When the door of the stone grotto in the shrubbery at The Hut was slammed in Enid Mallory's face by "The Bootlace Man" her first sensation was one of relief that the repulsive creature had gone away without maltreating her. This was quickly followed by burning indignation at being locked in, so that her sphere of usefulness was limited to the narrow confines of the mouldy moss-grown chamber. And her anger was in turn succeeded by a humorous appreciation of her plight.
"This is what comes of aiding and abetting father's detective propensities," she laughed, immediately checking her merriment lest it should cause the return of her unsavoury captor.
Now that the door was shut the gloom of the mausoleum-like interior was increased twenty-fold, the meagre light that filtered through the ivy-choked window scarcely showing the walls of her prison. But by degrees her bright young eyes grew more accustomed to the obscurity, and she began to search for means of escape. Having embarked on the venture more or less in a spirit of bravado, andbeing totally ignorant of the tremendous issues hanging in the balance, she was more concerned to get out of her pother without incurring ridicule than with anything else.
She attached but little importance to the triumphant insolence of Tuke when locking her in. The words he had used suggested that he was acting on his own initiative, and not on specific orders from Mr. Nugent, whose approval he hoped to gain. It was possible that he might meet with reproof instead of praise. But she was aware that there was no love lost between her father and the gentleman on whose property she was an undoubted trespasser, and she was annoyed with herself for having done a silly thing which might make an apology necessary.
"If father has to eat humble pie to Mr. Nugent on my account it will be simply rotten," she murmured. "I wish I could get out of this before that wretched man brings him. If I only could there would be nothing to prove that his story is true, or at worst I could stick it out that it was not me he caught."
But to wish herself out of the grotto was one thing, and to find a means of exit another. The door was of oak, strongly clamped with iron and quite impervious to any battery she could administer. She had her golf clubs with her, and essayed to prise open the lock with her driving iron, but the heavy bolt resisted all her efforts. The window was high out of her reach, and if it had not been it was too small for her to creep through. With tears of vexation in her eyes she had to admit that escape was impracticable. There was nothing for it but to await an ignominious release by way of the door when Nugentshould have been apprised of her capture. It was possible, she thought ruefully, that he might pretend he had not been told, and keep her there all night as a punishment for her intrusion.
Having resigned herself to the inevitable, Enid characteristically cast about for means to extract what comfort she could out of her cheerless surroundings. The materials at hand were not very promising, the contents of the grotto consisting of a broken lawn-mower, some empty kegs that had held patent manure, and a few obsolete garden tools. But she now noted, what she had missed before, a bench at the far end, running the whole breadth of the grotto. Upon it lay a lot of matting, such as is used for protecting cucumber frames in frosty weather.
"I'm in luck's way at last," she muttered. "That'll make a ripping sofa on which to take it easy till I'm let out of durance vile."
Suiting the action to the word, she moved one or two of the upper mats more to her liking, and then stretched her lithe young frame luxuriously on the improvised couch. In a moment she was on her feet again, staring in dismay at her hastily vacated nest, while every nerve in her body tingled with apprehension.
Something had moved—"squirmed," she called it afterwards—beneath the mats. Something soft and yielding, horribly suggestive of a human body discomfited by her weight.
But there was no further movement. Relieved of its incubus, the thing that had wriggled its dumb protest had reverted to its previous quiescence,and was as uncannily still as it had been all the time she had been in the grotto. Enid felt that she must do one of two things—either scream at the top of her voice, or fathom the mystery of what, or who, it was that lay concealed.
She was no screamer, so screwing up her lips tightly she chose the second course. A few vigorous tugs sent the mats flying hither and thither, and disclosed a man lying prone upon his face on the wooden seat, flattened out like a gigantic lizard. Enid shrank back a little as the figure rose slowly, uncoiling its cramped limbs and peering and blinking up at her. Intuitively she recoiled further still when she saw the ferocity in the haggard eyes.
But even as she looked the fierceness died out, giving place to an expression of patient sadness. The man, who was clad in a cotton blouse and blue jean trousers, made a half-respectful, half-deprecating gesture.
"Ah, so it is not Louise," he said gently in French. "So much the better for the traitress, and for me, perhaps." Then he added in broken English, "Ma'amselle must not be frighted. I do her no harm. I only poor sailor man from onion ship, come in naice cool place for rest."
On the instant Enid's self-possession returned to her. She remembered what her father had said to Reggie Beauchamp—that the clue to the murder of Levison was probably connected with a French lugger engaged in the onion trade, at present lying at Exmouth. It was on the cards that her adventure was not to turn out so fruitless as she had feared. But the man would require careful handling, for shedid not lose sight of the fact that she might be in the presence of a murderer. And she was handicapped by not knowing what were the relations between Travers Nugent and this foreigner.
In coming to a conclusion on the latter point, her inherited powers of deduction came to her aid. She shrewdly reasoned that if the man were well disposed towards the owner of The Hut, he would hardly be lurking in the grounds, hidden under a pile of matting.
"I was not frightened—only startled," she replied pleasantly. "You see I am an intruder here, just as much as I expect you are yourself. I am afraid it will be as awkward for you as for me—my getting myself locked in by that horrid creature."
Pierre Legros laughed grimly. "It no matter to me, so long as the right person come to unlock the door," he said.
The words were suggestive of some sinister purpose—if not of some secret relating to the past. Enid reflected quickly that she must draw this man out if he was to be useful to her in either respect. And it also occurred to her that he might be made useful in more ways than as a source of information.
"You thought I was some one else when I sat down upon you?" she said, ignoring his last remark, and trying to read his features in the gloom. It was light enough to enable her to note that her question recalled the ferocity to his deep-sunk eyes, though not for her. His hardening gaze was rather for some one he saw in his mental vision.
"Yes, I t'ink you was anozer person, ma'amselle, and for that I demand of you the kind pardon, for shevery weecked person," he said. "Ma'amselle not cruel and weecked—I Pierre Legros, tell by her voice. But that ozair, shefille du diable, and trample on the heart of man, and make him more bad than herself. She and her false Ingleesh lover."
The onion-seller had no more terrors for Enid, and she drew a little closer, subtly conveying the idea of confidence in order to win his confidence. She rejoiced that she had been locked up in the grotto now. She guessed that the core of the mystery lay under the cotton blouse of this rugged foreign sailor, and she meant to have it out of him by hook or by crook. Rapidly casting about for the most effective weapon in her equipment, she hit upon friendly sympathy as the best—for the opening of the campaign, at any rate. A little later, perhaps, she would play for all it was worth the sentiment that they were companions in the same dilemma.
"I am sorry that you are in trouble," she said kindly, and wondering what language Reggie would use if he knew how he was to be exploited for her purpose. "I wish I could help you, for I, too, know what it is to have an affair of the heart. I am betrothed to a sailor, and he has gone away and left me miserable. Got half a dozen wives in half a dozen ports, I expect."
