Carthew whispered some further hasty instructions to Herries, and, "Yes, my lord," the old factor answered again so that all could hear, and all understood that the tenth Earl of Jura and Baron St. Just had thus succeeded the ninth—who lay there dead on the floor before them.
The duchess was gently leading Sallie away. Herries followed them, on his own errands, while Captain Dove and his accomplices remained looking on with sullen, suspicious eyes, straining their ears in a vain attempt to hear what was to be their fate.
Carthew turned to them. "I'll bid you good night now," he said, in a tone not without a new tinge of authority in it, and at which they looked anything but well pleased. "You'll be more comfortable in your own quarters than anywhere else in the meantime." And, with that sufficiently broad hint, he stood waiting for them to go.
Captain Dove had opened his mouth as if to speak, but said nothing. Slyne, very pinched and white about the nostrils, drew Mr. Jobling toward the door, as if he would not trust the shifty lawyer with Carthew, and answered for them all, with a most sarcastic inflection, "Good night,—my lord!" Now that the worst had come to the worst he was his old cool, careless, calculating self again.
Captain Dove paused at the buffet in passing, and went on with both hands full. Both he and Slyne, on their way toward the North Keep with Mr. Jobling shambling along between them, not unlike a condemned criminal, noticed the unusual number of able-bodied men-servants who seemed to have found aimless occupation of some sort about the corridor, and drew their own discomforting conclusions therefrom.
Slyne even hesitated for a moment on the threshold of the cosy living-hall which occupies the base of the North Keep, and then, with a grimace of disdain, followed the other two, closing the heavy door behind him. Almost immediately he heard the key turned quietly in the lock outside—and knew that his suspicions had been only too well founded. Carthew intended to keep him and his associates prisoners there. He bit his lip and pulled at his moustache as he watched Captain Dove drawing the cork of one of the two bottles of champagne that strategist had brought from the banquet-hall.
"We're cornered at last," he said suddenly, as the old man set the bottle down after having imbibed the best half of its contents. "They've locked us in here."
Captain Dove turned to glare disbelievingly at him, and then, darting across to the door, tugged furiously at its wrought-iron handle. He set a foot against the wall and tried again, with no better results. He bounced about, almost frantic, blaspheming as if bereft of all self-control. Mr. Jobling stood wringing his hands helplessly, his flaccid features expressive of abject despair. But Slyne continued to eye the old man with a strained, disconcerting composure.
"We haven't so much time to spare, Dove," said he bitingly, "that we can afford to waste any more watching you play the fool. I expect that fellow Carthew will have your whole history out of Farish M'Kissock within—"
"If you had only keptyourdamned mouth shut when Brasse was kicking the bucket," cried Captain Dove, very venomously, "Carthew would be keepinghimcompany now. The snake would have got him too. And we'd have won out after all."
Slyne ground his teeth. But that was no moment for futile recrimination, and self-interest served to stay the acrid retort on the tip of his tongue.
"'If this and if that' doesn't make any difference now," he declared evenly. "I'm not going to argue with you. I want to get out of this before worse comes my way."
"But how—" moaned Mr. Jobling, across whose mental vision also were no doubt flashing pictures of Wandsworth Common and Wormwood Scrubbs.
Slyne silenced him with a glance. "I'd very gladly leave you here to your fate, you fat bungler!" said he, with irrepressible bitterness, "if it weren't that you'd turn informer on us. So come on, both of you. We've only one chance left among us. And, but for me, neither of you would have even that." Wherewith, and only pausing to take a long pull at Captain Dove's open bottle, he turned up the staircase, leaving them to follow him or stay where they were, as they chose.
Captain Dove did follow him, curiously, but not forgetting to pocket the other bottle. The shivering lawyer came close at his heels, no less eager to snatch at any possibility of escape.
"Get into a change of clothes," ordered Slyne, as he opened the door of his own room. "And I wouldn't be slow about it, if I were you—forI'mgoing as soon as I'm ready."
Captain Dove's change did not unduly detain him, since he merely pulled on a pair of serge trousers and a pilot-jacket on top of his other attire. And Mr. Jobling was back in Slyne's room no less promptly. They found it in darkness and Captain Dove uttered a stifled imprecation. But almost immediately, they heard hasty footsteps on the stair without and Slyne reappeared with a coil of thin strong cord in one hand.
