The necessary orders were given, and, the rumour spreading through the ship that some unorthodox adventure was afoot, the crew achieved a record in getting under weigh. In less than twenty minutes from the time of Reggie coming aboard theSnipewas steaming down past Drake's Island on to the broad bosom of Plymouth Sound, and so to the open sea. There were still three hours to daylight, and Reggie's intention was to utilize them in reaching the spot where his judgment told him he would stand the best chance of intercepting the runaway.
The break of dawn found the destroyer patrolling the sea some ten miles south-west of the great lighthouse, in the comparatively lonely stretch of water that lies between the track of vessels making for Plymouth and the route of those whose destination is further to the eastward. In the immediate vicinity were only a few trawlers finishing the harvest of the night, but away to the north and south faint smears of vapour on the skyline showed the main lines of the Channel traffic.
And then, suddenly, from his place in the miniature conning-tower Reggie saw a great blur of black smoke crossing the southern edge of the vacuum he had selected for his hunting-ground. His binoculars flew to his eyes, and intuitively he knew that, though he had been right in his main conjecture, he had made a slight miscalculation of distance. The cause of the smoke-blur, magnified by his powerful lenses into a graceful steamer running southward at a high rate of speed, was neither a man-of-war or a liner, but a huge yacht—just such a one as would have been selected for a long ocean voyage. And a cry of chagrin escaped him as he perceived that he had not taken theSnipefar enough out to stop her. She had in fact already passed him, and was now between him and the mouth of the Channel, thus being nearer to the open door of the trap he would have closed than he was.
"What's her speed?" he asked, passing the glasses to his second-lieutenant. "I put it at about twenty-five."
The other, after a careful scrutiny of the receding vessel, gave it as his opinion that twenty knots was nearer the mark. Anyway, bar fog, theSnipe, with her thirty-knot engines, ought to be able to catch her in something under five hours.
"Yes, if she is doing her best now," said Reggie doubtfully. "She may be keeping a bit up her sleeve for an emergency. But we'll shove this old hooker along at her top notch anyhow."
So, with disrespect, do the boys to whom the nation entrusts its mosquito fleet speak of the little spitfires they love—a disrespect which they would swiftly and haughtily resent if it was evinced by any but themselves.
A word to the man at the wheel caused theSnipe'sugly snout to swing round for her quarry, and thenthe engine-room gong clanged its sharp command, "Full speed ahead." Reggie, with his eyes glued to his glasses, watched like a cat for any increase of speed or suggestive manœuvre on the part of the chase, but she held on her way as if supremely indifferent to, or unconscious of, the fact that she was being pursued by the destroyer.
"She's slowing down a trifle, isn't she, sir?" Parsons called up to his chief after the pursuit had lasted twenty minutes or so. "That doesn't look as if she had a guilty conscience."
Reggie was of the same opinion on both points. The yacht certainly was not travelling so fast as when first sighted, and her slackened speed suggested that her commander had no reason for showing his heels to a navy ship—was, perhaps, moved by curiosity to learn why the spiteful little man-of-war was tearing after him. Whatever the cause might be the result was that in less than an hour theSnipe'slean black hull was within a mile of the yacht, and that objects on the deck of the latter were plainly distinguishable by the aid of Reggie's binoculars.
"By Jove!" he exclaimed, "there's a woman on board right enough—about Miss Maynard's height, too. And, good God! she's waving to us like blue murder. But no, her face gets clearer every second—no, it isn't the lady we're after."
"We shall soon know what's wrong," said the second-lieutenant. "The yacht has pretty nearly stopped. She's only keeping enough way on her for steerage."
The acting-gunner, Ned Parsons, who had alsobeen examining the mysterious vessel through his own pair of cheap inferior glasses, here uttered an exclamation of combined incredulity and dismay.
"If you'd be so good, sir, as to let me have a squint through those binos of yours," he said, "I might be able to tell you something."
Reggie handed over his own splendid pair, the last word in telescopic art and a present from his mother. They had hardly bridged Parson's sun-browned nose when they were lowered again, and the gunner turned a face full of whimsical concern upon his commander.
"Asking your pardon, sir, but it's a funny thing," he said, "but that gal behaving like a semaphore yonder is my young lady—the one I was telling you of, seeing as there have been others—Miss Nettle Jimpson, of Grigg and Winter's drapery warehouse, Weymouth. How the Holy Moses you've gone and got her mixed up with the lady the Rajah has his eye on licks me, but what licks me most is how Nettle came to be aboard that steam yacht. She ought to be in her beauty sleep on Grigg and Winter's top floor, preparing for a busy day behind the underlinen counter."
"You're sure?" said Reggie, receiving the binoculars back.
"Sure as eggs," responded Parsons. "I could see that she was holding language towards the little monkey on the bridge, him being the captain, I reckon. That's Nettle Jimpson all over."
"Well," said Reggie, after a moment's reflection, "if your girl hails from Weymouth it's fair proofthat that is the steamer we want, for Weymouth was her last port of call."
"Didn't I tell you, sir, that she was a cough-drop," rejoined Parsons excitedly. "You can stake your shirt she's bested that dirty little captain somehow. That's why he's stopping for us."
"But he isn't stopping for us," chimed in the second-lieutenant, and his dictum was emphasized by his slight lisp. "See, he's started at full-speed, and that means that he has scored the trick, for his rascally packet is fitted with turbine engines. He's been fooling us, sir."