Enid Mallory was her father's daughter, and had inherited a strain of the veteran diplomatist's knowledge of human nature. A thrill of victory ran through her veins as she noted the effect of her Parthian shot. For Pierre Legros lifted his brown hands to his swarthy face and wept such a flood of tears as a British seaman could not have secreted,let alone shed, in a lifetime. She waited patiently till the paroxysm had passed, and then reaped her reward in a flow of excited verbiage which amounted to this—
He was one of the hands on a lugger which had brought a cargo of onions from France, and in the course of vending his wares about the country he had discovered his old sweetheart, Louise Aubin, in service at the Manor House. But her head had been turned by a succession of English admirers, and she would have nothing to do with him. Legros waxed somewhat incoherent about the personality of these swains, slurring over his first efforts to defeat his rivals in a jumble of phrases, from which, however sharp-witted Enid was able to form a distinct suspicion. Her father had hinted that the murder of Levison might be connected with the onion ship; she believed that she was shut up with the actual perpetrator of the crime.
Bringing his narrative down to date, in explanation of his concealment in the grounds of The Hut, Legros became more intelligible. Enid could hardly believe her ears when it transpired that Mr. Travers Nugent himself was the object of this half-demented creature's jealousy. She was convinced that he was the victim of some ridiculous error, since to associate the fastidious, middle-aged bachelor with a vulgar intrigue with a lady's maid was the height of absurdity. But there was no doubt that, however the misunderstanding had arisen, Legros was firmly convinced of its truth.
He had of late found that Louise was paying frequent clandestine visits to Nugent, and as a consequence he had spent much time in hanging about and spying on them. That very morning he had crept from the moor into the garden for the purpose, and he had been making his way through the shrubbery when he heard Nugent's voice coming towards him. He had taken refuge in the grotto, and had barely had time to conceal himself under the mats when Nugent had entered, accompanied by the man who had just now made them both prisoners by locking the door.
"They made plenty talk, ma'amselle, till my poor head ache," Legros continued with that note of self-pity which seemed his leading attribute. "And their talk was of 'the girl'—always the girl, and how she was to be deported—is that your word?—in a steamer that would come off the shore to-night. There was also talk of anozaire—a man, one Jermicide—who was to be deported and made what you call decoy for tempting her on to the steamer. The girl,cela va sans dire, is Louise Aubin, and Nugent, he run off with her. I not rightly know where Jermicide what you call come in, for I nevair heard of him. He must be one more of the lovers of Louise. She raise 'em like the mushrooms, here in your damp country."
Enid's active brain worked rapidly. The onion-seller had evidently got a bee in his bonnet which it was useless to try to disentangle. The salient fact stood out that Nugent had a project afoot for that night, in which all the principal actors in the Levison mystery, as enumerated by her father, were concerned, and of which her father would wish to be informed without delay. And here was she, hisonly possible informant, a prisoner without any prospect of release except at the hands of a cunning schemer who would have reason for preventing her from imparting the knowledge she had acquired. The action of "The Bootlace Man" in locking her in took a more sinister meaning by the light of what she had heard, and at the same time made her more than ever anxious to escape.
The suggestion that Violet Maynard's maid was the object of Nugent's machinations she dismissed with scorn, but that Leslie Chermside was to be "deported" in a steamer, either voluntarily or otherwise, was an item which ought to be under her father's consideration before it became an accomplished fact.
"I think that if I was out of this horrid place I could help you," she said. "Miss Maynard, the mistress of Louise, is a friend of mine. I would go to her and persuade her not to allow Louise any liberty to-night. Sailors are so clever, especially French sailors. I am sure that you will be able to hit upon some way of getting out."
The sun was low in the heavens, and inside the shrub-girt grotto it was scarcely possible to see the walls. Legros peered up at the little window, the top of which was just on a level with the eaves, where the slope of the roof began. Enid followed the direction of his glance, and pointed out that the aperture was not big enough for either of them to pass through. For answer Legros went and collected some of the patent fertilizer kegs, set them one upon the other under the window, and clambered up on to the topmost. By so doing he couldeasily reach with his hand the upper pane. It was already cracked, and, cautiously removing the broken glass, he thrust his arm through.
"From here I can make a hole in the roof big enough," he called down in a hoarse whisper. "It will take very long time to pick off the slates, they so firm fixed. But it the only way."
"Then, my dear good man, please begin at once," Enid urged him. "And don't make more noise than you can help in dislodging the slates, or we shall have that brute, or Mr. Nugent himself, round to stop us."
So she leaned against the mouldy wall and watched the laborious task with growing impatience, and in momentary dread lest the door should be flung open by the "bootlace man" or his employer. For though she was nearly certain that her companion of the grotto was a shedder of human blood her instinct told her that to her personally the forces controlled by Travers Nugent were far more dangerous.
The work of removing the roofing seemed interminable. The interior of the old stone building grew pitch-black before three of the slates had been displaced and gently tossed into the herbage. A distant clock in the town struck eight, nine, and ten and still Legros remained on his perch, toiling, with twisted body and arm crooked through the broken pane, in frantic endeavour to enlarge the opening.
At last the clock struck eleven, and before the half-hour the Frenchman slid nimbly to the floor.
"There, ma'amselle!" he panted after his exertions. "I t'ink there room now for you to passthrough. For myself I shall have to make 'im one bit bigger. If you ready I give you what you call a 'and up."
Enid prepared to mount the kegs, grateful that she was wearing a short golfing skirt, but in no wise daunted at the prospect of crawling through the yawning gap in the roof or of the drop to the ground on the other side. But in the act of commencing her scramble on to the improvised stage she paused and clutched Pierre's arm.
"Hush!" she whispered. "I heard some one speaking. There are people close by—crossing the garden."
In a silence that could be felt they waited, and it was only when the voice which had disturbed her had passed beyond hearing that Enid wished that she had pursued quite other tactics and called out—called with the full vigour of her lungs.
For all too late she realized that the voice which had arrested her attempted escape was the voice of her friend, Violet Maynard. She tried to rectify her error by calling out now, but there was no response. Her shrill cry shot skywards through the aperture towards the blinking stars, but the thick stone walls stood between her and the ears the cry was meant for. Violet and Travers Nugent had passed through the door on to the moor on their way to the beach.
The commotion caused by Leslie Chermside's descent into the launch, and by his unsuccessful struggle with the crew alarmed and agitated Violet. But she was spared the full extent of the shock, not having recognized her lover in the man who had swarmed down the steamer's side to be ultimately stunned and overpowered. In haste to complete the task which had brought her there, she mounted to the deck of theCobrawithout waiting to see the sequel of the disturbance.
As she stepped on board she noticed that the ship, which had been wrapped in complete darkness, suddenly blazed from stem to stern in the full glow of the electric light. She was surprised at this premature disclosure of the vessel's position, as long as it remained stationary off the coast Leslie not being safe from arrest. But she reflected that it did not really matter, since she hoped to prevail on him to go back with her and face his accusers.