"The flagpole-halliards," he explained breathlessly as he shut the door behind him again. "My window looks out on the battlements. We must clamber down. Make the rope secure at this end, Dove, but so that we can pull it after us once we're all down—it's long enough to go double—while I get some things together."
Captain Dove did as he was bidden, so deftly that Slyne had not quite completed his own preparations when the old man called on him to go first.
"Send Jobling down," said Slyne, pulling on an overcoat to cover his evening clothes, and the stout solicitor gave voice to a very heartrending groan as he glared blankly out into the black gulf beyond the window.
"I won't go—" he was beginning when Captain Dove ran furiously at him, clutched him round the waist in a gorilla-like grip, and thrust him, feet foremost, struggling insanely, over the sill.
"Catch hold of the cord—both strands—or I'll drop you!" snarled the old man. "Down you go, now. You'll find a knot every foot or so. You needn't slip unless you force me to start you with a slam on the head." And he stood watching, grimly amused, while his moaning victim sank out of sight, very gradually.
In a few moments the weight on the rope relaxed.
"Are you there?" he demanded, and had to shout the question again at the top of his voice, so strong was the wind.
"Yes, all right," the answer came back, very faint but palpably freighted with helpless wrath.
"Come on, then, Slyne," ordered Captain Dove, and himself prepared to follow the injured lawyer. "What's that for?" he called in through the window. Slyne was busy securing a bundle about his own shoulders.
"Some spare wraps," Slyne shouted back from between set teeth. "We're going to take Sallie away with us. On you go—I'll be right after you."
Nor had the other two long to wait till he came scrambling down in his turn. And, as soon as they had retrieved their rope, they followed his lead through the darkness.
The three fugitives made their way in the teeth of the wind along the battlements to a point overlooking the terrace that lies at the back of the banquet-hall. And there again their rope stood them in good stead. Slyne thanked his stars that he had studied all the intricacies of the castle so thoroughly, as he led the way, with infinite precaution, from the terrace into the empty passage down which they crept as far as the service-pantry behind the gun-room.
The gun-room was empty also. As he entered it, he gave vent to a long sigh of heartfelt relief.
"We're safe now," he told Captain Dove in a guarded tone, and, pulling off his overcoat, smoothed down his crumpled shirt-front. "But you'd better hurry down to the water-gate and make sure that the boat there doesn't go off without us. As soon as Sallie comes along, we'll—"
"But what if she won't come?" asked Captain Dove, becoming recalcitrant again. "And how do you know there's a boat below?"
"You don't suppose Brasse swam ashore, do you!" Slyne retorted impatiently. "The boat that brought him from theOlive Branchwas still there a few minutes ago—while I was at the top of the tower. I suppose he told them to wait for him, in case he struck trouble here. But they may not wait much longer, if you waste any more time.
"And, as to Sallie, leave me to manage. If you trip me up again now with any of your damned nonsense," he finished with sudden fury, "I'll go to gaol quite contentedly—and make sure there that you hang."
"I might still make terms with that fellow Carthew," Captain Dove suggested provokingly and with a great air of cunning.
"All right," returned Slyne. "That's enough." And, crossing toward the fireplace, he pressed the bell-push beside the mantel.
Captain Dove snatched up a candle and, with that, made a dart for the panel in the wainscot. It would not move despite his most desperate efforts. Slyne pulled a bunch of keys from one pocket and promptly released the powerful spring-lock. At a sign from him, Mr. Jobling descended the steps below in Captain Dove's wake. Slyne pulled the panel back into place and was seated quietly writing at the table in one corner when a sleepy-looking footman entered the room.
"I want you to take this note along to her ladyship's rooms," said Slyne, and yawned. "Give it to her maid. You needn't wait for an answer."
"Very well, sir," the man returned with all the respect due to Slyne's recent standing there and evidently still without suspicion of any change. Slyne yawned again, as if ready for bed, re-reading what he had written. And then, watching his messenger go off with the missive, breathed a thanksgiving that was, at the same time, a prayer to the goddess of chance who was his deity. For he was taking risks now that were recklessly dangerous and might, at any moment, prove deadly to him.