Reggie Beauchamp was generally a clean-mouthed man, but the tea-party old ladies of Ottermouth would have banned him for evermore could they have heard the sultry oath that flew from his lips as he realized the truth of the assertion. Simon Brant, near enough now for his loathsome personality to be appreciated, was making insulting gestures at them with the hand which he had just withdrawn from the engine-room telegraph. And like a hound slipped from the leash theCobraleapt forward and went racing to the south-west at forty knots—a speed which would quickly reduce her to a speck upon the horizon.
And after that—chaos!
After letting himself in through the door from the moor into the grounds of The Hut, Travers Nugent paused irresolute. Should he punish that impudent hussy Enid Mallory by keeping her in the grotto all night and have her accidentally "found" in the morning, or should he go and release her now?
In either case he meant to throw the blame on Tuke, whom he could describe as an irresponsible lunatic—or anything else that came into his head at the time. He need not be too nice about his excuses, for, after all, the girl, as a trespasser on his private property, was the real offender. It would be interesting to know what account she would give of herself.
On the whole he decided that it would be wiser to go and let her out at once, and so have done with an incident which he regretted as a blunder on the part of his too zealous follower. Mr. Vernon Mallory was a dangerous man to annoy, and, conscious as he was of his veiled antagonism, Nugent did not want to give him cause for open quarrel. Till theCobrahad reached her destination, and alltraces of her had been obliterated, Bhagwan Singh's agent knew that he would have to walk warily indeed.
So he struck into the shrubbery, and on coming to the grotto unlocked the door with the key which Tuke had left in the keyhole. With a curious qualm that was not exactly alarm he saw that his kind offices would not be needed, and that the lies he had framed might remain unspoken. For the electric torch which he flashed on the gloomy interior showed it to be untenanted, while the gaping hole in the roof told of the way of escape.
Nugent stared at the improvised ladder of fertilizer kegs, and at the aperture overhead, with a thoughtful frown.
"That is hardly girl's work, yet she cannot have had help," he muttered. "If she had contrived to attract attention, no one would have been at the pains of breaking open the roof for her when the key was on the outside of the door all the time. Certainly she had hours to do it in; and she's more than half a boy."
He turned away, and, crossing the dewy lawn, entered his library by the unfastened French window. The shaded lamp had been lit, shedding a pleasant glow over the cosy bachelor room, and he gave a little sigh of content. He was fain to admit that he was tired with the day's exertions, and glad to be home again. He rang the bell, and the soft-footed Sinnett appeared.
"Mix me some whisky and soda water and give me a cigar," he said. "You have nothing out of the common to report?"
"Nothing that you do not know already, sir," was the reply. "Tuke will have informed you about Miss Mallory and the stone grotto."
"That is why I asked," rejoined Nugent. "The young lady has gone, and part of the roof of the grotto has been removed. You have heard or seen nothing that would account for it?"
"Nothing at all, sir. I have not been in the garden, but no sound reached me in the house. And I have been listening—in case she called out."
Nugent nodded, knowing the man's ways. "And that mad French seller of onions, he has not been here to-day?" he continued.
"No, sir; I haven't seen him for a day or two."
"Thank you, Sinnett. Then that will be all now I think. Don't go to bed just yet. I may want you to go out and post a letter for the early collection."
The butler having retired, Nugent lay back in his luxurious lounge-chair and sipped his drink and watched the blue wreaths from his Havana coiling upwards. He was filled with a delightful sense of achievement. The thing which had seemed so easy at first, and had then threatened dire failure through Chermside's defection, had been carried out in spite of the temporary obstacle. That band of electric light stealing away across the dark sea had been the signal that he had won the game, the stakes of which were the Maharajah's twenty thousand pounds. Not bad pay for six months' work, of which his pawns had taken the most arduous share.
He did not anticipate any trouble from these pawns, except perhaps, from one. Leslie Chermside was safe on board theCobra, and Bhagwan Singh might be trusted to see to it that he was never heard of again. That vain puppet, Louise Aubin, could do him no harm if she would, since she would believe, as all the world would believe, that Violet had voluntarily fled with her lover. And if the flighty French maid was disappointed in her preposterous aims with regard to himself—well, a little palm-grease would effectually staunch the bleeding of her fickle heart. Simon Brant, Bully Cheeseman, Tuke, and Sinnett were his accomplices rather than his tools, and they might be trusted to keep silence for their own sakes; if not, he knew enough to hang each or all of them. The crew of theCobrawere to be paid off in India, whence they would doubtless be scattered to the four winds of heaven; and, besides the captain and the mate, not one of them was aware of his connection with the affair.
The remaining exception, which had cost him more uneasiness than all the rest combined, was Pierre Legros. The onion-seller's insane and vindictive jealousy of himself in respect of Louise might grow into a factor to be reckoned with, entailing unpleasant, if not actually perilous, consequences. Well, it would be surprising if he, Travers Nugent, the finished schemer, were not equal to dealing with a half-demented foreign sailor, whose position was, to put it mildly, somewhat insecure.
"A hint to the fair Louise to revert to her original suspicion would satisfactorily settle Monsieur Pierre Legros, without my having to make an open move myself," he mused aloud, as he summed up the situation.