The sudden illumination showed her the hairless features of Captain Brant, who had come down from the bridge to meet her at the gangway. The monkeyish limbs and curious leper-like face of theCobra'scommander filled her with a repulsion which was increased by the mocking smile and bow of his greeting.
"Miss Maynard, I believe?" he said in his thin, piping treble. "Allow me to introduce myself as the captain of this ship, Simon Brant by name, and very much at your service. If you will do me the honour to follow I will conduct you to the saloon, where I think that you will find that everything for your comfort has been——"
"My comfort doesn't count, as I shall only be on the steamer a few minutes," Violet cut him short in the rather imperious tone she sometimes used to people she disliked. "If you will take me to Mr. Chermside I shall hope not to delay you very long, for I am anxious to be put on shore again at the earliest possible moment."
"Oh, I'll see that you're put on shore again, miss, don't you make any mistake about that. I'm on the job for no other purpose," replied Brant with a chuckle that he made no attempt to conceal.
His insolent manner caused Violet to eye him with growing indignation, and a hot reproof trembled on her tongue. But Bully Cheeseman created a diversion by approaching the captain and handing him a letter.
"The sealed orders, I reckon; the gent gave them to me for you," said the mate, with a cold stare at his late passenger, whose statuesque beauty it had been too dark to appreciate on the way to the steamer in the launch.
Brant tore open the envelope, glanced through the contents, and emitted a low whistle. "Sindkhote,by God!" Violet heard him mutter under his breath, and it struck the first note of vague, uncomprehended danger. "A long cruise that, but it's all in the day's work."
Aloud he added: "Have you got that swab trussed up?"
"Haven't left him room to wriggle," was Cheeseman's reply, accompanied by an evil grin. "They're hoisting him aboard now. Where would you wish him to be stowed?"
"Is he unconscious?"
"Dazed, but coming round, I reckon."
"Then tell them to take him to his state-room—you know what I mean, the one with the appliances for taming naughty boys," said the captain, winking at his subordinate. "I'll come and read the riot act to him as soon as I've got time. When you've fixed him up safely, sling the launch inboard and take charge of the bridge. You know what to do, but I'll join you as soon as I've seen to this lady. Now, madam, follow me, please."
Violet's eagerness to see her lover was so intense that in spite of the misgivings with which Brant's manner had begun to inspire her she obeyed his curt command. She tried to attribute his rudeness to irritation at having had his start delayed on her account, and she told herself that she ought to be ashamed of her vague alarm. After all theCobraand her saturnine commander were only incidents in a bad dream which would be past in a few minutes—as soon as she should have persuaded Leslie to return with her to Ottermouth.
But, pursuant on this train of thought, the question occurred to her: What had the captain meant by ordering his offensive mate to "have the launch slung inboard?" Many happy days on her father's yacht had made her familiar with sea terms, and she knew that the order was incompatible with Nugent's promise that the launch should take her back to the foot of Colebrook Chine, either with or without her lover. If it was required for that purpose there was no reason for hoisting it aboard.
And then, just as she was hesitating how to put her question into words, there came the terrible enlightenment. She had reached the door of the saloon in the deck-house, and Brant, with another of his sardonic bows, was standing aside for her to enter, when the rattle of the launch being raised to the davits fell upon her ears, succeeded without a moment's interval by the sharp beat of theCobra'sengine-room gong. The steamer immediately began to move through the water, gathering speed with every pulse of her powerful turbines.
"What—what is this?" Violet cried, voicing her fears at last. "They have made a mistake—have forgotten that I am not going."
The apelike skipper emphasized his amusement with a cackling laugh. "That's where you make a mistake," he said. "Because, my dear young lady, we have been fooling about for weeks for no other purpose than to take you a nice long sea voyage. Come, be a sensible girl and don't quarrel with your luck. I'll explain it all in a brace of shakes."
Throwing off all semblance of deference, he pushed his prisoner into the luxurious and brilliantly lit saloon, and shutting the door, stood with hisback to it. Violet, perceiving that she was powerless to resent an outrage so utterly incomprehensible, confronted him in silence, only the cold lightnings from her eyes telling of her anger.
"I like a good plucked 'un, and I can see you're that." Brant resumed in his squeaky tones. "It'll make my job easier, and I'll lay level chalks that by the time we part four weeks hence you'll be giving me a testimonial for gentlemanly conduct and good seamanship. That's what the passengers do on the big liners, and this ship will be quite as comfortable as a mail-boat for you, miss, unless you make trouble for yourself. You'll be telling me so when I land you at Sindkhote."
"At Sindkhote?" Violet repeated faintly. The name seemed familiar, but in her dismay at her present situation she could not remember why.
"Sindkhote, in the Runn of Cutch in the East Indies," said Brant, his base nature leading him to discern acquiescence in the calm that was only due to bewilderment. "This yacht is the property of the Maharajah of Sindkhote, and I, for the time being, have the honour to be his Highness's humble servant at a thundering good wage. Mr. Nugent, who engaged me and the whole bag of tricks, gave me to understand that you and the Maharajah were a bit thick up in London a while back, and that as you drew the line at matrimony, the prince was driven to extreme measures. You ought to take it as a compliment."
No further words were needed to inform Bhagwan Singh's intended victim of the main issue of the plot against her. She saw clearly that theenormous resources of the Maharajah, aided by Travers Nugent's subtle scheming, had been called into play to avenge her refusal of his preposterous offer of marriage in the conservatory of Brabazon House at the beginning of the London season. The broad lines of the conspiracy stood out in their grim significance, and the minor details of it did not seem to matter. The one thing that concerned her was the part played in it by the man who had so quickly come into her life, and to whom she had given her love.
"Where is Mr. Chermside?" she forced herself to ask.
"Nursing his broken head," was the brutal reply. "You mustn't set any store on having him for a travelling companion. He's going to make the voyage on the silent system, in a cabin of his own. I can't have an impetuous young lunatic like him loose on such a quiet ship as theCobra."
"It was Mr. Chermside who attacked the crew of the launch just now?"
"No other, but mark you, he never had the ghost of a chance. Bully Cheeseman is equal to taking on half a dozen such shavers as that, and with his pretty temper it's a wonder he didn't shoot. It would have served the dirty turncoat right, but he'll get it hotter by waiting—hot as hell on this ship, and hotter still when Bhagwan Singh gets his claws into him, from what I hear of his Highness."
It was a trait in Simon Brant's warped temperament to rejoice in the infliction of pain, mental and physical. His brutal answer was designed to create a distress that he could gloat over. But itmissed its mark. Violet received it, outwardly at least, with cold disdain.
