I REVISIT BLACKLADIES.
That night I lay in the bracken on the hillside looking down into
Ennerdale. Far below I could see one light burning in an upper window
at the eastern side of Applegarth. It burned in Dorothy's chamber, and
its yellow homeliness tugged at my heart as I lay there, the lonesome
darkness about me, the shrill cry of the wind in my ears. The light
burned very late that night. The clouds were gradually drawn like a
curtain beneath the stars, and still it burned, and it was the
blurring of the rain which at the last hid it from my sight.
For the next three days I hid amongst the hills betwixt Borrowdale and
Applegarth. I was now fallen upon the last days of September, and the
weather very shrewd with black drenching storms of rain which would
sweep up the valleys with extraordinary suddenness, impenetrable as a
screen, blotting out the world. The wind, too, blew from the north,
bitter and cold, moaning up and down the faces of cliffs, whistling
through the grasses, with a sound inimitably desolate, and twisting to
a very whirlpool in the gaps between the mountain-peaks. To make my
case the harder, I had come away in that haste, and oblivion of all
but the necessity of my departure, that I had made little provision in
my dress to defend me against the lashing of the wind and rain. I had
picked up a hat and a long cloak, it is true, but for the rest, I wore
no stouter covering than that suit of white which Mary Tyson had laid
out for me so reluctantly. It was an unfit garb for my present life,
and one that was to prove a considerable danger to me. But it was the
cold discomfort of it which vexed me now. I had occasion enough to
reflect on the folly of my precipitation, as I lay crouched in some
draughty cave of boulders, watching the livelong day the clouds lower
and lift, the battalions of the rain trample across the fells, and
seeking to warm myself with the thought of that army in Scotland
marching to the English borders. At nightfall I would creep down
into Borrowdale, procure food from one of my old tenants who was
well-disposed to me, and so get me back again to some jutting corner
whence I could look down Gillerthwaite to Applegarth. But I looked in
vain for the lights of the house. On the night of my departure, I saw
them, but never afterwards, even when the air was of the clearest, so
that I knew not what to think, and was almost persuaded to return to
the house, that I might ascertain the cause of their disappearance.
So for four days and nights, whilst an old thought shaped to a
resolve. For in the pocket of my coat, I had carried away not merely
the button I had discovered in the garden at Blackladies--that never
left my person--but the letter Tash had brought to me from Lord
Derwentwater. I had been interrupted in the reading of it by Mr.
Curwen's return, and so crammed it into my pocket with some part of it
unread. However, I gave very careful heed to it now.
"My own affairs," it ran on, "have come to so desperate a pass that I
dare not poke my nose into the matter of Herbert's disappearance; I
live, indeed, myself, in hourly expectation of arrest. Your servant
came again to me from Blackladies the other day, and told me a watch
was no longer kept upon the house."
And since I had no knowledge that England was stirring in support of
the rebellion, I determined to hazard an interview with my cousin, and
so late on the fifth night climbed into the garden of Blackladies and
let myself into the house as I had once seen Jervas Rookley do. I
stood for a little in the parlour, feeling the darkness throb heavily
about me with all the memories of that fatal night which had compassed
my undoing.
Then I crossed towards the hall, but, my cloak flapping and dragging
noisily at a chair as I passed, I loosed it from my shoulders and left
it there. No lamp was burning in the hall, and since the curtains were
drawn close over the lower windows, only the faintest of twilights
penetrating through the upper panes made a doubtful glimmering beneath
the roof; so that one seemed to be standing in a deep well.
The dining-room lay to my right on the further side of the hall. I
made towards it, and of a sudden came sharply to a halt, my heart
fairly quivering within me. For it seemed to me that the figure of a
man had suddenly sprung out of the darkness and was advancing to me,
but so close that the next step would bring our heads knocking against
each other. And he had made no sound. As I stopped, the figure
stopped. For a moment I stood watching it, holding my breath, then I
clapped my hand to my sword, and the next moment I could have laughed
at my alarm. For the figure copied my gesture. It was, moreover,
dressed in clothes of a white colour from top to toe, and it was for
that reason I saw its movements so distinctly. But I was likewise
dressed in white. The one difference, in fact, between us which I
noted was a certain black sheen in which it stood framed. I reached
out a hand; it slid upon the polished surface of a great mirror.
