his
life were spared that day he vowed he would never rest until he had
squared their account finally. Some idea of this probability seemed to
possess Van Bleit, and inclined him strongly toward committing the foul
deed he contemplated; but Denzil, the more timorous, stood out against
murder.
"There are the horses, Karl," he urged... "Any amount of awkward
questions may be asked."
"All right," Van Bleit said shortly. "We'll leave him as he is. It
will take him all he knows to worry his hands free."
He struck his foe again in the face with his open hand, and turning
away, walked towards the horses. He mounted, and Denzil following his
example, they rode off, leaving their victim seated on the veld, his
wrists securely bound, without, so far as they knew, any prospect of
freeing them, and with no available means of pursuit. It was a safe
game, as Lawless had said.
He remained seated until they were out of sight. Not on any
consideration would he have given Van Bleit the satisfaction of watching
him rise and proceed on his way with his arms in their present
undignified position. When the two men finally disappeared from view he
got up, and walking painfully, for the fall from his horse had injured
him, made his way slowly back towards the hut. The riders had passed
quite close behind it after climbing the rise, little guessing that it
was tenanted. The noise of the horses' hoofs awoke Tottie. She rubbed
her eyes, and half sat up, and so, resting on her elbow, remained still,
listening, till the sounds died away in the distance and complete
silence reigned once more. No suspicion crossed her mind that anything
was amiss.
"Grit's early astir," her thoughts ran as she settled down to sleep
again.
She was half-wakeful, half-dozing, when something happened that roused
her fully and brought the languid eyes open with a jerk. Abruptly,
without warning, the light from the doorless exit was obscured, and a
man's figure, bending from the waist, entered, and, straightening
itself, stood upright, looking uncertainly about with eyes unaccustomed
to the dimness, upon unfamiliar surroundings.
Tottie sat up on her improvised mattress of bush and dried rushes and
stared in amaze at the appearance presented by the intruder. The
swollen, inflamed face with the ugly weals across it was scarcely
recognisable, the blood running down the chin on to the front of his
shirt gave it a savage, even a sinister look, that was strangely
repellent. She wondered why he made no effort to wipe the blood away,
and noticed that he kept his hands behind him, but did not realise that
this was owing to compulsion, until he turned suddenly about and
requested her shortly to undo the "damned knots."
"Good God! Grit," she said, "what's happened?"
"Van Bleit's scored this time," he answered. "It's first game to him...
But the rubber isn't won yet. I've merely got my deserts for being a
gullible idiot."
She worked at the knots with her teeth, and after a while unbound his
raw and bleeding wrists and flung the rope to the floor.
"My word! but they've used you ill," she said... "If I'd only
guessed..."
Lawless made no response. He was peering with half-blinded eyes at a
huddled object on the ground that he had taken for a bundle of old rags,
but now that his sight was growing used to the obscurity discovered to
be the sleeping form of a native woman, who lay curled up against the
mud wall, like an animal, with her superb arms flung high above her
head. She was either fast asleep or feigning slumber, for she made
neither sound nor movement, but lay like a dead woman, save for the
gentle rise and fall of her bosom under the ochre blanket that formed
its sole covering.
"What is the meaning of that?" he said sternly, pointing to the
recumbent figure, his burning gaze on Tottie's face.
She laughed with a slight embarrassment. In the surprise of his entry
she had forgotten that the woman was there.
"Oh! that's all right," she answered jerkily. "Couldn't turn her out,
you know... The hut belongs to her--in a way. She happened along the
first evening, and was for running like a scared rabbit at sight of me,
but,"--Tottie laughed again. "Even a nigger is companionable," she
said.
Lawless looked hard at her.
"She's raw," Tottie explained... "Zulu... only speaks her own tongue.
I know a few words, and so we rub along."
"And her belongings?" Lawless asked. "Has it occurred to you that
there's a nigger husband somewhere? If she makes this place her home
she doesn't live alone here."
"He hasn't shown up so far," Tottie answered comfortably. She touched
significantly a holster at her waist. "I'm not scared of niggers,
Grit."
"Well, it doesn't matter," he said. "You've done with this. Van
Bleit's gone--Denzil too... And they've taken the horses. It's twenty
miles to the town, but we've got to do it."
Tottie looked thoughtful.
"There's a nearer way than that, baas," she said. She jerked her head
in the direction of the sleeping native. "There's some sort of a farm
within reasonable walking distance... _She_ makes the journey for sour
milk. They'd let us have a conveyance if we paid enough, I expect...
It's better than tramping, anyhow. We'll rouse her, and make her show
us the way."
She stood up, shook out the folds of her skirt, and surveyed herself in
the glass she had brought from the house and hung by a nail on the wall.
One cheek was hectic with artificial colour, the other, on which she
had been lying, was white and red in streaks.
"What a guy!" she murmured. "I'll need to repair the ravages before we
start, old man... You wouldn't look any the worse for a wash yourself."
She laid a hand affectionately on his arm.
"We'll wipe out that score--you and I--pretty thoroughly. It's come to
a point now where I shall be able to help. It won't do for you to
follow him, because, plainly, he'll be expecting you. He'll be on the
look out. I don't know whether you've got a plan, but I have. We won't
follow him... He shall follow me." She chuckled wickedly. "I've
always had an idea I should elope with old Karl... You go back to Cape
Town, Grit, and leave this to me. When I've got him safely in tow, I'll
communicate with you, and you can drop down on us and finish him, if
necessary."
Lawless regarded her earnestly.
"How will you get on his trail?" he asked.
She smiled significantly.
"I'm going to turn up in the same town; then, if I know anything of him,
the pursuit will be all on his side. You must give me a cheque for
something killing in the way of a trousseau... I'll manage the rest."
He appeared not altogether pleased with the arrangement.
"You'll overplay the part," he objected.
"You trust me," she answered confidently.
"Besides, he doesn't carry the letters on him... He boasted this
morning that they were safely out of reach."
She turned round from the glass to stare at him.
"Then what's the good--Well, in any case," she finished, in the manner
of one who clinches an argument, "there's got to be a settlement over
that bashed face of yours."