So I bound myself to a guilty secrecy for Eva's sake, to save her from
these wretches, or if you will, to win her for myself. Nor did it
strike me as very strange, after a moment's reflection, that she should
intercede thus earnestly for a band headed by her own mother's widower,
prime scoundrel of them all though she knew him to be. The only
surprise was that she had not interceded in his name; that I should have
forgotten, and she should have allowed me to forget, the very existence
of so indisputable a claim upon her loyalty. This, however, made it a
little difficult to understand the hysterical gratitude with which my
unwilling promise was received. Poor darling! she was beside herself
with sheer relief. She wept as I had never seen her weep before. She
seized and even kissed my hands, as one who neither knew nor cared what
she did, surprising me so much by her emotion that this expression of it
passed unheeded. I was the best friend she had ever had. I was her one
good friend in all the world; she would trust herself to me; and if I
would but take her to the convent where she had been brought up, she
would pray for me there until her death, but that would not be very
long.
All of which confused me utterly; it seemed an inexplicable breakdown
in one who had shown such nerve and courage hitherto, and so hearty a
loathing for that damnable Santos. So completely had her presence of
mind forsaken her that she looked no longer where she had been gazing
hitherto. And thus it was that neither of us saw José until we heard
him calling, “Senhora Evah! Senhora Evah!” with some rapid sentences in
Portuguese.
“Now is our time,” I whispered, crouching lower and clasping a small
hand gone suddenly cold. “Think of nothing now but getting out of this.
I'll keep my word once we are out; and here's the toy that's going to
get us out.” And I produced my Deane and Adams with no small relish.
A little trustful pressure was my answer and my reward; meanwhile the
black was singing out lustily in evident suspicion and alarm.
“He says they are coming back,” whispered Eva; “but that's impossible.”
“Why?”
“Because if they were he couldn't see them, and if he heard them he
would be frightened of their hearing him. But here he comes!”
A shuffling quick step on the path; a running grumble of unmistakable
threats; a shambling moonlit figure seen in glimpses through the leaves,
very near us for an instant, then hidden by the shrubbery as he passed
within a few yards of our hiding-place. A diminuendo of the
shuffling steps; then a cursing, frightened savage at one end of the
rhododendrons, and we two stealing out at the other, hand in hand, and
bent quite double, into the long neglected grass.
“Can you run for it?” I whispered.
“Yes, but not too fast, for fear we trip.'
“Come on, then!”
The lighted open doorway grew greater at every stride.
“He hasn't seen us yet--”
“No, I hear him threatening me still.”
“Now he has, though!”
A wild whoop proclaimed the fact, and upright we tore at top speed
through the last ten yards of grass, while the black rushed down one of
the side paths, gaining audibly on us over the better ground. But our
start had saved us, and we flew up the steps as his feet ceased to
clatter on the path; he had plunged into the grass to cut off the
corner.
“Thank God!” cried Eva. “Now shut it quick.”
The great door swung home with a mighty clatter, and Eva seized the key
in both hands.
“I can't turn it!”
To lose a second was to take a life, and unconsciously I was sticking
at that, perhaps from no higher instinct than distrust of my aim. Our
pursuer, however, was on the steps when I clapped my free hand on top of
those little white straining ones, and by a timely effort bent both them
and the key round together; the ward shot home as José hurled himself
against the door. Eva bolted it. But the thud was not repeated, and I
gathered myself together between the door and the nearest window, for by
now I saw there was but one thing for us. The nigger must be disabled,
if I could manage such a nicety; if not, the devil take his own.
Well, I was not one tick too soon for him. My pistol was not cocked
before the crash came that I was counting on, and with it a shower of
small glass driving across the six-foot sill and tinkling on the flags.
Next came a black and bloody face, at which I could not fire. I had
to wait till I saw his legs, when I promptly shattered one of them at
disgracefully short range. The report was as deafening as one upon the
stage; the hall filled with white smoke, and remained hideous with the
bellowing of my victim. I searched him without a qualm, but threats
of annihilation instead, and found him unarmed but for that very knife
which Rattray had induced me to hand over to him in town. I had a grim
satisfaction in depriving him of this, and but small compunction in
turning my back upon his pain.
“Come,” I said to poor Eva, “don't pity him, though I daresay he's the
most pitiable of the lot; show me the way through, and I'll follow with
this lamp.”
One was burning on the old oak table. I carried it along a narrow
passage, through a great low kitchen where I bumped my head against the
black oak beams; and I held it on high at a door almost as massive as
the one which we had succeeded in shutting in the nigger's face.
“I was afraid of it!” cried Eva, with a sudden sob.
“What is it?”
“They've taken away the key!”
Yes, the keen air came through an empty keyhole; and my lamp, held
close, not only showed that the door was locked, but that the lock was
one with which an unskilled hand might tamper for hours without result.
I dealt it a hearty kick by way of a test. The heavy timber did not
budge; there was no play at all at either lock or hinges; nor did I see
how I could spend one of my four remaining bullets upon the former, with
any chance of a return.
“Is this the only other door?”
“Then it must be a window.”
“All the back ones are barred.”
“Securely?”
“Yes.”
“Then we've no choice in the matter.”
And I led the way back to the hall, where the poor black devil lay
blubbering in his blood. In the kitchen I found the bottle of wine
(Rattray's best port, that they were trying to make her take for her
health) with which Eva had bribed him, and I gave it to him before
laying hands on a couple of chairs.
“What are you going to do?”'
“Go out the way we came.”
“But the wall?”
“Pile up these chairs, and as many more as we may need, if we can't open
the gate.”
But Eva was not paying attention any longer, either to me or to José;
his white teeth were showing in a grin for all his pain; her eyes were
fixed in horror on the floor.