The dining-room, I knew, opened at the side of this mirror, and I
groped cautiously for the handle of the door, but before I found it my
hand knocked against the key. With equal caution I opened the door to
the width of an inch or so. A steady light shone upon the side of the
wall, and through the opening there came the sound of a man snoring. I
put my head into the room; and there to my inexpressible relief was
Jervas Rookley. He was dressed in a suit of black satin, stretched to
his full length upon a chair in front of a blazing fire, his head
thrown back, his periwig on the floor, his cravat loosened, his shoes
unbuckled off his feet.
I closed the door behind me; then opened it again and pocketed the key
against which my hand had struck. The truth is that now that I was
come into the man's presence, which I had before considered the most
difficult part of the business, I now, on the contrary, saw very
clearly that it was the easiest. I had not merely to come into his
presence; I had to win out of it afterwards; and moreover I had
somehow or other to twist from him the information about Mr. Herbert's
whereabouts, for which I had adventured the visit.
I stepped on tiptoe across the carpet and seated myself in a chair
facing him at the corner of the fireplace. Then I sought to arrange
and order the questions I should put to him. But in truth I found the
task well-nigh beyond my powers. It was all very well to tell myself
that I was here on behalf of my remnant honour to secure the
enlargement of Mr. Herbert. But the man was face to face with me; the
firelight played upon his honest face and outstretched limbs; and I
felt hatred spring up in me and kindle through my veins like fire. Up
till now, so engrossed had I been by the turmoil of my own more
personal troubles, I had given little serious thought to Jervas
Rookley: I had taken his treachery almost callously as an accepted
thing, and the depths of my indignation had only been stirred against
myself. Now, however, every piece of trickery he had used on me
crowded in upon my recollections. I might cry out within myself,
"Anthony Herbert! Anthony Herbert!" Anthony Herbert was none the less
pushed to the backward of my mind. That honest face was upturned to
the light, and my thoughts swarmed about it I scanned it most
carefully. It was more than common flushed and swollen, for which I
was at no loss to account, since a bottle of French brandy stood on a
little table at his elbow, three parts empty, and a carafe of water
three parts full. I reached over for the bottle, and rinsing out his
glass, helped myself, bethinking me that after my exposure of the
three last days, its invigoration might prove of use to me.
But as I sat there and drank the brandy and watched Jervas Rookley's
face, my fingers ever strayed to the hilt of my sword; I moved the
weapon gently backwards and forwards so as to satisfy my ears with the
pleasant jingle of the hanger; I half drew the blade from the sheath
and rubbed my thumb along the edge until the blood came; and then I
sat looking at the blood, and from the blood to Jervas Rookley, until
at last an overmastering desire grew hot about my heart It was no
longer the edge or the point of the sword which I desired to employ. I
wanted to smash in that broad, honest face with the big pommel, and I
feared the moment of his awakening lest I should yield to the
temptation.
Fortunately, his first movement was one that diverted my thoughts. For
as he opened his eyes he stretched out his hands to the brandy bottle.
It was near to my elbow, however, on the mantelpiece, and I refilled
my own glass. It was, I think, the sound of the liquor tinkling into
the glass more than the words I spoke to him which made Rookley open
his eyes. He blinked at me for a moment.
"You?" said he, but blankly with the stupor of his sleep still heavy
upon him.
"Yes!" said I, drinking the brandy.
He followed the glass to my lips and woke to the possession of some
part of his senses.
"I had expected you before," says he, and sits clicking his tongue
against the roof of his mouth and swallowing, as though his throat was
parched.
"So I believe," I returned. "You had even gone so far as to prepare
for me a fitting welcome."
He was by this time wide awake. He picked up his peruke, clapped it on
his head, and stood up in his stocking feet.
"Your servants, sir," says he with inimitable assurance, "will always
honour their master with a fitting welcome, so long as I am steward,
on whatever misfortunes he may have declined."
"I meant," said I, "a welcome not so much fitting my mastership as
that honesty of yours, Mr. Rookley, which my Lord Derwentwater tells
me is all on the outside."
I bent forward, keeping my eyes upon his face. But not a muscle jerked
in it.
"Ah!" said he, in an indifferent voice. "Did Lord Derwentwater tell
you that? Well, I had never a great respect for his discernment;" and
he stood looking into the fire. Then he glanced at me and uttered a
quiet little laugh.
"So you knew," said he, easily, "I had it in my mind, but I could not
be certain."
"I have known it----" I cried, exasperated out of all control by his
cool audacity; and with a wave of the hand he interrupted me.