Sitting there lazily in the lamp-glow, he felt like a general reviewing a victorious battlefield—"cleaning up the mess," as he put it to himself, with the advantage that there was no visible mess to clean up. He had scored another of those easy wins in the great game of life—the game he had played so long and so successfully, with men and women as counters and gold as the final stake.
But as he murmured that last self-gratulation there came a sudden sound, very faint, but near at hand, to break his train of thought. He had left the long window open so that he could watch the fire-flies on the dew-frosted grass of the lawn; but he was not sure if the sound came from out there in the garden or from inside the room. It was an ill-defined sound, that might have been the intake of a heavy breath or the stirring of leaves gently moved by the sluggish air. The chair he sat in backed on to a beautifully-carved sandalwood screen which covered the angle at one side of the hearth, and he was smiling, half contemptuously, at an impulse to rise and look behind the screen, when it was checked and driven clean out of his head by quite a different sort of noise.
From the back premises, prolonged and imperative, there reached him the metallic clamour of the electric bell—the bell at the front door. He glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. It was half-past twelve. Who could be calling upon him at that time of night?
A moment later Sinnett knocked and entered, and the man's usually imperturbable face, white and quivering, struck the keynote of danger. With anapologetic gesture, as though to convey that his outer defences had been forced, he stood aside and announced—
"Mr. Mallory, sir, and Sergeant Bruce. I told them I didn't think you would see them so late, but they insisted."
Nugent rose, somewhat heavily, to greet his visitors. He was wondering where was the flaw in the web he had woven. There must be a loose thread somewhere, or these men would not be here. That little devil Enid must have been complaining about Tuke's behaviour, and if that was all there was no harm done. So there was no trace of disquiet in the sleepy smile and stifled yawn which he affected.
"Ah, my dear Mallory; I was dozing, I think. And you, Bruce," he murmured, with a pleasant nod for the police-officer. "This looks very formidable. What is wrong? If it is nothing urgent, perhaps you will sit down."
Vernon Mallory ignored the civility. "I have just seen my daughter," he began, with a quiet directness that duly impressed its hearer. "She has been shut up in the grotto in your grounds all the afternoon—whether with or without your knowledge is immaterial. The point is this: her imprisonment led to her learning that you had planned to entrap some female on to a vessel to-night, using Chermside in some unexplained manner, which, however, I can guess at, as a decoy. Now, a few moments before she escaped from your grotto Enid heard Violet Maynard's voice in your garden, apparently on the way down to the shore. I havetelephoned to the Manor House, by favour of the exchange, and I am informed that Miss Maynard cannot be found in or about the house. What have you to say?"
Travers Nugent felt as if an icy finger had touched his spine. The indictment put forward with such inexorable precision comprised the very core of his whole vile plot. This terrible old man had even hinted that the means employed to drive Chermside on to theCobrawere no secret to him. This was a bolt from the blue which only a bold front could avert. Everything depended on the source of Enid Mallory's amazing discovery; till he had ascertained that, it would be childish to abandon his position.
He gave an amused little laugh. "Really it is too bad that I should be dragged into Miss Enid's home-made romance," he protested. "Did she give you chapter and verse, may I ask?"
"My daughter is not a fool," Mr. Mallory replied quietly. "She happened to have a fellow-prisoner in the grotto, who had earlier in the day heard you discussing your plans for this evening with one of your creatures—the same man who shut her into the grotto. To be quite frank with you, Mr. Nugent, the sergeant accompanies me because I intend to charge you with serious crime."
"And anything you say will be taken down and used against you," the policeman interjected with official gravity. This was the first time the worthy man had had to arrest a gentleman, and he hardly knew whether he liked the job or not.
"Serious crime is a comprehensive phrase,"sneered Nugent. "Means anything from pitch and toss to manslaughter. Come, sir! What do you charge me with?"
"With a crime one degree more heinous than the worst of those you have named—with murder, as an accessory before the fact," the accuser's clear voice cut the silence. "I charge you with indirectly inciting one Pierre Legros to kill Levi Levison under circumstances that would throw suspicion on Mr. Chermside. I charge you with using the state of terror to which you reduced that unhappy man in order to induce him to fly in such a manner that he might be deemed to have eloped with the lady whom you have been suborned to snatch from her home and friends for——"
Mr. Mallory checked himself. His ancient training in international politics saved him from the indiscretion of naming the Indian prince who was behind the culprit. And, sub-consciously, he was also checked by a movement behind Nugent's chair. The great carved sandal-wood screen swayed, and was surely going to fall forward on the man who was fingering his long moustache in a vain effort to frame an answer. But no, the screen righted itself, and Nugent's tongue moistened his dry lips into power of utterance.
"Very pretty, very pretty," he said, striving for calm. "But don't you see, my dear Mallory, that all your midnight madness topples down like a house of cards unless your daughter's informant—her fellow-prisoner, as you call him—is a credible witness. I will make you a small wager that he will never come forward and tell the public the wonderful pack oflies with which he gulled that charming little girl of yours. I——"
Again that movement in the screen behind Nugent's chair, and this time with results that shifted the centre of interest with startling suddenness. Round the corner of the screen came Pierre Legros, gaunt and haggard, his fierce eyes in accord with the furious spasms that made a battle-ground of his unshaven face. Nugent, half turning in his chair to look up at the apparition which had drawn the gaze of the other two, broke off in the midst of his sneer with a sobbing catch in his throat.