"Thank you," she said, betraying no emotion save by a little catch in her breath. "I think that I am now fully informed on all necessary points; and I shall be obliged if you will leave me. One moment, please. Is this the apartment I am to occupy? Where is the sleeping accommodation?"
Brant, who had hoped for the luxury of seeing a woman in tears, had begun to open the door, but at her bidding he turned, and the chagrin in his horrible face changed to a grudging admiration which made it infinitely more horrible. The pose of the superb figure, the disgusted scorn in the coolly appraising eyes, the level tones of the musical voice, all reduced him to a temporary servility that would have been unbearingly nauseous to a weaker character, capable of a personal interest in the vile instrument of her persecution. But Violet Maynard, having grasped the main facts, was able to regard Captain Simon Brant from an entirely detached point of view.
"I will send the stewardess to you, miss," he said quite humbly. "She has been selected on purpose to be of service to you during the voyage, and if you have any cause of complaint do not fail to let me know."
He was gone at last, and if the devil ever gets his tail between his legs his disciple followed his master's example in the going. But Brant's subdued mood only lasted till he had shut the saloon door. He went storming up on to the bridge, and vented some of his spleen on Cheeseman for being half a point off his course."We must keep out of the regular steamer tracks," he growled in conclusion. "There's nothing at sea fast enough to catch us, but the less we're sighted the better for us afterwards."
"That wench that we shipped at Weymouth has been worrying to know when we shall be off Plymouth," said the mate.
"Oh, has she?" sneered Brant. "Go and tell her to attend the lady in the saloon, and if she asks again you can box her ears."
In the meanwhile Violet had sunk down on to one of the couches in the saloon. Though she had thoroughly taken in the meaning of all that Brant had said to her, it was too soon to feel the full force of the blow that had fallen. So stunning had been the shock that she would have to recover from the shock before she would be able to contemplate the prospect ahead in a proper sense of proportion. For the present her thoughts were chiefly busy with her lover, and with the news of him that had enabled her to confound Brant with such stoical calm.
For the fact stood out above all others that Leslie was as much a dupe as she was herself in the train of circumstances that had ended in their being fellow-captives on the steamer. His desperate effort to obtain control of the launch proved that. He had risked his life to prevent her coming on board, instead of, as she had been falsely led to believe, leaving the unmanly message which had lured her into the trap. Brant had referred to him as a turncoat, but her heart kept telling her that if he had ever been associated in the conspiracy he had been hoodwinked into it—just as, later, Nugent hadhoodwinked him into acting as the unconscious decoy for her final undoing.
Suddenly her reverie was interrupted by the opening and shutting of the saloon door. Looking up, she saw a tall girl in rusty black advancing towards her, her plain and somewhat bold face showing traces of recent storm.
"You are my female gaoler?" said Violet, rising. On such a ship engaged on such an errand she had not expected a congenial attendant, but the dogged firmness in this young woman's square jaw seemed to foreshadow that present harsh treatment would be added to the terrors of the future. Violet knew enough of human nature to be aware that the same attitude which would quell the loose tongue of a man like Brant would only goad a bully of her own sex to grosser indignities.
The reply which she received came, therefore, as a welcome surprise.
"No, madam, I am not your gaoler, but I will be your friend if you will let me be," said Miss Jimpson, her clenched lips relaxing into a reassuring smile that changed her into a kindly woman with all the magic of a transformation scene. "I was trapped on to this villainous ship only this morning—same as you were to-night. I'm just as keen to get off it as you can be."
The daughter of the millionaire and the draper's assistant stood eyeing each other for twenty seconds in growing mutual approval, and then the hearty ring of Miss Nettle Jimpson's rather powerful voice prevailed. Their hands met in a grasp that at once testified to true comradeship and to sympathy for the other's plight. Violet would have drawn the other down on to the couch beside her, but Miss Jimpson, with a glance at the door, resisted the friendly invitation.
"Better not," she said in her matter-of-fact way. "One of those beasts might take it into his head to come in at any minute, and it won't do for them to think that we're going to be thick together. I've just given one of them a smack in the face that will last him quite a while, but it wasn't exactly judicious. They know I'm not fond of them, but my cue isn't open rebellion till I'm driven to it."
So Miss Jimpson remained standing while at Violet's request she recounted the story of her enforced enlistment, and of all that had happened on theCobrasince. She waxed humorous at herown expense over the inducement held out by Brant to pacify her—that she was to act as companion to a lady passenger; and she described her subsequent surmise that she was to assist at an elopement. Again she went on to relate how Leslie Chermside had shattered that latest theory, first in words and secondly by wild dismay on hearing Violet's voice in the launch alongside.
"I knew then that he might be your sweetheart, but that he certainly wasn't on board theCobrato run away with you," said Nettle simply. "He was like a crazy creature in his wish to stop you from coming aboard. He expected to be killed in the attempt, and he begged me to stand by you if he failed to get the better of the men in the launch."
Violet's eyes were moist with unshed tears. "You have been frank with me, and I will be frank with you," she said. "Mr. Chermside is my lover, and the people who are employing Brant in this cruel business induced him by a series of lying tricks to fly on the steamer from a charge of murder. They hoped, as has happened, that I should follow to dissuade him."
"The charge is trumped up, of course?" said Nettle, and it was rather an assertion than a question.
"He might have some difficulty in disproving it, the train was laid with such fiendish ingenuity," answered Violet gravely.
"That is rough luck. Then if he escaped from the ship to land he would be arrested and have to stand his trial?" And there was that in Miss Jimpson's voice that suggested that she was weighing chances with some definite idea at the back of her active brain.
"I am afraid so, but his arrest would be infinitely preferable to the fate destined for him if he does not escape," replied Violet. There was a little eager note of inquiry in her voice, for she had been quick to grasp the hesitation in her new friend's tone.
But, ignoring the challenge, Miss Jimpson refused to be drawn at present. "Tell me," she said—"that is if you care to—why Brant has been bribed to do this dirty work, and where the ship is bound for."
Wisely abstaining from forcing her ally's hand, Violet disclosed in such halting sentences as her pride would permit the object of the cunning intrigue that had centred round her. Nettle Jimpson's fearless eyes grew rounder and rounder as she listened to the crop of mischief sown by the Maharajah of Sindkhote 5,000 miles away to ripen in a quiet English village. And not being the direct object of the villainous outrage, she appreciated more fully than Violet was yet able to the ghastly tragedy looming ahead at the end of theCobra'svoyage.
"There's one chance," she said when the story of the Eastern Prince's passion, aided by a western rascal's guile, came to an end. "Only a little one, but still a chance. On condition that I didn't play the giddy goat over being kidnapped Brant promised to put into Plymouth on the way down channel, so that I could send a letter ashore for myyoung man. He's a petty officer on the destroyerSnipe."
"TheSnipe!" repeated Violet. The name struck her at once as familiar, and a moment later she remembered why. It had been ever on the impertinent lips of Enid Mallory as that of the diminutive warship commanded by her own particular naval hero, Reggie Beauchamp.