"It would be pretty fatal, for instance, if Carthew chanced to be with the duchess and her when Ambrizette takes my note in," he told himself. "But—there are a dozen other chances of accident, and what's the use of worrying? The wind doesn't always blow from the same quarter. I'd feel safe enough if I only knew where Carthew is at this precise moment."
He crossed to the fireplace, picking up a cigarette by the way, and, having lighted it with trembling fingers, stood staring down into the dull glow of the dying logs on the hearth. He was wondering whetherallwas really lost, and listening most impatiently to every slightest sound. But he had not long to wait before Sallie, pale of face and with a world of woe in her wet eyes, came very quietly into the room.
He held out both his hands to her, but she stopped at a little distance.
"You mustn't blame me, Sallie," he said in a voice meant to carry conviction with it. "I didn't know—I had no idea—I believed honestly from the first that you were—"
"It makes no difference now," she interrupted, "and—I—I—Oh! I'msoashamed. What can Mr. Carthew think of me! And heknewall the time that I had no right to be here!"
"It wasn't your fault either," he assured her soothingly. "You were misled—no less than I was. How could we ever have foreseen—But there's no time to talk of that just now. We must be off. Captain Dove has gone on ahead. He left me to show you the way to the boat."
She lifted a hand dazedly to her forehead.
"I don't know what to do," she murmured. "But—of course, I can't stay here now."
Slyne was watching her tensely. "Most assuredly not," he agreed in haste and trying hard to hide his elation. "You can't possibly stay here—after what has happened. You've far too much proper pride."
"And my promise to you is no longer binding," she said, "since I'm not—It was Lady Josceline Justice with whom you made that bargain—and not with me."
He saw that it was no moment to argue that point. All he wanted at once was to get her safely on board theOlive Branch. And he did not contradict her.
"Ambrizette must come with me, Jasper," she said brokenly. "I won't leave her behind."
He set his teeth to stifle an angry refusal of that difficult condition.
"All right, Sallie," he answered smoothly. "I'll risk that too, since you say so. Slip on this coat—it will be bitter cold in the boat. And I'll send for Ambrizette."
Carthew was feeling anything but fit to cope with all the cares and responsibilities which had devolved upon him again, under circumstances so shocking, no less suddenly than he had been relieved of them all—along with that place in life to which they pertained—by the man now lying dead on the floor before him. As he watched the Duchess of Dawn leading Sallie gently out of the banquet-hall, he would have given a very great deal to have been free to follow them, for Sallie had looked back at him out of tear-dimmed eyes as she went, with an expression he could not quite understand. And, now that she too knew the very worst there was to be told, he was desperately anxious to find out how she was going to deal with him, under such changed conditions.
But there were matters even more urgent to be disposed of, for her sake too, before he could set himself right with her. He pulled himself together, with a great effort.
It was clear that he must not permit Captain Dove and his two confederates to decamp. He had heard enough already to justify him in taking the law into his own hands for the nonce and detaining them there. It was equally clear that he must not delay for a moment in finding out as much more as he might from Farish M'Kissock, who looked as if he could scarcely live for another hour.
He whispered to Herries to take such steps as would ensure that no one whosoever should be allowed to leave the castle, and to shut the three accomplices up together in the North Keep if that could be done quietly, without any scandal. Then, having got rid of Captain Dove and the other two, he was left in the banquet-hall with only the Marquis of Ingoldsby, in a state of apparent coma, old Janet M'Kissock, grief-stricken to the very verge of endurance, and her unfortunate brother, still standing motionless, with bent head and hands clasped, staring down at the dead man—so near in semblance and yet so far beyond reach of his animosity.
The grey-haired housekeeper was pleading with Farish M'Kissock to come away, but he resisted all her attempts to get him to leave that spot.
"Let me bide where I am," he answered her querulously. "In a very little, Janet, I'll be away off after his foolish lordship there, that thinks he has slipped through my feckless fingers again—as he did once before. But I'll soon be on his track again, for they'll have to streek me on the same stretching-board that serves him. Let me bide beside him till then."