"You will excuse me," he said politely; and then, "There is no longer
any reason why I should stand, is there?" and he resumed his seat and
slipped his feet into his shoes. "Now," said he, "if you will pass the
bottle."
"No," I roared in a fury.
"Well, well," he returned, "since there seems some doubt which of us
is host and which guest, I will not press the request. You were saying
that you have known it----?"
"Since one evening when you showed me a private entrance into
Blackladies," I cried; and bending forward to press upon him the
knowledge that he had thereby foiled himself, I added in some triumph,
"I have great reason to thank you for that, Mr. Jervas Rookley."
He leaned forward too, so that our heads were close together.
"And for more than that," said he. "Believe me, dear Mr. Clavering,
that is by no means all you have to thank me for;" and he very
affectionately patted my knee.
"And that is very true," says I, as I drew my knee away. "For I have
to thank you for the fourth part of a bottle of brandy, but I cannot
just bring to mind any other occasion of gratitude."
"Oh, gratitude!" says he, with a reproachful shake of the hand. "Fie,
Mr. Clavering! Between gentleman and cousins the word stinks--it
positively stinks. Whatever little service I have done for you, calls
for no such big-sounding name."
His voice, his looks, his gestures were such as a man notes only in a
friend, and a friend that is perplexed by some unaccountable
suspicion.
"But you spoke of honesty," he continued, throwing a knee across the
other and spreading out his hands. "It is very true I played a trick
on you in coming to Paris as your servant But it is a trick which my
betters had used before me. Your Duke of Ormond got him into France
with the help of a lackey's livery. And your redoubtable Mar----"
At that name I started.
"It is indeed so," he said earnestly. "The Earl of Mar, I have it on
the best authority, worked his passage as a collier into Scotland."
It was not, however, that I was concerned at all as to how the Earl of
Mar had escaped unremarked from London. But it suddenly occurred to
me, as an explanation of Rookley's friendly demeanour, that the
insurrection might be sweeping southwards on a higher tide of success
than I had been disposed to credit. If that was the case, Mr. Jervas
Rookley would of a certainty be anxious still to keep friends with me.
"So you see, Mr. Clavering," he went on, "I have all the precedents
that a man could need to justify me."
"Well," said I, "it is not the trick itself which troubles me so much
as your design in executing it."
"Design?" says he, taking me up in a tone of wonderment "You are very
suspicious, Mr. Clavering. But I do not wonder at it, knowing in what
school you were brought up;" and rising from his chair he took a pipe
from the mantel-shelf and commenced to fill it with tobacco, "The
suspicion, however, is unjust."
He bent down and plucked a splinter of burning wood out of the fire.
"You do not smoke, I believe, but most like you do now, and at all
events you will have grown used to the smell."
I started forward and stared at him. He lighted his pipe with great
deliberation.
"Yes," said he nodding his head at me, "the suspicion is unjust." He
tossed the splinter into the fire and sat down again.
"And how is little Dorothy Curwen?" he asked, with a lazy,
contemptuous smile.
I sprang out of my seat, stung by the contempt rather than the
surprise his words were like to arouse in me. And this, I think, he
perceived, for he laughed to himself. Whereupon I felt my face flush;
and that too he noted, and laughed again.
"Then you knew," I exclaimed, recovering myself--"you knew where I
was sheltered!"
"A gentleman riding down Gillerthwaite at three o'clock of the morning
is a sufficiently rare a sight to attract attention. I believe that,
luckily, the shepherd who saw you only gossiped to a tenant of
Blackladies."
I remembered the flock of sheep which I had seen scared up the
hillside across the valley. But it was on my return from Keswick that
I had been remarked--no later than a day after Rookley had striven to
encompass my arrest.
"The news," said I, very slowly, "came to you in a roundabout fashion,
and took, I suppose, some time in the coming. I infer, therefore, that
it came to your ears after the Earl of Mar had risen in Scotland."
I was leaning upon the mantelpiece, looking down into his face, on
which the fire shone with a full light; and just for a moment his face
changed, the slightest thing in the world, but enough to assure me
that my conjecture was right.
"There are inferences, my good cousin," he said sharply, "which it is
not over-prudent for a man so delicately circumstanced as yourself to
draw."
There was a note of disappointment in his tone, as though he would
fain have hoodwinked me still into the belief that he stood my friend.