"Yes," said Nettle, "theSnipeis attached to the torpedo flotilla there. If I could communicate your position to Ned he'd tell his commander, and something would surely be done to stop this steamer before she reaches her destination. It's a far cry to India, and the authorities would set the cables to work. It would go hard with us if theCobrawasn't snapped up by a man-of-war somewhere betwixt this and there."
Violet shook her head. "That promise was made to be broken," she smiled sadly. "I fear Brant would never incur such a risk as that."
"If he doesn't this is going to be a hot ship," rejoined Nettle with spirit. "But you are very likely right," she added after a pause. "When I asked the mate Cheeseman when we should be off Plymouth he tried to box my ears—by the captain's orders, he said. That was why I smacked his face."
Suddenly Violet rose and began pacing the saloon. "Oh, but I have been selfishly thinking of myself!" she cried. "I heard that brute say that Leslie—Mr. Chermside—was only stunned and that he was coming to, but for all that he may be badly injured and in pain. Can you find outfor me, you dear kind girl? Not if it will entail insult or ill-treatment for you, though."
"I'll chance that," replied Nettle firmly. "They carried him down on to the lower deck somewhere, and I'll go and see. But I am forgetting my duties. I was to show you your sleeping cabin. It's next door to this."
Violet waved her away. "As if I could sleep," she protested with a petulance which she instantly regretted.
Nettle, with a large-hearted tolerance for her companion's over-wrought condition, nodded and went out on to the upper deck. The steamer was gliding through the calm water at half-speed, having reached the fishing grounds of the Brixham trawlers off Berry Head. The sturdy little craft were clustered thick as ants on either beam. It was necessary to thread a cautious track through them if an untimely collision was not to furnish a clue to Violet's disappearance as soon as it was discovered in the morning. Nugent's "sealed orders" had been explicit on this head, and Simon Brant was not the man to risk punishment and the loss of his huge reward for lack of attention to detail.
"The inference at Ottermouth when Miss Maynard is missed will be that she has voluntarily accompanied Chermside on his flight," these instructions run. "On the whole it will serve our purpose as well as another, but it is imperative that the direction of this flight be unknown. I have Mr. Maynard's confidence, and I shall do my best to foster the idea that Chermside, whom he will of course regard as a free agent, will be likely to makefor America, blinding pursuit by taking an eastern course up channel, and then a northerly one round the Scottish coast into the Atlantic. In reality you will run down channel to the westward, and in doing so you must therefore avoid undue speed or anything that may draw attention to your vessel as the one in which the 'elopement' has been carried out."
Nettle Jimpson, knowing nothing about the reason, was nevertheless annoyed at the slow speed, because it would delay the "one chance" at Plymouth to which she had pinned her faith. But realizing that the delay was beyond her control, she devoted herself to the matter in hand.
Casting an upward glance at the bridge, where the quartermaster at the wheel and several other figures were dimly visible against the starlit sky, she skulked along in the shadows of the deck superstructure till she came to the companion stairs leading down to the main deck. It was but a short distance from the door of the saloon and she met no one, though both from the stern and the forecastle gruff whisperings told her that it was a wakeful ship. Stealing down the stairs, she reached the main deck unmolested, and looked about her. Evidently it was here that the officers and the engineers were berthed. Open cabin doors yielded glimpses of oilskin coats and tarpaulin hats, while a well-scrubbed table in the centre of the open space was spread with the remains of a meal that had been partaken of by half a dozen people.
But of the prisoner, or of any closed door behind which he could be confined, there was no sign.She continued to explore, and at the forward end of the deck found an open hatchway with a flight of almost perpendicular wooden steps running down into the pitch darkness of the lower deck. Undaunted by the steepness of the ladder and the absence of light, she descended into the abyss, where the smell of paint and cordage told her that she was near the ship's storeroom. Realizing at once that down here her eyes were useless for the quest, she raised her voice and called——
"Where are you, Mr. Chermside?"
Nothing but silence followed, and emboldened by the fact that none of theCobra'sruffian crew seemed to be on the lower deck, she called louder still, and this time she got an answer—an inarticulate utterance, half-sigh and half-groan, from out of the inky blackness. Picking her way towards it, her groping hands encountered the blank space of an open door.
"Mr. Chermside, are you in there?" she asked, excitement rather than fear of being overheard causing her to drop her voice to a whisper.
Again that curious sound but no informing reply, and Nettle crept into the cabin. She had penetrated but a few feet when she stumbled over something, and, stooping down, she felt a soft substance which her sense of touch informed her was the body of a man. The next instant she gave vent to a cry of horror when her searching hands came into contact with a steel chain which her busy fingers quickly traced to a metal circlet grasping a man's leg.
"Mr. Chermside!" she scarcely breathed."Give me water," came the faint response from the unseen.
Nettle Jimpson's presence of mind, which had never really left her, reasserted itself in full force. "Shan't be a moment," she said, and whisking out of the cabin, retraced her steps as best she could to the ladder, climbed to the main-deck, and seized a jug of water from the table where the ship's officers had supped. She looked around for a portable lamp or candle, but this deck, like the rest of the vessel, was electrically lit, and she had abandoned the hope of providing herself with a light, when she espied a box of wax matches among a heap of tobacco ashes on a plate.
A minute later she was down on the lower deck again, holding the jug to Leslie's parched lips, and by the tiny flare of one of the matches examining the dungeon which Brant's malevolent spite had devised for his prisoner. Leslie was lying on a plank bench, securely chained from the ankles to an iron ring firmly set in the stanchion over his head. His face was covered with blood, and he was white with the loss of it, though he revived fast when he had drained the water. By the time Nettle had lit her third match she had assured herself that his injuries were not dangerous, though she was equally convinced that to release him from his cruel durance was beyond her powers.
"Miss Maynard—they have not harmed her?" gasped Leslie, as soon as he could speak.
His ministering angel hastened to reassure him, exaggerating sturdily in a good cause. "She's treated like a queen, with every deference andrespect," said the girl, as she eased his cramped position. "Of course, she's worried about you. But see here, Mr. Chermside, we've no time for talking. I must get back to the saloon without being caught if I'm to be of any use. There are only us two women to stand between you and these fiends, and there's only God Almighty to stand between us and—the end of the voyage. There's a bare chance that we may be able to send word into Plymouth, if I can fool or browbeat the captain, and I must be on hand to run that chance for all it's worth. You understand that I can't stay here with you?"
"Yes, go at once," murmured the injured man. "Never mind me, but for heaven's sake do what you can for her. Above all, let me beg of you not to harrow her with a description of all this."