Carthew looked anxiously across at the Marquis of Ingoldsby. There was nobody who might better serve as a witness to whatever M'Kissock might still be induced to tell concerning that nightmare past in which the poor corpse on the floor and the girl who had gone away weeping and he himself had all been involved.
"There's somethin' doosid fishy about all these goin's-on," Lord Ingoldsby commented with a good deal more candour than tact, when Carthew made that suggestion to him. "And I'm for Lady Josceline, right through from start to finish. I don't believe a word of that goat-bearded fellow's yarn. He's been and caught sunstroke somewhere—that's what's the matter with him, eh? He's mad as a hatter.
"But, all the same, I'm willin' to listen to anything more he has to say—and take a mental note of it, so to speak. I want to know who's who and what's what myself."
Carthew turned to Farish M'Kissock then, and the latter looked him over with a frown as of dim remembrance which gradually changed to a scowl of hate.
"And so," said the ex-Emir in a rancorous voice, "youhave come to your own at last amid it all. Is there no end to your ill race? My men told me that you were safely buried and dead—they showed me the mound that they said covered you. How—"
"Come away from here," said Carthew steadily, "and I'll tell you how I escaped." And Farish M'Kissock, leaning heavily on his sister's shoulder, at last allowed her to lead him to her own room.
Carthew told him then, in few words, while Lord Ingoldsby, listening gloomily, scowled over it, the story of Sallie's daring and his own escape from death, on the African coast.
The ex-Emir's heavy eyes lighted up a little.
"Ay," said Farish M'Kissock, musingly. "And so it was—her—that helped you past your dug grave! I knew her for a mettlesome filly the first time I ever clapped eyes on her. And now—to think that but for you and me she'd be cosily settled, knowing nothing, in this old nest—that should by rights have been my wife's and mine! It's a damned upside-down world this, my fine doctor! But—you'll make it up to her, maybe, in another way?"
He was gazing at Carthew with something of his old imperious, indomitable spirit. "You owe—her—your very coronet, my new Lord Jura," said he.
"I'll pay all I owe," said Carthew, to humour him, "if she'll take any payment from me." And at that the Marquis of Ingoldsby scowled still more blackly.
The ex-Emir made a gruesome effort to laugh sardonically.
"She'll take it," said he, "if you're man enough, if you're man enough to master her," said he and sank back on his couch.
"And now—about Captain Dove," Carthew suggested as he brought paper and ink to the table from the desk in one corner. And the dying man sat up again as if spurred to a final effort.
He looked round at his stricken sister. "Leave us for a little, Janet, woman," said he in a more kindly tone. "There is that to be told now which you would like ill to hear, and his lordship will call you back when I'm through with it."
Carthew nodded hastily to the old housekeeper. "We'll be as quick as we can," he promised: "and you can stay within call."
She went, however unwillingly, and then her brother began the story of all his dealings with Captain Dove, speaking slowly, in a low voice, husbanding his strength, while Carthew wrote down every word of it.
In his eagerness to ensure the downfall of his surviving enemy, he had no hesitation in incriminating himself. Lord Ingoldsby listened as if stricken dumb and Carthew had hard work to contain himself as he heard, among other infamies, of the bargain the ex-Emir had driven with Captain Dove over Sallie. He would have thrown down his pen during M'Kissock's laboured, self-compassionate account of how Captain Dove had outwitted him, had not the man on the couch at the other side of the table been almost across death's threshold already. M'Kissock's rabid thirst for revenge, his obvious impenitence for all his own crimes and misdeeds, excited repugnance in place of the pity his plight might otherwise have inspired. Carthew was devoutly thankful when that most distasteful task was at length completed, and Farish M'Kissock's feeble, straggling signature attached to the document he had drawn up. Lord Ingoldsby and he both added their names as witnesses, and then he called the housekeeper in again. Her brother, having thus accomplished his final object in life, was evidently sinking fast.
In the corridor outside, Lord Ingoldsby called a halt as Carthew would have turned to leave him with a few hurried words of thanks for the jealous service he had just rendered.
"Half a mo'," interposed his lordship, very morosely. "We might just as well come to an understandin' now as later on. I want to tell you that, whoever Lady Josceline is or is not, I've asked her to marry me—and, if you're goin' to see her now—I don't know what your ideas are, but—we might just as well start fair."