And it suddenly occurred to me that there was a new danger in this
knowledge of his--a danger which threatened not so much me as the
people who had sheltered me. I resumed accordingly in a more amicable
tone:
"It was not, however, of my whereabouts that I came hither to speak to
you, but of the whereabouts of Mr. Herbert."
"Mr. Herbert?" says he, playing surprise. "What should I know of Mr.
Herbert? Now, if I was to ask you the whereabouts of Mrs. Herbert,
there would be some sense in the question, eh?" and he chuckled
cunningly and poked a forefinger into my ribs. I struck the hand
aside.
"What, indeed, should you know of Mr. Herbert," I cried--"you that
plotted his arrest!"
"Arrest?" he interrupted, yet more dumfounded. "Plot?"
"That is the word," said I--"plot! a simple word enough, though with a
damned dirty underhand meaning."
"Ah," he returned, with a sneer, "you take that interest in the
husband, it appears, which I imagined you to have reserved for his
wife. But as for plots and arrests--why, I know no more of what you
mean than does the Khan of Crim Tartary."
"Then," said I, "will you tell me why you paid a visit to Mr. Herbert
the night before he was arrested? And why you told him that if he came
to Blackladies on the afternoon of the next day he would find Mrs.
Herbert and myself in the garden?"
It was something of a chance shot, for I had no more than suspicion to
warrant me, but it sped straight to its mark. Rookley started back in
his chair, huddling his body together. Then he drew himself erect,
with a certain defiance.
"But zounds, man!" he exclaimed, like one exasperated with perplexity,
"what maggot's in your brains? Why should I send Herbert--devil take
the fellow!--to find you in the garden when I knew you would not be
there?"
"And I can answer that question with another," said I. "Who were in
the garden at the time Mr. Herbert was to discover us?"
"The gardeners, I suppose," said he, thrusting his wig aside to
scratch his head.
"It is a queer kind of gardener that wears buttons of this sort," said
I; and I pulled the button from my pocket, and held it before his eyes
in the palm of my hand.
He bent forward, examined the button, and again looked at me
inquiringly.
"I picked it up," I explained, "on a little plot of trampled grass in
the Wilderness on the next morning."
Rookley burst into a laugh and slapped his thighs.
"Lord! Mr. Clavering," he cried, and rising from his chair he walked
briskly about the room, "your button is something too small to carry
so weighty an accusation."
"Nay," I answered, smiling in my turn, "the button, though small, is
metal solid enough. It depends upon how closely it is sewn to the
cloth of my argument. It is true that I picked up the button on the
morning that the soldiers came for me, but I was in the house on the
afternoon before, and I saw----"
Jervas Rookley stopped in his walk, and his laughter ceased with the
sound of his steps.
"You were in the house?" His mouth so worked that he pronounced the
words awry. "You were in the house?"
"In the little parlour which gives on to the terrace."
Had I possessed any doubt before as to his complicity, the doubt would
have vanished now. He reeled for a moment as if he had been struck,
and the blood mottled in his cheeks.
"The house-door may be left open for one man, but two men may enter
it," said I.
"You saw?" He took a step round the table and leaned across the corner
of it. "What did you see?"
I took up a lighted candle from the table.
"I will show you," said I, and walked to the door.
He followed me, at first with uncertain steps. The steps grew firm
behind my back.
They seemed to me significant of a growing purpose--so in the hall I
stopped.
"We are good cousins, you and I," said I, holding the candle so that
the flame lighted his face.
"Without a doubt," says he, readily. "You begin to see that you have
mistaken me."
"I was thinking rather," said I, "that being good cousins, we might
walk arm-in-arm."
"I should count it an honour," said he, with a bow.
"And it will certainly be a relief to me," said I. And accordingly I
took his arm.
We crossed the hall into the parlour. The window stood open, as I had
left it, with the curtains half drawn. Rookley busily pushed them back
while I set the candle down. The sky had cleared during the last half
hour, and the moon, which was in its fourth quarter, hung like a globe
above the garden.
"I met Mr. Herbert in the hall," said I, "just outside this room. We
had some talk--of a kind you can imagine. He went down the steps with
his sword drawn. There he dropped his cloak, there he slashed at the
bushes. Between those two trees he passed out of sight. I stepped out
into the terrace to follow him, but before I had reached the flight of
steps, I heard a pistol crack and saw a little cloud of smoke hang
above the bushes there. I found the button the next morning at the
very spot, and near the button, the pistol. It was Mr. Herbert's
pistol. That," said I, "is my part of the story. But perhaps if we go
back to the warmer room you will give me your part. For I take it that
you were not in the house, else you would have heard my voice, but
rather in the garden. You made a great mistake in not looking towards
the terrace, my cousin." And again I took his arm, and we walked back.