The clank of the chain was eloquent of what he meant, and, promising to observe his wishes, Nettle withdrew. She regained the saloon after her adventure without meeting any one, and to Violet's eager questions she gave the evasively truthful answer that Leslie was recovering from his injuries, but that he was kept a close prisoner on the lower deck, and that she had had to converse with him without seeing him, leaving it to be inferred that she had not entered his cabin. By this means she avoided imparting the gruesome details of theCobra's"black hole."
Violet steadily refused to retire to the sleeping cabin prepared for her, and the two girls spent what remained of the hours of darkness in the saloon together. In the grey of dawn Nettle went out on to the upper deck, self-possessed as usual, butdespondent of success in the task before her. Brant was on the bridge, stumping to and fro to keep himself warm, for there was a chilly nip in the breeze that had sprung up during the night. The little atomy of a skipper seemed in an ominously genial mood, for at sight of Miss Jimpson's fluttering garments he leaned over the bridge-rail and hailed her.
"Hullo, my Weymouth linen-tearer!" he called down. "Shaking into your job nicely, eh? How's her Royal Highness the Maharanee of Sindkhote this morning? I've no doubt that she's confided in you about her brilliant destiny. The day will come when she will look on Simon Brant as a sort of fairy godfather."
Nettle looked round warily. Land was visible on the starboard beam, but so far off that its contour could not be distinguished in the blue haze that preceded sunrise. The distance between the coastline and the steamer, which was now running at full speed, was hardly compatible with an intention to make for an English port. Miss Nettle's Sunday walks and talks with a sailor sweetheart had given her a smattering of sea-lore, and she did not like the look of it. But she was there to assert herself, and did not mean to haul down her colours without striking a blow.
"Drat you for a fairy godfather—you and your Maharanees!" she exclaimed, with a well-feigned indifference to the larger issue, "It's me and my young man I'm thinking about. When do you run into Plymouth, so that I can send my letter?"
"Is it written?" Brant grinned down at her.
"That won't take five minutes. It will beready long before you can put me within reach of a post office."
Brant grinned again as he followed the direction of her gesture towards the distant land.
"Then don't trouble to write it," he croaked. "I admire your cheek so that I'd break orders for you if I could. But there's five thousand pounds to it, my dear, and theCobraisn't going to call at Plymouth or any other port till we dump our cargo. If you want a young man, I've no doubt you can be accommodated on board, or if there's none here to your fancy, perhaps the lady will fix you up with a blacky husband in India."
Miss Jimpson's eyes glinted. "Is that your last word?" she said.
"As to calling at Plymouth? Yes, it's my very last word; and now you can start abusing me. I rather like it," came down the captain's shrill treble. And he added maliciously, "We passed the opening of Plymouth Sound an hour ago if it's any use to you to know it."
The girl turned on her heel without further waste of breath. She had never in her heart relied on the miscreant's promise, but she had clung to it as the last chance. And now their last chance had failed.
Mr. and Mrs. Vernon Mallory were too accustomed to their daughter's erratic habits to be perturbed by her non-appearance at the dinner-table. It came natural to them to account for her absence by an invitation, given and accepted on the spur of the moment, to spend an informal evening at the house of some friend, and they would be quite satisfied if she turned up any time before midnight.
It was Mr. Mallory's practice on three evenings of the week to go down to the club after dinner to enjoy a little bridge or whist with some of his cronies, and this being one of the appointed nights he sallied forth about nine o'clock without giving Enid a second thought. If he had known that she was shut up in Travers Nugent's grotto, his opponents at the card-table would have had reason to rejoice; for, always a sound player, he was more than usually deadly that evening.
On going downstairs at the conclusion of the play, he came upon the lantern-jawed Mr. Lazarus Lowch, the foreman of the adjourned inquest. Mr. Lowch was seldom to be found at the club so late, and he was mooning about the ante-room with anabstracted air which promptly changed to purposeful alertness at sight of Mr. Mallory. A less shrewd observer than the old servant of the Foreign Office would have seen that he was the object of this unwonted visitation.
"I should be glad if you could spare me a few minutes, Mallory," said Lowch, in his funereal tones. "It is rather important and in a way personal to yourself. We are on the eve of some striking developments in this murder case, I think."
In common with most of his fellow-members, Mr. Mallory had no great liking for the dismal Lazarus, but, like the old war-horse he was, he pricked up his ears at the reason for the desired interview.
Glancing into the reading-room, he saw that it was unoccupied. "Come in here," he said shortly. "There is no one to overhear us."
"Your mention of overhearing brings me at once to what I want to say," Mr. Lowch proceeded ponderously. "The other day, in this very club, I overheard the most astonishing confirmation——"
"I know. I saw you listening on the stairs when Nugent and Chermside were together in the card-room," Mr. Mallory could not resist the interruption. "Incidentally, you led me into a bit of eavesdropping too, for when I was at pains to inform myself who it was who was so engrossed in that conversation, I couldn't help hearing a few words of what was interesting you."
The sarcasm fell quite flat on Mr. Lazarus Lowch. His hide was as that of a rhinoceros to any such delicate irony. He was one of those who thinkthat the end justifies the means, provided that the end in question entails the discomfort or disparagement of some unfortunate fellow-creature.
"Then if you heard it too, it will simplify my task," he went on serenely. "Mr. Mallory, it will be my duty at the adjourned inquiry to let daylight into the coroner about that fellow Chermside. He is the murderer, as sure as we stand here, and Nugent is shielding him because he wishes to avoid incurring the odium of having introduced a scoundrel into this peaceful spot."
Mr. Mallory could not entirely control the disgust which crept into his face at this open avowal of petty spite. But he was old diplomatist enough to control his voice. "That is not my view of the case," he said, with frigid politeness. And then, as if stung by a scorpion, he for an instant lost the grip in which he was holding himself, and added quickly, "But why am I the recipient of your—what shall I call it—confession? What have your spyings and deductions to do with me more than another?"
Mr. Lowch essayed to impart to his saturnine features an expression of sympathetic concern, and made a failure of the job. Indeed, the facial antics in which he indulged rather suggested the anticipation of malevolent triumph. "You surely, my dear sir, have not forgotten the first sitting of the inquest, and the evidence given thereat by Lieutenant Beauchamp?" he said, trying to adopt an ingratiating tone, but only succeeding in croaking like a raven.
Mr. Mallory guessed what he was making for,but declined to provide the opening. "Well?" was all he said.
"Mr. Beauchamp admitted that on the night of the murder he was on the marsh, close to where the body of Levison was found—at least, I elicited as much from him," said Lowch, warming to his work.
"Yes?" snapped Mr. Mallory, still refusing to be helpful.
"And that he heard a strange cry?"
"So I understood."
"Leaving an impression on the mind of the jury that he knew more of the occurrence than he chose to tell?"
"Not having been on the jury, it is impossible for me to answer that," Mr. Mallory rejoined drily.