Carthew contemplated him for a moment in surprised silence, and then nodded curtly. He was going to see Sallie at once, if he could, as his rival had divined.
"All right," he assented. "Come on."
He looked into the banquet-hall in passing. Herries was there, with the butler and all his assistants. The dinner-table had been cleared and draped with a great black mort-cloth. And on it lay, recumbent, with clasped hands, in the clear, mellow light of the tall, white tapers at its head and feet, the unheeding shape of Carthew's predecessor in the earldom of Jura, still dressed in its disreputable, greasy blue uniform and burst boots, with a red smudge, as of iron-rust, on its forehead.
The fires had both been raked out and their hearth-stones strewn with the ashes, not to be rekindled before that night on which the dead earl should be carried away by the water-gate from his catafalque to the great black burial-barge, with the pipes wailing a wild lament for the mountains to echo, and the waves or the still sea-surface, as might befall, crimson under the twinkling torches of those who would follow, with muffled oars.
Herries came forward to speak to Carthew. "I'm seeing to everything here now, my lord, and we'll soon have all as it should be," said he. "Captain Dove and his friends are fast, in the North Keep. And your other orders have all been observed."
"I'll see you again in a little, then," Carthew returned, and went on his way, by no means inspirited.
It was the Duchess of Dawn, her blue eyes still blurred and showing traces of tears, who came to the door of the boudoir in Sallie's suite in the distant West Wing, in response to Carthew's knock.
"Have you not brought her back with you?" she asked, and looked surprisedly past him at Lord Ingoldsby.
"Where is she?" Carthew asked, in sudden alarm. "I haven't seen her."
"She went along to the gun-room a little ago—a note came to say she was wanted there. And—I supposed it would be from you."
"I'll find her there, then," declared Carthew, and turned and retraced his steps very hurriedly. An instant dread of some unforeseen mischance among his over-rapid plans for her welfare had filled his mind; and his face grew dark as he hobbled back along that endless corridor and across the deserted main hall again, with Lord Ingoldsby at his elbow.
Of the sleepy servants they passed by the way he asked no questions, for only the butler and his immediate underlings knew anything as yet of what had happened. It had been Carthew's own idea to prevent any garbled report being spread about till he should have devised some means to save Sallie from pain and scandal.
He found the gun-room empty, and stared about it in dire distress. Then he sniffed the air, frowning. And then he noticed a half-smoked cigarette smouldering in the fireplace. He picked it up hastily and saw Jasper Slyne's monogram upon it.
"Must have been a long time burning," he thought, and a concrete suspicion flashed through his mind. But that seemed so far-fetched at first that he shook his head impatiently over it.
"They could scarcely escape from the North Keep," said he to himself. "But—I may as well make sure that everything's safe here while I'm about it," he muttered, and limped across to the panel that covered the passage to the water-gate.
It was unlocked.
He pulled it open and looked down into the darkness, listening intently. Then he swung round and, snatching up the lighted lamp on the table beside the fire, made off down the steps, leaving Lord Ingoldsby in the dark.
But his gaping lordship was not to be left behind. He followed hot-foot, uttering foolish oaths as he barked an elbow on the rock wall.
Carthew stopped suddenly. He could hear voices not very far ahead and the movement of some heavy weight. The tunnel curved a little there, and he knew he must be near the bridge that crosses the oubliette. He went on again, very cautiously, keeping close to one wall and shading the lamp as well as he could, till he came to a point where further precaution was idle. For, fifty yards away, straight ahead, he could see Slyne holding a candle beside Captain Dove, who was stooping over the roughly carpentered tree-trunk which still stretched from lip to lip of the intervening chasm. Its former neighbour had disappeared.
Captain Dove looked up and caught sight of Carthew in his turn. He had got his hands under the heavy trunk, and staggered sideways, straddling it, till its butt-end was close to the brink. Carthew had all but reached the opposite edge of the pit between them when he let it go with a breathless grunt and it fell almost soundlessly into the void below.
Slyne blew out his candle then, with a bitter, mocking laugh, but not before Carthew had observed Mr. Jobling and Ambrizette in the background, with a drooping figure between them.