"You say I not come forward to spik the truth?" the Frenchman began, in a voice that shook with emotion. "I was hide here to do that to you, and now these gentlemens shall hear the truth also. I only now learn it myself, for it is different from what I think till now. I say to myself, messieurs, that thisscélératdesire to depart in steamer with Louise Aubin, but I was wrong. What you say about Ma'amselle Maynard and that poor Jermicide, monsieur, show me all his wickedness as by flash of lightning. It is true, gentlemens, that I kill Levison, and that this Nugent tempt me to it."
The sergeant made a movement, but changed his mind. The man was in the mood to confess, and confession implied that he meant surrender. No need to lay hands on him till he had made a little more evidence. Mr. Mallory stood like a graven image watching Nugent, who, still preserving the half-turn he had made in his lounge chair, was staring up as if fascinated by the man at his shoulder.
"It is that I desire to make clean the name of aman who is innocent," Legros went on. "This Jermicide—I not know him, I nevair spik with him, but he do me no wrong, and Pierre Legros is not cruel, messieurs. I would not that Jermicide suffer for me, who am guilty. Nugent, he send for me, and pretend he wish to save Louise from the so deceitful Levison, who made to admire her. He say, did Nugent, that Louise, whom as a boy in Brittany I love, will meet Levison on the marsh, and that he will persuade her to fly with him to London, where Levison will leave her in disgrace. Messieurs, I was mad—my brain was hot like fire—Nugent he gave me the place and time of meeting, and I was there first—with my knife—that was all."
The tragedy in the concluding words was dramatic; even more so the silence that followed. The sergeant, good man, felt that the next move was with him, but he was single-handed, and had not bargained for having to convey two murderers to the station when he consented to accompany Mr. Mallory to The Hut. He coughed nervously to attract the attention of his two prospective prisoners, who seemed to have no eyes for any one but each other. Nugent, with his head twisted round, was looking up at Legros; Legros, behind the chair, was looking down at Nugent, his nostrils twitching strangely. The Frenchman, with innate politeness, understood, and obeyed the policeman's claim on his attention, turning a mild and friendly gaze on him.
"You know, you'll have to come along with me, both of you, after this," said the sergeant haltingly. "You won't give any trouble, Legros?" It didnot occur to his mind that the gentleman would otherwise than "go quietly."
"Oh, yes," Legros answered gently. "We shall both of us give you nothing of the trouble, monsieur. I myself, Pierre Legros, will see that this wolf in the clothes of the sheep will go from this apartment with complacence the most profound."
Nugent essayed to rise, unsteadily, to his feet, but Legros shot out a brown hand on to his shoulder, and firmly pressed him back into a sitting posture.
"Stay there,chien, till you have the orders to move," he snarled.
The eyes of the master of the house glittered balefully. "Really, sergeant, if you persist in coupling us in this absurd charge, I must ask your protection against this man," he protested. "I was going to ring the bell for my servant to arrange matters before leaving; perhaps you will kindly do it for me."
In answer to the summons Sinnett appeared, furtively scanning his employer's face for some sign of his wishes other than what he might hear in words. A quick look of intelligence passed between them, though Nugent's request sounded simple enough.
"There has been a stupid misunderstanding, Sinnett, which will entail my going with Sergeant Bruce till it has been explained," he said quietly. "I want you to put a few things in my handbag, please—just absolute necessaries, such as a change of linen and a tooth brush. You will know what I am most likely to need. Don't keep us waiting, there's a good fellow."
The silent-footed servitor bowed and retired, and with an air of contemptuous resignation Nugent lay back in his chair. As he fingered his fair moustache his gaze, lazily contemplative, was all for the observant face of Mr. Mallory, whose attention was directed at the supple form of the French sailor. Legros himself had no eyes for any one but the man over whose chair he hovered, expectant and menacing. The sergeant kept shifting from one foot to another, emphasizing the silence with deprecatory coughs. He was probably the most uncomfortable man in the room.
The tableau was not unduly prolonged, for in less than three minutes Sinnett reappeared, carrying a small leather bag, which he brought to his master. Nugent placed it on his lap, and, idly fingering the catch, proceeded to instruct his servant on various household matters. The gardener was to be careful to attend to the heating of the orchid house; Nugent was minutely particular about ordering his dinner for the following night, as he had no doubt that after explaining to the magistrates at Exmouth he should be at home in good time to enjoy it. Dixon, the chauffeur, was to have the car at the police court at noon, so as to be ready to bring him back.
"And now, sergeant, I think I am ready to end this business," he concluded, looking blandly round. "It really galls me to give you so much trouble, but you, like my dear friend Mallory, have brought it on yourself, you see."
As he spoke the fingers which had been toying with the catch of the bag closed, snapping it open and diving swift as lightning into the interior. Atthe same moment Pierre Legros thrust his hand into the bosom of his blue blouse, and withdrew it just as Nugent lifted a revolver from the bag. There was a gleam of steel, and a great sheath-knife shot downwards like a streak of fire into the back of Nugent's neck ere he could level the weapon. The point of the knife came out above the collar-stud, and the Frenchman dragged it out with a vicious wrench as the corpse fell forward on to a magnificent tiger-skin rug.
"He make to shoot us all," said Legros calmly. "But most he make to shoot you, Monsieur Mallory, and I glad to save the father of the brave ma'amselle. But I have no love for the Ingleesh rope or the Ingleesh madhouse—sobon voyage, messieurs."