Lazarus Lowch bowed slightly as though willing to make the concession, but conscious of his magnanimity in doing so. "Now Mr. Mallory," he went on, clearing his throat as a prelude to the real issue, "I do not mean any offence, but I am more or less in an official position in this inquiry. Mr. Beauchamp had a companion on that evening, and though the name did not transpire in court, it is common knowledge who that companion was. Gossip may be pernicious, but in a place like this it does not err. It will not be denied, I think, that it was your daughter, Miss Enid Mallory, who accompanied Lieutenant Beauchamp on that evening walk?"
Mr. Mallory contrived to keep the curb on himself. He was very angry, but he wanted to knowwhat was coming. Evidently this fatuous busybody had not yet sprung the full force of the tremendous battery with which he believed himself armed.
"There is no need for any mystery," Mr. Mallory replied suavely. "Enid and Reggie Beauchamp are engaged to be married. I am aware that they were together that evening, and with my entire sanction—if that is what you are driving at."
Mr. Lazarus shook his head, as one who is misjudged. "Really, no," came his protesting croak. "I should be the last to impute that kind of secrecy to Miss Mallory. On the contrary, I am sure that she would be quite open about anything of that sort. Nor would it be my business if she wasn't."
"Well, look here, Lowch. What the devil is it that she hasn't been open about that is your business?" exclaimed Enid's father, losing patience at last. "You have got something up your sleeve, I can see. Would it not be better to pull it down and have done with it? But I warn you first that you must be careful how you handle my daughter's good name."
The chronic scowl that made little children run when the local kill-joy approached lifted at the prospect of striking a blow beneath the belt. Lowch even smiled in sickly fashion as he struck it.
"I was on the golf links this afternoon," he began his indictment, "and I happened to see Miss Enid leave at the end of her round, as I thought, for home. Instead of accompanying her friends, however, she parted from them outside the pavilion, and went away alone in the opposite direction. Infact, entirely in the interests of justice, I watched her——"
"Where from?" came the knife-like interruption.
"From behind a gorse-bush," was the unblushing rejoinder. "She went into Mr. Travers Nugent's garden door, which, as you know, abuts on the moor. In a little while she was followed by a disreputable-looking man, who also disappeared into Nugent's garden. He, too, had been taking advantage of a convenient gorse-bush. The deduction is obvious. Nugent and his friend Chermside are deeply implicated in the murder which I am officially investigating, and—er—it looks very much as if Miss Enid, innocently perhaps, is mixed up in it too."
Mr. Mallory's clean-shaven, ascetic face had gone as white as snow. The absence from dinner took on a new complexion by the light of this misbegotten information that she had ventured into the danger zone, and had been shadowed into it by one of its dangerous master's creatures. But the old man's sudden pallor was due as much to the contemptuous rage that overmastered him as to fear for his only child.
"You amazing idiot!" he cried. "Why couldn't you have told me the bare fact of my daughter having been to The Hut at first, without your string of silly insinuations? The delay may mean—but there, words are wasted on such as you——"
He turned to hurry from the room, and there in the doorway, where she had stood for the last half-minute, in defiance of the most stringent rule of the club, was the pretty subject of his anxiety, her sun-brownedcheeks all seamed with bramble scratches, her corona of golden hair tumbling over her shoulders, her golf skirt in tatters.
"Don't look so scared, father," she said. "I'm all right. But that person has hit the correct nail about my being very mixed up in it, and you must come away at once, please. I have a lot to tell you."
Ignoring the incoherences of the inquisitive Lazarus, whom they left babbling his willingness to overlook the infraction of the rule against the admission of ladies if they would only have their say out there, father and daughter passed out of the club into the quiet and deserted street. Alive to the value of every second, Enid condensed the narrative of her experience in the grotto into a few words, but she missed no vital point, from her imprisonment by "The Bootlace Man" to her escape twenty minutes ago by the aid of her fellow-prisoner, the French onion-seller. Nor did she omit to repeat the fantastic notions held by Pierre Legros, and the final mystery of Violet Maynard's voice being heard in the garden so late at night.
In his absorption in the momentous tale, Mr. Mallory came to a halt under a street lamp, for they had intuitively turned their steps up the hill homewards. Enid saw the dawn of a great fear in the well-chiselled features she knew so well. But she would not have abstained from slang on the Judgment Day.
"What is it, dad," she said, laying a grimy paw on the sleeve of her father's dinner jacket. "Have I enabled you to spot the winner?""This is what I make of it on a rough calculation," Mr. Mallory replied. "The Frenchman's suspicions as to Nugent taking Louise Aubin away on a steamer are, of course, all moonshine. It is Violet Maynard who is being decoyed on to the steamer, with Chermside and the murder of that miserable Jew as items in a nice little plot of Nugent's. I have had inquiries made in London lately, and I find that he was thick with that Indian prince whose name was coupled with Violet's in the society rags. I know Bhagwan Singh for an arrogant and pitiless libertine, Enid. That steamer is bound for India."
The old man and the girl stared at each other, comprehending the tragedy in all its naked horror.
"How long ago was it that you heard Miss Maynard passing through the grounds of The Hut on her way to the beach?" Mr. Mallory asked, breaking the strained silence.
"It must have been more than half an hour. I got out through the roof of the grotto almost immediately afterwards; then I went home, and, finding you out, ran down to the club as hard as I could," Enid replied. Then, glancing up at her father's stern, set face, she said abruptly——
"What time does the telephone exchange close?"
"Hours ago—at eight o'clock, and it's now nearly midnight," replied Mr. Mallory, looking at her as if she had gone daft.
"But if we made it all right with the exchange people we could get the wire, I suppose?"
"If you could persuade or bribe them—certainly," said Mr. Mallory, with a touch of impatience. "But what good would it do? You cannot telephone to any one who can prevent Miss Maynard from going on board a steamer which, by your own showing, must have been reached by her long ago."
Enid linked her arm in her father's and began dragging him to the shop where the exchange was worked. "Come along and see," she exclaimed excitedly. "The worst of you clever people is that you never give any one else credit for a gleam of intelligence."
A couple of minutes later they had rung the bell at the private door of the shop, and were parleying with a sleepy individual at an upper window, who was at last induced to come down and open to them.
Lieutenant Reginald Beauchamp had been dining at the officers' mess of the Royal Naval Barracks at Devonport, and was making his way back to the dockyard, where he expected to find his boat's crew ready to put him aboard what Enid irreverently called his floating sardine-box. TheSnipewas anchored in the Hamoaze, not far from the docks for the convenience of victualling.
Reggie, being a youth of convivial but temperate habits had dined wisely, to the extent of feeling at peace with all the world. The fine digestive powers of eight-and-twenty had served to assimilate the excellent fare provided by his hosts; he had enjoyed the society of many old comrades, whose pockets he had afterwards lightened at snooker pool; and the few glasses of wine he had drunk had done him no greater harm than to render him, out here under the stars, mildly sentimental about his little girl at Ottermouth.