Captain Dove looked across at Carthew with a hoarse chuckle, no less malicious. He was evidently in that mordant, capricious humour most common with him at moments when his potations had merely begun their evil work on his wits.
"Light that candle again, Slyne, confound you!" he ordered sharply. "His noble lordship, our American friend, can scarcely see us—to say good-bye."
"Oh, come on," Slyne urged, obviously almost at the end of his patience. "We've no more than time to get safely away before we'll have the hue and cry after us in the fishermen's boats—and they're faster than you imagine."
"Youcan't teachmeanything about boats!" Captain Dove retorted with crapulous dignity. "So just light—Or, here—gimme the candle, quick! And don't address any more of—of your in—invidious conversation to me."
"I'll see Sallie safely afloat, then," suggested Slyne. "We'll have to send her down in a whip, I expect. The sea's always rising."
"She's a better seaman than you are, Slyne," the old man returned with a sneer. "And she'll go down hand under hand, same as I will—when I'm quite ready. Till then, she'll stay here with me, so that his loving lordship there can have a last, long look at her." He chuckled again, most discordantly. "But—you can see that fat stiff, Jobling, safely afloat, if you like. It will probably take a whip to tempthimto run the risk of a wetting on his way aboard."
The wretched object of his derision gave vent to a very audible groan, hearing which, Captain Dove laughed aloud, with malevolent relish. And, having at length succeeded in striking a match, he turned again toward Carthew, standing still and silent on the other side of the apparently bottomless chasm which cut the pathway apart.
"Are there only the two of you there?" he asked, darting a contemptuous glance at Lord Ingoldsby.
"That's all," Carthew answered tersely. He was absolutely at his wits' end, but thought he could not do better than detain the old man there as long as he might.
"But you've raised the alarm up above?" Captain Dove suggested, with all the fatuous cunning of one half-fuddled. "And we'll have a pack of your cut-throats in petticoats down on us in a minute or two?"
He looked savagely round at Slyne. "I thought I told you to see that bloated Jonah into the boat!" he blurted explosively. And Slyne, with an exasperated shrug of the shoulders, sauntered away, with Mr. Jobling in very uncertain attendance.
"I want to talk to you on my own account for five seconds or so, young-fellow-my-lad," Captain Dove continued, as if in confidence, to Carthew. "But—is it safe, eh? You haven't answered my questions yet. And—you've turned the key on us once already!"
"You're safe from pursuit in the meantime," Carthew reassured him.
"I'll take your word for it, sir," Captain Dove declared, and, bowing very graciously, all but over-balanced himself. "And now let me ask you whether you have been listening to any more lies from Farish M'Kissock; because, if you have, we must part brass-rags right away."
Carthew was most sorely tempted to spare the truth, and made haste to answer honestly while he might. "I've heard all he had to tell," said he, "and—"
"And you believe it all!" Captain Dove interposed, with maudlin pathos, his evident intention to see whether he could not even yet make terms of some sort for himself with the young American knocked on the head. "Well, well! We must be jogging now, Sallie."
The girl stepped forward beside him at that, and Carthew was thankful to see Ambrizette clinging to her skirts, for she had told him more than once how often the dumb, black dwarf had stood betwixt her and imminent harm.
Her sweet, sensitive features were very pale, but placid, as if, after the sore stress she had suffered, she had found some sort of peace. And all the pride seemed to have died out of her downcast eyes as she faced him across the dark, impassable gulf that stretched between them.
"I don't want you to think that I have gone away unwillingly, Mr. Carthew," she said, and his heart almost failed him as he heard that. It had never occurred to him that she might have taken such a sheerly suicidal step of her own free will.
"But why—" he cried, and the hurt in his voice perhaps helped to salve a little the sore wounds in her own heart.
"I couldn't possibly have stayed here, you see—after what has happened. And,—I'm not afraid of the future now. You don't understand, perhaps, but—you will remember—I wasn't afraid."
"Come away now, Sallie," said Captain Dove. An irascible voice in the distance was calling upon him insistently.
"Good-bye," she said, submissively, to Carthew, and, looking up, her eyes met his for an instant.