And before they could guess his intention the big knife was driven home, through the blue blouse, into his own tumultuous heart.
The moment when theSnipewas first sighted from the bridge of theCobrawas immediately after Brant's refusal to put into Plymouth to allow Miss Jimpson to communicate with her "young man." The girl had just turned away to rejoin Violet in the saloon, when her quick ears caught the phrase—
"There's a torpedo craft of sorts away to the nor'-east, and I'm jiggered if I don't think she's chasing us."
The speaker was Bully Cheeseman, who thus passed on his discovery to the captain. The latter took a long survey of the distant destroyer through his telescope, and then, cocking his eye to see if Nettle was within earshot, assented to the mate's statement in a string of imprecations, the pith of which was that the stranger was travelling thirty knots to their twenty.
Which was perfectly true as far as it went, though had he so wished Brant might have added that theCobra, fast as she was moving through the water, was only going at half her possible speed of forty knots. But he was seized with a malicious desire to raise false hopes on the part of his prisoners, andhe wanted Nettle to draw the inference that the war vessel could easily overtake them.
To add to the disappointment of the girl who had flouted him he sent verbal instructions to the engine-room to reduce the speed still further, with the result, as we know, that theSnipebegan to rapidly creep up. Nettle, after taking in the situation as she believed it to exist, ran excitedly into the saloon and imparted the glad tidings to Violet.
"The brute refused to call at Plymouth, but we've beat him for all that," she cried. "There's a Navy ship chevying us and catching up like mad. Your friends must have got news through to the admiral at Plymouth, and he's sent that dear dirty little boat after us. We shall soon be all right now, Miss Maynard."
The girl's cheery optimism was infectious, and Violet roused herself from the apathy of despair. "I hope so, dear," she said, leaping up from the couch where she had spent the miserable night. "Shall we go out on deck and watch Brant's discomfiture?"
But Nettle was wise according to her lights. "I think it would be better for you to stay here," she advised. "The captain is such a beast that he might be rude if you showed on deck. He might hide you away somewhere till the danger was past," she added, remembering the ghastly inferno on the lower deck, to which Leslie Chermside had been relegated.
"Then how shall we know what happens?"
"I will keep you posted," Nettle rejoined eagerly. "It doesn't matter about me. Anyhow, I'll stay on deck till I'm stopped, and run in here now andagain. What a lark it would be if that was theSnipe, with my Ned aboard. I was reading a tale the other day where they hung a pirate at his own yard-arm, which is a thing I don't believe they've got on this ugly up-and-down steamer. But I'll bet a pair of Grigg and Winter's best one-and-eleven-penny white kids that Mr. Edward Parsons, of his Majesty's destroyerSnipe, will find something to hang Captain Simon Brant on if that's him out yonder."
She skipped out on to the deck without waiting for an answer, and her stout heart pulsed with joy as she saw the lean, venomous hull of the warship much nearer than when she had entered the saloon. Her appearance was the signal for a violent flow of language from Brant, who had confided the secret of his mummery to the mate. Cheeseman, with his tongue in his cheek, played up to the lead of the apelike skipper, simulating the wildest terror of the oncoming destroyer.
Nettle leaned over the rail not far from the saloon door, into which she darted at brief intervals with the latest news. Each time she was able to improve on her last report—that she could make out objects on the deck of the pursuer clearer than before. But the highwater mark of ecstasy was reached when Nettle ran in with the announcement that it was indeed theSnipewhich was after them, that she had recognized her Ned, and had received an answer to her signals.
"They'll be alongside in a few minutes," she cheered Violet. "Brant and Cheeseman are tearing their hair with rage."
But disaster followed swift on her triumph. Running back to the rail, she saw to her dismay that the distance between the two vessels had increased, and that the reason was not far to seek. TheSnipewas steaming as fast as ever; but theCobrawas tearing through the calm sea at the pace of an express train. During Nettle's absence in the saloon Brant had rung down to the engineers to let loose the full power of the mighty turbines, and the fugitive was running away at ten knots an hour faster than the little war-vessel could follow.
From behind the wind-screen on the bridge the evil face of the captain peered down at the girl he had mocked with false hopes. Miss Jimpson was engaged in a dumb-show demonstration of her requirements to her lover, whose stalwart figure as he conversed with his officers in the conning-house of theSnipeseemed to be growing momentarily smaller. Her gestures did not conform to the correct motions as laid down in the gunnery drill-book, but they conveyed a fair impression of what she wanted.
Brant's sinister face was creased in a malignant grin. "Go it, my vixen," he jeered down from his eyrie. "Living statues ain't in it with you for showing off the female figure in the wrong pose. But you can spare your antics, for they'll never dare fire on us without orders, and them I'll lay a whale to a herring they haven't got."
Nettle bit her ripe red lip to keep back the retort that surged up. It was no time for wasting breath in futile insults, when something had to be done, and done quickly, if the tragedy implied by theescape of theCobrawas not to be consummated. But, if theSnipewould not use her guns or torpedoes, how was she, with the pluck of the devil but only the experience of a draper's girl, to enable a slower ship to catch a faster one? If only she had a man to help her, with knowledge equal to her determination.