I was, indeed, rather anxious to discover the whereabouts of Rookley
during that afternoon, since so far I had been able to keep Mrs.
Herbert's name entirely out of the narrative. If Jervas Rookley had
been in the garden during the afternoon, and had only returned to the
house in time to intercept Lord Derwentwater's letter concerning the
French King's health, and had thereupon ridden off to apply for a
warrant against me, why, there was just a chance that I might save
Mrs. Herbert from figuring in the business at all.
Rookley said nothing until we were got back into the dining-room, but
walked thoughtfully, his arm in mine. I noticed that he was carrying
in his left hand the cord by which the curtains in the little parlour
were fastened. He stood swinging it to and fro mechanically.
"Your suspicions," said he, "discompose me. They discompose me very
much. I gave you credit for more generosity;" and lifting up the
brandy bottle, he held it with trembling hands betwixt himself and the
candle.
"I am afraid that it is empty," said I.
"If you will pardon me," said he, "I will even fetch another."
He laid the cord upon the table, advanced to the door and opened it
wide. I saw him slide his hand across the lock.
"The key is in my pocket," I said.
He looked at me with a sorrowful shake of the head.
"Your suspicions discompose me very much," and he came back for a
candle. I noticed too that he carelessly picked up the cord again.
"I think," said I, "that I will help you to fetch that bottle;" and I
went with him into the hall.
There was something new in the man's bearing which began to alarm me.
He still used the same tone of aggrieved affection, but with an
indefinable difference which was none the less very apparent to me.
His effort seemed no longer to aim at misleading me, but rather to
sustain the pretence that he was aiming to mislead me. It seemed to me
that since he had become aware of what I knew concerning his treachery
he had devised some new plan, and kept his old tone to hinder me from
suspecting it. I noticed, too, a certain deliberateness in the
indifference of his walk, a certain intention in the discomposure.
In the hall he stopped, and setting down the candle upon a cabinet,
turned to face me.
"Why did you come with me?" he asked gently.
"I did not know but what you might call your servants, and, as you put
it, I am delicately circumstanced."
He raised his hands in a gesture of pity.
"See what suspicion leads a man to! My servants hold you in so much
respect that if I harboured designs against your safety, to call my
servants would be to ruin me."
I was inclined to believe that what he said was in a measure true, for
I remembered the interview which I had had with Ashlock in the
steward's office, and the subsequent consideration which had been
shown me.
Then, "Look!" I cried of a sudden, pointing my arm. Right in front of
me on that vacant space of the wall amongst the pictures hung the
portrait of Jervas Rookley.
Rookley started ever so little and then stood eyeing me keenly, the
while he swung round and round in a little circle the tassel of the
curtain cord.
"You prate to me of suspicions," I cried, "there's the proof of their
justice. This estate of Blackladies I held on one condition--that you
should receive no benefit from it. We jogged side by side, you and I,
cousins with hearts cousinly mated in the same endeavour! You still
profess it! Then explain to me: how comes it the Whigs leave you
alone, you stripped of your inheritance because of the very principles
which outlawed me? Explain that, and I'll still believe you. Prove
that you live here without the Government's connivance, I'll forget
the rest of my suspicions. I'll count you my loyal friend. Only show
me this: how comes it that I make my bed upon the bracken, and you
lord it at Blackladies? Your presence the common talk, your picture
staring from the walls?" and in my rage I plucked my sword from the
sheath, and slashed his portrait across the face, lengthwise and
breadthwise, in a cross.
The tassel stopped swinging. His shoulders hunched ever so little, his
head came forward, the eyes shone out bright like beads, and his face
tightened to that expression of foxy cunning I had noted before in mid
Channel between Dover and Dunkirk.
"It is a gallant swordsman," he said, with a sneer, "and a prudent
too."
"He looks to the original," I cried, "to give him the occasion of
imprudence;" and I faced him.
"There is a better way," said he, with the quietest laugh, and he
sprang back suddenly to the cabinet on which the candle stood. "We
will make a present of a Michaelmas goose to King George."
I saw his hand for an instant poised above the flame, red with the
light of it; I saw his figure black from head to foot, and at his
elbow another figure white from head to foot, the reflection of myself
in the mirror by his side; and then his palm squashed down upon the
wick.