"A rattling good sort, Enid, and no flies on her for a young 'un," he summed up his mental recapitulation of his sweetheart's virtues. "But if she tries to boss me afloat as well as ashore the little witch will have to look out for squalls, that's all."
As he passed through the dock gates his musings were suddenly but respectfully broken into by the police-constable who admitted him. Reggie was the kind of officer who is known by sight, and was remembered even by those who had but little to do with him.
"You're wanted on the telephone, sir," said the man, leading the way into the gate-house. "Sounds like a lady. Been holding the wire and ringing up every two minutes for the last half-hour."
Needless to say that there is an all-night telephonic service into his Majesty's dockyards, and for the commander of a "destroyer" to be rung up at any hour was nothing out of the common. All sorts of official instructions fly about irrespective of the sun's position in the heavens. Port admirals never go to bed, or if they do they leave some wakeful person to harass their subordinates with ill-timed change of orders. But a lady on the telephone at 12.30 at night was a novel experience, considering that the common or garden species has not access to telephonic communication in the small hours. It must be the port admiral's wife, Reggie told himself, doing her lord and master's dirty work for want of an available secretary.
"Who is it?" he asked, when he had been shown to the instrument, and had made his presence known to the other end.
The reply, which was also in the form of a question, fairly staggered him, "Is that you, Reggie? It's me, Enid. Yes, you old silly—Enid Mallory at Ottermouth. The most awful thing has happened, and I want your help. You are the only person in thewhole world who can help. Are you listening? Are you ready to attend to every word I say?"
"Go ahead!" was Reggie's laconic reply, the flippant gibe that rose to the tip of his tongue checked by the reflection that the Ottermouth exchange was not ordinarily open at that time of night. Allowing for Enid's fondness for exaggerated phrasing, there must be some foundation for the "something awful," or she would not have been able to get through to him on the telephone.
And when at last he took up his own parable and spoke his answer into the transmitter he knew that there had been no exaggeration at all, and that had she been so minded his saucy sweetheart might have used more lurid language without going astray. So impressed was he by what he had heard that he condensed his reply into the crisp sentences——
"What infernal scoundrels! All right, girlie; I'll do it if they break me. Off at once. Good night!"
Hanging up the receiver, and thanking the janitor of the gate, he threaded his way along the deserted quays to the stairs, where his boat was waiting for him.
"By George, but it's a tall order!" he repeated several times as his bluejackets bent to their oars. "Just as I'd settled it, too, that she should never interfere in professional duties. But, damme, it's a good cause to go down in, and perhaps old Maynard will buy me a penny steamboat if I get the sack over the job."
It was, indeed, a "tall order," coming from a minx in her teens to a naval officer enjoying his firstindependent command, being no less than to employ one of his Majesty's ships on a private enterprise. An enterprise, too, which an ingenious counsel, before a judge of less than average intelligence, might very easily contort and twist into an act of piracy. None knew better than Reggie Beauchamp that for one ship to stop another on the high seas, and do things to her by armed force unbacked by supreme authority was a serious matter indeed.
And yet that was the task which the sunny-haired maiden, with eager red lips to the telephone at the other end of the county, had set him. So graphically had Enid done her bit of descriptive 'phoning that he was under no illusions as to what he had to do. Violet Maynard had been "carried off" in a large steam yacht which had just started from Ottermouth for India. In a few hours' time at most the yacht would be off Plymouth. Enid was aware that theSnipewas leaving port very early every morning for gun practice, and she implored him and threatened him in the same breath to intercept the yacht and rescue Miss Maynard. The few words which Enid had added as to the fate in store for the victim of the outrage had decided Reggie to make the attempt, even at the hazard of his career.
But he was by no means assured that he would succeed. The whole vile scheme must have been planned with deadly deliberation, and with the resources of vast wealth behind it. The vessel chosen for such a lawless errand would certainly be of high speed, and would avoid the regular steamer tracks. The littleSnipe, for all her thirty-knot engines, might well be outpaced by the craftbought or chartered by Bhagwan Singh's agent; but before he could put that vital question to the test he would have to find her—no easy matter in the crowded waters of the Channel, when he had no description of her to guide him, and he was entirely in the dark as to the course she would steer.
But in all things pertaining to his profession the young commander was astute beyond his years, and, having once decided to treat the Maharajah's yacht as a hostile ship, he made his calculations as thoroughly as if his promotion depended on stopping her. As soon as he stepped aboard his destroyer he routed out of their bunks the two men on whose co-operation he would have to rely, one being the only other commissioned officer, Second-Lieutenant Ellison, and the other the petty officer who was acting as gunner, a smart young fellow by name Parsons.
Having tersely explained to them the situation, and at greater length demonstrated that his would be the sole responsibility for what he proposed to do, he succeeded in rousing their enthusiasm, and from that moment he was loyally served by both. The three promptly constituted themselves a council of war in the poky little mess-room, and Ned Parsons was ready with some valuable advice.
"You'll pardon me, sir," he said with a friendly grin, "but if it was my girl instead of yours who was on that yacht I shouldn't fumble for my tactics—not for a single minute."
"It isn't my girl—only a friend of my girl," Reggie corrected him. "But no matter as to that. What would the tactics be, Parsons? You were always a helpful chap."
"Well, you see, sir, I'm thinking, as every man on the ship will be, how to get you out of this without blame," replied the acting gunner. "I don't know the lady that these blackguards are making off with, but if it was my Nettle there'd be only one way to it. I'd lay theSnipeas close as may be to the yacht and trust the girl to do the rest. She'd holler for help, or clout the helmsman over the head, or do something that would justify us in interfering, and in asking questions afterwards. But there! she's a fair cough-drop, though only a draper's assistant at Weymouth."
Reggie had to smile in the midst of his dilemma. The idea of the stately Violet Maynard "clouting the helmsman," or even "hollering for help," was not to be imagined. Still, the notion of getting as close as possible to the yacht and trusting to some stroke of good fortune making it unnecessary to fire on her was a good one. Enid had mentioned on the telephone that by some inexplicable means Leslie Chermside was also on the steamer, and Reggie was as good a judge of men as he was a sailor. That there was some mystery about the reserved young soldier he was shrewdly convinced, but he did not think that his presence on the fugitive yacht was due to collusion with the enemies of the girl he was popularly believed to be in love with. Chermside, he argued, might be trusted, given the chance, to fill the part which would have fallen to Ned Parsons' "cough drop," if she had been on board.
"Very well," he said. "We will start as passive resisters anyway, and trust to luck afterwards. Now as to the course this steamer is likely to steer. She will want to keep clear of vessels bound for Plymouthwhich might report a craft making down Channel at high speed. For that reason she would leave the Eddystone well to the northward, and she won't travel more than ordinarily fast at first. That being so, if we up anchor at once and choose the sea beyond the Eddystone for our firing practice this morning we ought to sight her before she has slipped away to the westward."