And then, suddenly, it flashed across her brain that there was such a man on board if only she could get to him unobserved. Chermside, chained in the black hole on the lower deck, had risked life once already in Violet Maynard's cause, and would doubtless do so again, were he granted the opportunity. Or if that were not possible he might tell her what to do.
Deciding for the present not to harrow Violet with news of the altered situation, she spent a grudged five minutes in lulling suspicion by sauntering about the upper deck. The crew were too interested in the game their captain was playing with the destroyer to pay any attention to her movements, and, watching Brant out of the tail of her eye, she at last slipped down the companion stairs on to the main deck. In another minute she had clambered down the ladder into the obscurity of the lower deck, and so safely reached the den where Leslie was confined.
Revived by the water she had given him on her last visit, he was suffering now from little more than the discomfort of cramped limbs, and was able to follow intelligently the breathless story which the girl poured out to him. At the conclusion he groaned at his own impotence.
"If I was only free I might find a way of stopping the ship," he said. "Do you think if you could get tools you could draw the staple to which the chain is fastened?"
Nettle stood on tiptoe, and, after a careful scrutiny in the half light, was compelled to admit that the task, even with the aid of tools, would be beyond her powers. The staple, which was really a heavy iron ring, was firmly driven into the oak bulk-head, and without mechanical leverage would remain immovable.
"But what should you have done supposing you were loose?" she asked. "Find a pistol and shoot Brant and the mate? I am afraid I should miss them, or I'd have a try myself."
"You would have to shoot the whole crew," replied Leslie, with a weary smile for her eagerness. "No, I should endeavour to hit upon some plan for damaging the engines. Those of a turbine steamer like this are a very delicate piece of mechanism, and a comparatively trifling injury, not necessarily entailing great violence, would do the trick. Ever such a little delay for repairs would enable theSnipeto catch up if they have allowed her to come as close as you describe."
"Then the sooner I set to work the better," said Nettle, knitting her brows, as the germ of an inspiration was born. "Good-bye, Mr. Chermside, and keep your pecker up. Miss Maynard doesn't know the hobble we're in—still thinks we're on the point of being rescued."
"God bless you for that," Leslie flung after his departing visitor.
But she was already half-way to the ladder to the main deck. In her exploration of the steamer during the run from Weymouth on the previous day she had been idly interested in what Chermside had called the delicate piece of mechanism, so far as its throbbing pulses were visible through the dome-shaped skylight of glass on the upper deck over the engine-room. The glass was opaque and thickly corrugated, but a slide in the dome had been opened for ventilating purposes, and through the aperture Nettle had been fascinated by the antics of gyrating fly-wheels and sucking piston-rods below. As she emerged into the free air of the upper deck she wondered if that convenient slide was open now.
But her first glance was for the pursuing warship, and it told her that the destroyer was a good half-mile further astern since her plunge into the bowels of theCobra. Her second anxiety was about Brant, and she was comforted to see that he was not on the bridge. As a matter of fact he had gone to his cabin for breakfast, tiring of a joke which had lost its zest with Nettle's disappearance from the deck.
The glass dome over the engine-room was amidships, abaft the funnel. Thither she strolled with seeming carelessness, passing on forward without stopping, but satisfying herself as she did so that the ventilating slide was open. She walked nearly to the bows, and then, on turning to come back, struck a gold mine in the way of good fortune, though it took the humble shape of a zinc bucket full of cinders. It had been placed by the cook outside the door of the caboose, ready to be thrown overboard by one of the sailors—a duty which hadbeen neglected in the excitement of the chase by theSnipe.
Miss Jimpson looked slyly round. With the exception of the look-out man in the bows the crew were all aft, watching the outpaced war vessel and exchanging ribald jests at the expense of her commander. But between the cook-house and the superstructure in which were the saloon and the state-rooms was an open stretch of deck in clear view of the bridge. And on the bridge Bully Cheeseman was stalking to and fro, in charge of the ship.
To reach her objective, the skylight over the engine-room, she would have to traverse the open space as far as the deck-house, when the latter would furnish some sort of cover; but the real danger would be after she had passed under the bridge into the after-part of the vessel. The eyes of the mate, who was watching the destroyer, were naturally turned in that direction. The only compensation was that the skylight was close to the bridge, and that she would not be long in the perilous zone of Cheeseman's vision before attempting her self-set task.
Anyhow, the danger had to be faced, and, timing her start so that the mate should be at the opposite end of the bridge from the side of the ship she selected for her rush, Nettle seized the bucket and raced for the shelter of the deck-house. She reached it without, so far as she knew, being observed, and so came to the alley under the bridge, where she waited till the lighter sound of Cheeseman's heavy steps overhead told that he had again receded from the side where she meant to operate.
"Looking up, she caught the furious eye of Cheeseman glaring at her along the blue barrel of his still levelled pistol.""Looking up, she caught the furious eye of Cheeseman glaring at her along the blue barrel of his still levelled pistol."
Then, with a queer little sob of expectancy, she darted forward to the glazed cupola and raised the bucket shoulder high over the open slide. As she stood there, her splendid young figure posed like a Greek goddess, a hoarse oath was yelled from the bridge, followed instantly by the simultaneous crack of a revolver and the ping of a bullet on the bucket. The missile glanced off and seared the bloom on the girl's cheek.
Looking up, she caught the furious eye of Cheeseman glaring at her along the blue barrel of his still levelled pistol. She smiled up at him, and before he could fire again she dumped the contents of the bucket into the whirling tangle of machinery below.