The hall fell to darkness just as I made the first step towards him. I
halted on the instant. He could see me, I could not see him! He had
thrown off the mask; he had proclaimed himself my enemy, and he knew
where I had been sheltered. It was that thought which slipped into my
mind as the darkness cloaked about me, and made me curse the folly of
my intrusion here. I had hazarded not merely myself, but Dorothy and
her father. He could see me, I could not see him, and the outcome of
this adventure struck at Dorothy.
I stepped backwards as lightly as I could, until the edge of a
picture-frame rubbed against my shoulder-blades, and so stood gripping
my sword-hilt, straining my ears. Across the hall I seemed to hear
Rookley breathing, but it was the only sound I heard. There was no
shuffle of a foot; he had not moved.
Above me the twilight glimmered beneath the roof; about me the chamber
was black as the inside of a nailed coffin. If I could only reach the
windows and tear the curtains back! But half the length of the hall
intercepted me, and to reach them I must needs take my back from the
wall. That I dared not do, and I stood listening helplessly to the
sound of Rookley's breathing. In that pitch-dark hall it seemed to
shift from quarter to quarter. At one moment I could have sworn I
heard his breath, soft as a sigh, a foot's length from me; I could
almost have sworn I felt it on my neck; and in a panic I whirled my
sword from side to side, but it touched nothing within the half circle
of its reach. My fears indeed so grew upon me, that I was in two minds
whether or no to shout and bring the servants about me. It would at
all events end the suspense. But I dared not do it. Jervas Rookley
distrusted them. But how much more cause had I! I could not risk the
safety of Applegarth upon their doubtful loyalty. And then a sharp
sound broke in upon the silence. It set my heart fluttering and
fainting within me by reason of its abruptness, so that for a moment I
was dazed and could not come at the reason of it. It was a clattering
sound, and, so far as I could gather, it came from the spot where I
had last seen Jervas Rookley standing. It was like--nay, it was the
sound of a shoe dropped upon the boards. I know not why, but the sound
steadied, though it appalled me. It spoke of a doubled danger and
cried for a doubled vigilance. Rookley could not only see my white
figure; he could move to it noiselessly, for he was slipping off his
shoes.
I listened for the creak of a board, for the light padding sound of
stockinged feet, for the rustle of his coat; and while I listened, I
moved my sword gently in front of me, but my sword touched nothing and
my ears heard nothing. Yet he must be coming--stealthily stepping
across the hall---I felt him coming. But from what quarter would he
come? During those seconds of waiting the question became a torture.
And then a momentary hope shot through me. When he put the candle out
his sword was in the scabbard. He had not drawn it, since I had
listened so strenuously that I must have heard. However carefully he
drew it, a chain would clink; or if not that, the scabbard might knock
against his leg; or if not that, there would be a little whirr, a sort
of whisper as the blade slid upwards out of the sheath.
There was still a chance, then. At that point of the darkness from
which the sound should come I would strike--strike the moment I heard
it, with all my strength, down towards the floor. I tightened my
fingers about my sword-hilt and waited. But it was a very different
noise which struck upon my hearing, a noise that a man may make in the
dragging of a heavy sack. I drew myself up close to the wall, setting
my feet together, pressing my heels against the panels. The sound
filled me with such terror as I think never before or since I have
known the like of. For I could not explain it to myself. I only knew
that it was dangerous. It seemed to me to come from somewhere about
midway of the room, and I held my breath that I might judge the better
on its repetition. After a moment it was repeated, but nearer, and by
its proximity it sounded so much the more dangerous. I sprang towards
it. A sobbing cry leapt from my lips, and I lunged at a venture into
the darkness. But again my sword touched nothing, and with the force
of that unresisted thrust I stumbled forward for a step or two. My cry
changed into a veritable scream. I felt the fingers of a hand gently
steal about each of my ankles and then tighten on them like iron
fetters. I understood; halfway across the room Rookley had lowered
himself full-length upon the floor and was crawling towards me. I
raised my sword to strike, but even as I raised it he jerked my feet
from beneath me, and I fell face forwards with a crash right across
his body. My sword flew out of my hand and went rolling and clattering
into the darkness. My forehead struck against the boards, and for a
moment I lay half stunned. It was only for a moment, but when that
moment had passed, Jervas Rookley was upon me, above me, his arms
twined about mine and drawing them behind me, his knees pressed with
all his might into the small of my back.
"We will truss the goose before we send it to King George," said he.