“They've come back,” she gasped. “The underground passage! Hark--hark!”
There was a muffled rush of feet beneath our own, then a dull but very
distinguishable clatter on some invisible stair.
“Underground passage!” I exclaimed, and in my sheer disgust I forgot
what was due to my darling. “Why on earth didn't you tell me of it
before?”
“There was so much to tell you! It leads to the sea. Oh, what shall we
do? You must hide--upstairs--anywhere!” cried Eva, wildly. “Leave them
to me--leave them to me.”
“I like that,” said I; and I did; but I detested myself for the tears my
words had drawn, and I prepared to die for them.
“They'll kill you, Mr. Cole!”
“It would serve me right; but we'll see about it.”
And I stood with my revolver very ready in my right hand, while with
the other I caught poor Eva to my side, even as a door flew open,
and Rattray himself burst upon us, a lantern in his hand, and the
perspiration shining on his handsome face in its light.
I can see him now as he stood dumfounded on the threshold of the hall;
and yet, at the time, my eyes sped past him into the room beyond.
It was the one I have described as being lined with books; there was
a long rent in this lining, where the books had opened with a door,
through which Captain Harris, Joaquin Santos, and Jane Braithwaite
followed Rattray in quick succession, the men all with lanterns, the
woman scarlet and dishevelled even for her. It was over the squire's
shoulders I saw their faces; he kept them from passing him in the
doorway by a free use of his elbows; and when I looked at him again, his
black eyes were blazing from a face white with passion, and they were
fixed upon me.
“What the devil brings you here?” he thundered at last.
“Don't ask idle questions,” was my reply to that.
“So you were shamming to-day!”
“I was taking a leaf out of your book.”
“You'll gain nothing by being clever!” sneered the squire, taking
a threatening step forward. For at the last moment I had tucked my
revolver behind my back, not only for the pleasure, but for the obvious
advantage of getting them all in front of me and off their guard. I
had no idea that such eyes as Rattray's could be so fierce: they were
dancing from me to my companion, whom their glitter frightened into an
attempt to disengage herself from me; but my arm only tightened about
her drooping figure.
“I shall gain no more than I expect,” said I, carelessly. “And I know
what to expect from brave gentlemen like you! It will be better than
your own fate, at all events; anything's better than being taken hence
to the place of execution, and hanged by the neck until you're dead, all
three of you in a row, and your bodies buried within the precincts of
the prison!”
“The very thing for him,” murmured Santos. “The--very--theeng!”
“But I'm so soft-hearted,” I went insanely on, “that I should be sorry
to see that happen to such fine fellows as you are. Come out of that,
you little fraud behind there!” It was my betrayer skulking in the
room. “Come out and line up with the rest! No, I'm not going to see you
fellows dance on nothing; I've another kind of ball apiece for you, and
one between 'em for the Braithwaites!”
Well, I suppose I always had a nasty tongue in me, and rather enjoyed
making play with it on provocation; but, if so, I met with my deserts
that night. For the nigger of the _Lady Jermyn_ lay all but hid behind Eva
and me; if they saw him at all, they may have thought him drunk; but, as
for myself, I had fairly forgotten his existence until the very moment
came for showing my revolver, when it was twisted out of my grasp
instead, and a ball sang under my arm as the brute fell back exhausted
and the weapon clattered beside him. Before I could stoop for it there
was a dead weight on my left arm, and Squire Rattray was over the table
at a bound, with his arms jostling mine beneath Eva Denison's senseless
form.
“Leave her to me,” he cried fiercely. “You fool,” he added in a lower
key, “do you think I'd let any harm come to her?”
I looked him in the bright and honest eyes that had made me trust him
in the beginning. And I did not utterly distrust him yet. Rather was the
guile on my side as I drew back and watched Rattray lift the young girl
tenderly, and slowly carry her to the door by which she had entered and
left the hall just twenty-four hours before. I could not take my eyes
off them till they were gone. And when I looked for my revolver, it also
had disappeared.
José had not got it--he lay insensible. Santos was whispering to Harris.
Neither of them seemed armed. I made sure that Rattray had picked it up
and carried it off with Eva. I looked wildly for some other weapon. Two
unarmed men and a woman were all I had to deal with, for Braithwaite
had long since vanished. Could I but knock the worthless life out of the
men, I should have but the squire and his servants to deal with; and in
that quarter I still had my hopes of a bloodless battle and a treaty of
war.
A log fire was smouldering in the open grate. I darted to it, and had a
heavy, half-burned brand whirling round my head next instant. Harris was
the first within my reach. He came gamely at me with his fists. I sprang
upon him, and struck him to the ground with one blow, the sparks flying
far and wide as my smoking brand met the seaman's skull. Santos was upon
me next instant, and him, by sheer luck, I managed to serve the same;
but I doubt whether either man was stunned; and I was standing ready for
them to rise, when I felt myself seized round the neck from behind, and
a mass of fluffy hair tickling my cheek, while a shrill voice set up a
lusty scream for the squire.
I have said that the woman Braithwaite was of a sinister strength; but I
had little dreamt how strong she really was. First it was her arms
that wound themselves about my neck, long, sinuous, and supple as the
tentacles of some vile monster; then, as I struggled, her thumbs were on
my windpipe like pads of steel. Tighter she pressed, and tighter yet. My
eyeballs started; my tongue lolled; I heard my brand drop, and through
a mist I saw it picked up instantly. It crashed upon my skull as I still
struggled vainly; again and again it came down mercilessly in the same
place; until I felt as though a sponge of warm water had been squeezed
over my head, and saw a hundred withered masks grinning sudden
exultation into mine; but still the lean arm whirled, and the splinters
flew, till I was blind with my blood and the seven senses were beaten
out of me.