The cinders fell with a clatter among the pistons and the fly-wheels, and Nettle Jimpson, too absorbed in watching results, forgot to notice that the ruffian on the bridge had not fired a second shot at her. For almost immediately there began a jarring and a scrunching in the engines which told that the delicate mechanism was trying to assimilate in its vitals the rough food she had fed it with, and found it indigestible. Cold-blooded murder was quite in Mr. Cheeseman's line as a preventive, equally so as a cure had that been possible. But those ominous sounds were eloquent of mischief done, and he was not the man to run his neck into a noose for the empty pleasure of revenge.
Three feeble revolutions followed, and then the engines stopped altogether, and theCobra, quickly exhausting the way on her, lay like a log on the oily swell. Brant came running from his cabin, and at the foot of the bridge stairs met Cheeseman, who had descended, and the chief engineer, who had hurried up from below.
"How long will it take to pick the stuff out?" asked Brant, when he had been informed of what had happened.
"It will be from two to three hours before we can get a move on the ship," was the engineer's verdict. "A lot of the muck has got into the governors and cylinders. If I hadn't shut off steam sharp there'd have been such a mix up that the steamer would have had to dock for repairs."
This meant that theSnipewould be up with them in twenty minutes. Brant cocked a wicked eye at the oncoming destroyer, and then began to walk to where Nettle was still standing by the engine-room hatch. So diabolical was the menace on the horrible hairless face that the girl was fascinated as by a snake, and could not fly, though she knew that her fate was trembling in the balance. Brant addressed her very quietly.
"Will you jump overboard yourself, or shall I shoot you first and then throw you over?" he said, drawing a vicious Derringer from his hip.
Unflinchingly Nettle returned his stare. She even laughed a little. "I am certainly not going to commit the crime of suicide to save you from committing the crime of murder. I don't love you well enough for that," she replied.
And then the swift thought came to her that the wretch meant to slake his thirst for revenge and trust to his cunning to avoid the penalty for it. When the warship's men boarded theCobrahe would have to explain the kidnapping of Violet Maynard and his treatment of Chermside as best he could, and he would doubtless have to suffer for it. But he had been guilty of no capital offence against them, and might contrive to throw much of the blame on other shoulders.
"I'll give you thirty seconds to reconsider that decision," said Brant, cocking and raising the pistol.
"It will be about long enough for you to reconsider yours," Nettle rejoined promptly. "You are relying on the crew of that destroyer not being aware that there are two women on board your ship. You think that if they saw me on deck they will have taken me for Miss Maynard, and that with her rescue assured they will ask no questions about me."
"And they won't," said Brant, though there was a note of interrogation in the assertion. "How are they to know that I shipped a d——d wild-cat at Weymouth?"
"That is the hole you have dug for yourself to tumble into," returned Miss Nettle Jimpson sweetly. "You thought you were being funny at my expense in allowing the torpedo-boat to nearly catch you, but you overdid your joke, Captain Brant. That ship is theSnipe, with my young man as acting gunner. You let her come so close that we were blowing kisses to each other half an hour ago. When my Ned steps on to your deck five minutes hence he'll ask for me, if he's still the affectionate youth I've educated him into. And you won't be able to gammon him with any yarn about my having jumped overboard. He knows jolly well I'm not built that way."
Brant looked up at her, mouthing and gibbering; then he spat on the deck, and, turning away without a word, flung his Derringer over the rail into the sea.
And the helplessCobra, her poison-fangs drawn,lay on the swell like a wilted weed while theSnipe, vomiting black fury from her three funnels, swooped down.
Mr. Montague Maynard passed the decanter, and beamed upon his guests—Mr. Vernon Mallory and Reggie Beauchamp. Through the open window they could catch glimpses of Leslie Chermside, who had taken a lover's privilege to leave the dessert table early and join Violet on the Manor House lawn. Somewhere out there in the twilight there were also Aunt Sarah and Enid Mallory, the elder lady listening for about the twentieth time to the adventure of the younger in the grotto at The Hut—an adventure which had been the direct cause of her great-niece's rescue.
"Roughly speaking, then, this is what you make of it," Mr. Maynard was saying. "From first to last Levison's murder was a job put up by Travers Nugent in order to render my future son-in-law the bait for getting Violet on to theCobra?"
"That is established from the mouth of Pierre Legros, from Brant's brutal frankness to Violet, and by Nugent's evident intention to kill Sergeant Bruce, Legros and myself the other night," replied Mr. Mallory. "He would not have embarked on wholesale murder, which must have been brought home to him, unless he had known that the game was up, and that his only resource was flight."
"Yes, that is all clear enough," the Birmingham magnate assented. "But what I am most concerned with, as I like the chap and he is going to marry my daughter, is Chermside's extraordinary conduct inbeing frightened into bolting on to that infernal steamer. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to it, he being obviously innocent of the crime. I shouldn't like to think that Violet was going to marry a fool or a coward."