"Wait a minute—only a minute more, for God's sake!" Carthew implored the old man. "It won't do any of you any harm to stand by till I've said my say. It won't help you in the least, Captain Dove, to carry Sallie away—and you'll be far safer, believe me, if you leave her here. I've only been waiting my chance to ask her to marry me, and—"
"I've asked her already," interrupted Lord Ingoldsby, in a tone no doubt meant to be most impressive but strongly resembling a squeal. No one, however, paid him any more attention than if he had been the shadow he seemed.
"And if you carry her off just now," Carthew continued hurriedly, encouraged by the benevolent smile with which Captain Dove was regarding him, "you'll have good cause to regret it. For I'll hunt you down till I find you, and then—"
"Now you're talking," the old man commented approvingly, quite undismayed by that threat. "And then we'll make terms, if you come in time and bring enough money with you.
"I'd even have waited here and fixed it all up, but—" He wagged his shameless white head sorrowfully. "It wouldn't be wise," said he. "You've been prejudiced against me—by Farish M'Kissock. It's too late to think of that now. So I must be off, for my own sake.
"But maybe we'll meet again," he concluded with cheerful complacence, "in some safer spot for me. And, if Sallie's still on my hands when you show up—"
"So be it, then," Carthew agreed, seeing clearly that further appeal would be futile, all eagerness to get above-ground again and begin the chase. He could have the whole fishing-fleet of the village armed and afloat within half an hour, and might even yet succeed in boarding theOlive Branchat her anchorage. But, manlike, he had counted without the woman in the case.
"I'm going away of my own free will, Mr. Carthew," said Sallie suddenly, with the same strange expression of face that he had observed when she had looked back at him in the banquet-hall. "And—I don't want you to follow me. You have been far more than generous, but—I couldn't marry you—in any case."
"Don't say that, Sallie," he beseeched, and, "Dove!" cried a very wrathful voice in the distance. "We'll be off without you if you don't come down at once."
The old man's smug, blinking smile instantaneously changed to a furious scowl. He pulled a big, golden-necked bottle from one of his pockets, removed the cork, and, having poured its remaining contents hastily down his throat, tiptoed off down the tunnel with it in one hand, making motions as if to hurl it with accurate aim, leaving Sallie alone there.
Carthew glared across the black gulf at his feet, his free hand clenched, in helpless despair. He would gladly have given his earldom then in exchange for a pair of wings.
"I'll bolt up and get a ladder brought down," groaned Lord Ingoldsby. And he would have made off without more ado but that Carthew had seized him by the sleeve.
"Here! Hold this," commanded Carthew, and thrust the smoking lamp into his hands. Sallie had turned to follow Captain Dove, with dragging steps. He could not believe that she meant what she had said. He would not let her go without making sure. Farish M'Kissock's contemptuous words had recurred to his mind—"if you're man enough to master her!" Instinct told him that she would not turn back now, and—a man's last stake was all he had left to venture.
"Stop, stop! It's sheer suicide," the marquis cried shrilly, as Carthew ran limping up the tunnel as far as the straight extended, and faced about, throwing off his coat, and balanced there for a breathless instant and then came racing down past him to launch himself bodily into space.
No human being could have leaped the distance, and Carthew had been further handicapped by his lameness. He shot, as if from a catapult, nearly as high as the arched rock-roof, his elbows close, chin on chest, head between his shoulders, knees at his temples and heels tucked back, and, on the downward curve, reached the lower lip of the chasm, landing on one shoulder, to hang there for the space of a couple of heart-beats, as if poised for the inevitable rebound.
Lord Ingoldsby heard the dull thud of his fall and Sallie's stifled, heart-broken cry. He opened his eyes and saw the girl desperately striving to pull a hunched-up, relaxing body back from the brink over which, but for her, it would already have toppled. He thought they must both have slipped over before, at the finish, Sallie succeeded in drawing Carthew into safety, and sat down beside him, swaying from side to side, as if her own back were broken.
But, presently, Carthew looked up and then he scrambled on to his knees with a suppressed grunt of agony. For a time the whole world swam redly about him, but he clenched his teeth, not to be overcome. And when Sallie in turn got on to her feet again, white and shaking, he had recovered the use of his voice.
"I won't let you go—dear," he said dazedly, and started, in renewed alarm for her, as they heard Captain Dove calling her harshly from below.