The old civil servant made patterns on his plate with walnut shells before replying. He was thinking of an interview he had had with Leslie Chermside that morning, at which the young ex-Lancer had made full confession to him of his early implication in the plot, and had sought advice as to what as a man of honour he ought to do. Mr. Mallory, after very earnest consideration, had given that advice, and it was in sustentation of it that he now replied—
"My view is this—that Chermside was duped by Nugent into becoming an accomplice in this atrocious scheme, without in the least understanding the enormity of the offence he was to aid, that he discovered how and for what a vile purpose he had been duped, and that in the meanwhile, having fallen in love with your daughter, he was terrified lest his complicity should come out. Nugent then deliberately engineered the murder of Levison so that he might play upon Chermside's fear—not of the legal consequences of arrest for murder, but of the revelations that would follow, Levison, I have reason to believe, having played a minor part in the conspiracy. The affair fell out exactly as Nugent anticipated, and Chermside lost his head and ran away—with the results we know."
Montague Maynard puckered his brows in a judicial frown quite unsuitable to his jovial features. But the cloud passed.
"Yes," he exclaimed, "the boy has acted straight enough, though he would have been wiser to put us on our guard instead of trusting that Nugent had abandoned the plot. He tells me, however, that he intended to write me about it at the first opportunity, and I have not found him other than truthful. I remember when I tackled him first about Violet, he confessed that the yacht, waiting to take him on that accursed cruise, and credited to him by local gossip, was not his property. No false pretence about that."
"I am sure he tried to act for the best in a very difficult position," Mr. Mallory interposed quietly.
"And his behaviour on theCobrain tackling, single-handed and unarmed, the crew of the launch, shows he's got grit," Maynard continued warmly. "I reckon we'll leave it at that. He has tried to chuck away his life to save Vi; he has suffered the tortures of the damned for her, and as he's good enough for her, he shall be good enough for me."
Mr. Mallory heaved a sigh of content, which, coming from him, was not of the kind that is noticed. He had achieved his purpose without betraying a confidence.
"You arranged the hushing-up process deuced cleverly," the screw manufacturer went on. "All that transpired at the adjourned inquest on Levison, I understand, and at those on Legros and Nugent, was that Nugent, had been engaged in a plot to kidnap Violet, and that it had failed. Some idiot in Parliament might have raised Cain if Bhagwan Singh's connection with it had been made public."
Mr. Mallory smiled. "I was certainly careful not to let the worthy sergeant into the secret of the Maharajah's iniquity," he said. "But we have chiefly Beauchamp here to thank for the veil we have been able to draw over the inner history of the conspiracy. His prompt action in putting to sea, and his judicious handling of Brant after boarding theCobra, crowned my humble efforts with success. The idea of letting Brant and his crew of cut-throats go scot-free, with the advice to finish their voyage and demand payment and explanations from Bhagwan Singh, was a masterpiece which augurs well for our young friend's career. One can imagine the kind of payment that the Maharajah will mete out when he gets that pack of failures into his dominions."
"I had to handle the wicked little demon judiciously to save my own skin," said Reggie modestly. "I had no orders to rove the seas in search of lost heiresses or eloping couples, and my career might have been nipped in the bud if I'd taken theCobrainto Devonport as a prize. My lords of the Admiralty are not kind to independent action by junior officers, and if I had pleaded that I had been ordered to sea by Enid it would hardly have mended matters. But as we are apportioning rewards and punishments, we mustn't forget the real heroine of the piece—Nettle Jimpson, my gunner's best girl. If she hadn't fired that bucketful of cinders into the engines we shouldn't be all sitting here shaking hands with ourselves to-night."
Montague Maynard filled his glass and drained it incontinently. "Grigg and Wynter, drapers,of Weymouth, ceased to exist as a firm to-day," he remarked oracularly.
"As to how?" demanded Reggie, genuinely puzzled.
"I have bought their business as a little reward for Miss Jimpson," the man of money replied. "She will have the transfer as soon as ever my lawyers can put it through."
"Then you've done his gracious Majesty an ill turn in losing him the most promising acting-gunner in the service," said Reggie. "Ned Parsons, as his wife's principal shop-walker, will be a standing disgrace to you, Mr. Maynard, to the end of your days. His only prospect of safety is that his future spouse is not, from what I saw of her, the sort of person to tolerate flirtations with the girls behind the counter. But while you are making everybody happy with that magic touch of yours, sir, what are you doing for Mr. Lazarus Lowch, the champion juryman. I hear that he was foreman at the other two inquests, as well as finishing up Levison."
The millionaire laughed boisterously—so boisterously that it devolved upon Mr. Mallory to explain.
"Mr. Lazarus Lowch is as tame as a sucking dove," he said, with mock solemnity. "He has had his claws clipped and has been taken into custody by that sly little mischief-maker, Mademoiselle Louise Aubin."
"Good Lord!" cried Reggie. "Miss Maynard's maid?"
"Yes; she is a very astute young lady, and the only actor in our drama whose actions have been not quite clear to me, except that she was a boneof contention between Pierre Legros and Levison, and also figured as one of Nugent's puppets. Be that as it may, she contrived to get hold of Lowch, who, as you know, is a widower, as he was hanging about outside the police-station ready to get summoned on the two later inquests. She set her cap at him so effectually that he gave the coroner no trouble, and proposed to her the same evening."
"It must have been her figure that fetched him," said Reggie, with the air of a connoisseur. "She's great oncorsage."
"And the figures in old Lowch's pass-book fetched her, I expect," roared Montague Maynard, rising. "Come, let's go and cool off on the lawn. It is time some one put a stopper on old Sally Dymmock. She's worrying the love-birds, and demoralizing that girl of yours, Mallory."