"Coming," she called back, since she could not help herself.
"You must stay here, or—he'll kill you!" she whispered in an agony of entreaty. "I'll go now; it will be best so. And if, by and by, you still care to follow—"
"You go on," he said gently. "I'm going to follow you now."
She had no option but to obey him, since to have remained there would merely have meant that Captain Dove, coming back for her, would have him at a greater disadvantage. And as she led the way in the dark, with slow steps, he followed quietly; while Lord Ingoldsby, left to his own devices as they disappeared, was brilliantly inspired to bolt back for help.
A little further on a thick twilight made progress more easily possible, and they could feel the salt breath of the sea on their fevered faces. Then, at last, they drew near the oblong opening in the cliff-face at which Captain Dove had for several minutes been busy abusing the men in the boat below. But he was in no better temper by then, since the empty bottle he had hurled at Slyne had knocked the steersman insensible.
"Is that you, Sallie?" he snapped, looking round.
"Below there, you lubbers! Stand in again. We're coming down now.
"Hurry up, girl!" he barked, impatiently. "It's high time we were away."
He was leaning out over the ledge, clinging with one hand to a bar of the great water-gate, so thick, that his stubby fingers did not meet round it. Carthew, creeping after Sallie set her suddenly aside, and ran at him.
Captain Dove heard him coming, but too late to save himself. He felt as if a bullock had kicked him in the small of the back, and, as his hold broke, he fell headlong, howling like an evil spirit, into the smothering, yeasty surge through which his boat was already hastily backing to pick him up.
Carthew set his back to the heavy gate, and it swung slowly shut. But Slyne had not left behind the key he had for its modern lock, and its old-fashioned draw-bolts were rusted fast. He could only hope that Lord Ingoldsby would bring back some means of bridging the drowning-hole before Captain Dove and his helpers could storm the position again.
He laughed, a little light-headed by then, as he stumbled up the long, dark slope, with Sallie close at his shoulder.
"I told you I wouldn't let you go,—dear," he declared triumphantly, and his laugh changed to a low, choked groan as she would have taken his arm to help him; for he was walking unsteadily.
"Don't touch that one," he begged. "It's a bit sore; I came down on it when I jumped."
"Do you think it's broken?" she whispered, and her eyes grew dim as she thought of all he had suffered through her. She had stopped. There were lights coming down the tunnel, and hurrying feet, on the further side of the drowning-hole.
He slipped his sound arm about her. "There's nothing broken that can't be mended now," he murmured contentedly. "Unless you're really determined to break my heart."
A few years ago Wyndham Martyn's first book, "The Man Outside," was one of the "best sellers" of its season. His new novel shows a distinct advance in the art of the story-teller, and will make many new friends for its author. Richard Chester, a young American of family, with a care-free disposition and a dashing outlook on life, goes through all his money, and has the choice of appealing to his older brother for assistance or working to avoid starvation.
Choosing the latter alternative, and the odds against him, he pursues his unfaltering way through many trials and vicissitudes, not afraid to try labor of the meanest sort; and throughout his struggle for existence his hopes are sustained through love of a true-hearted woman. No man fights more gallantly than he for what is dear to him; neither hardship nor ill-success has power to stay his impetuous course.
The reader must learn for himself the place that a curious will and a chance meeting have in the unusual plot, and the reader may be sure of finding in "All the World to Nothing" a story of charm and cheeriness and unusual appeal.
This is absolutely the cleverest, catchiest book of the season, the Arabian Nights up-to-date in modern New York, a rapid, rollicking romance of love and laughter, fun and absurdity, all told in the most delightfully whimsical manner imaginable. A young club-man, whose distinguishing characteristic is the possession of unblushing audacity and nerve, sees a pretty girl outside the antique-shop of a Persian dealer, to which the girl's aunt has come in quest of a wonderful rug—and then the fun begins and never stops.
For Abou Hassan's shop holds a rug more wonderful than the world has known in many centuries: a magic rug—put foot upon it and one can't be seen or heard. And the hero's love-making, his masquerade as another man, the complications for which the magic rug is responsible, these make a steady stream of comedy that brings laughter to your lips and tears to your eyes while you are held entranced by the mirthful medley of mysterious events that follow.