He advanced towards Jane Blazon, who recoiled in terror, her hands stretched out before her. He was almost touching her. Soon, checked by the wall, she felt right hi her face his alcohol tainted breath.
"I can die, anyhow," she said.
"Die! . . ." repeated Harry Killer, as motionless as his shaking legs would allow. He was brought up short by the cold determination with which she uttered this word. "Die!" he repeated once more, scratching his chin indecisively.
A moment's silence, then another idea struck him. "Pah! . . . We'll see about that tomorrow. We shall soon come to an understanding, my girl! And meantime, let's make ourselves comfortable and happy."
Returning to his arm-chair he hold out his glass. "Let's have a drink!"' he said.
One glass followed another, and a quarter of an hour later Harry Killer, already three parts drunk when Jane arrived, was snoring like a grampus.
So again the girl held at her mercy the brute who might well be her brother's murderer. She could have struck him to the heart, with the very dagger which had struck George Blazon. But what would be the good of that? Would it not, indeed, destroy the last vestige of the hope that she could bring any help to those whom she wanted to save?
For some time she waited, wrapped in thought, and her eyes fixed on the sleeping despot. Then a sudden pang assailed her. She was gripped by hunger, a cruel and imperious hunger.
For the moment she forgot her situation, the place where she found herself, and even Harry Killer himself; she forgot everything except her need for food. Eat, at all costs she must cat at once.
She carefully opened the door through which the eight Counsellors had made their exit, and in an adjacent room she saw a table covered with the remains of a meal. They must have been having a feast before winding up the evening in the Throne Room.
Jane rushed towards the table and picked up at random some fragments of food, which she quickly devoured. As she ate, life returned to her exhausted body; her heart sent the blood speeding through her arteries, and she regained her physical and moral energy.
Refreshed, she went back into the room where she had left Harry Killer. He was still asleep and raucously snoring.
She seated herself in front of him, waiting for him to awake.
A few minutes elapsed, then he moved and something rolled on to the floor. Stooping down, Jane picked up the object fallen from his pocket. It was a small key.
At this, memories crowded back into her mind. She remembered Hany Killer's regular exits, and how much she had wanted to know what it was he kept behind the door, whose lock was opened by this key which he always kept on him. And now chance had given her the means of satisfying her curiosity! The temptation was too great. She must take advantage of the opportunity, which was hardly likely to recur.
Moving very quietly, she reached the door through which Harry Killer was wont to vanish every day, and put the key into the lock. The door turned silently on its hinges. Behind it she found a landing from which a staircase led down to the lower floors. Having quietly pushed the door to without closing it, Jane tiptoed down the staircase, dimly lit by a gleam from below.
The room she had just left was on the second floor of the Palace. Yet, when she had gone down two floors she only came out on to another landing: below this was another stairway which must lead down to the basement. After a moment's hesitation, she went further down.
She came out at last into a sort of oblong vestibule, on the threshold of which she stopped abruptly. A Negro was seated on guard in a recess, and at her approach he rose suddenly.
But she was quickly reassured. The warder seemed to have no hostile intention. On the other hand, he flattened himself respectfully against the wall to allow more room for his nocturnal visitor. She realized the cause for this unexpected deference when she recognized in this warder a member of the Black Guard. Like the Merry Fellows who had escorted her along the Esplanade, he had too often seen her moving freely about the Palace to have any doubts as to her influence over the Master.
With a determined step she went past him unopposed. But all was not over yet. Beyond the man there was a door.
Simulating a confidence which she did not feel, Jane put Harry Killer's key into the lock; it opened this as it had opened the other. She then found herself in a fairly long corridor, a mere extension of the vestibule she had just crossed, with a dozen or so doors opening in its walls to right and left.
All except one were wide open. Jane threw a glance into the rooms they disclosed, and saw that these were nothing but cells, or rather dungeons, dark and airless, and furnished only with a table and a wretched apology for a bed. Othenvise they were empty, and nothing suggested that they had been occupied for some lime.
There remained only the locked door. For the third time Jane tested the power of her key; like the two others the door opened without difficulty.
At first she could distinguish nothing within the dungeon which was plunged into profound darkness. Then, as her eyes gradually became accustomed to the dimness, she was able to make out in the gloom a confused heap, from which came the regular breathing of a sleeping man.
As if some supernatural power had warned her that she had unwittingly made an important discovery, Jane felt herself grow weak. Trembling, her heart throbbing, feeling lost and devoid of strength, she stood motionless on the dungeon's threshold, her ear and her eye seeking in vain to rench into the impenetrable darkness.
Then at last she remembered seeing just outside the door an electric switch. Without taking her eves from the gloomy cell she succeeded in making use of this.
What was the astonishment she now felt, or rather the fear that assailed her!
If she had found, in that inner depth of the Blackland Palace, one of the men whom she had left in the Factory a few minutes before, or even if she had found her brother George Blazon, although she knew him to be dead ten vears ago, she could hardly have been taken more aback.
Suddenly aroused by the switching on of the electric light, a man had sat erect on the wretched sleeping-place in one of the corners of the dungeon. Clothed in rags, whose holes disclosed a body covered with countless wounds and as thin as a skeleton, he tried painfully to stand up, while he turned towards the door eyes astare with fright.
Yet, in spite of the frightful evidences of long torture, in spite of his emaciated face, in spite of his beard and of his uncut hair, Jane could not be mistaken: she at once recognized the wretched prisoner.
Incredible, wonderful, was her recognition of the man who lay there in the depths of the Blackland dungeon. It was he whom six months before she had left peacefully at work in England. This human wreck, this martyr, it was Lewis Robert Blazon, it was her brother!
Panting, her eyes astare, Jane was momentarily unable to move and unable to speak.
"Lewis! . . ." she cried at last, hastening towards her hapless brother, who stammered in his bewilderment: "Jane! . . . You here! .. . Here!"
They threw themselves into one another's arms, and for some time, seized by convulsive sobs, they mingled their tears without being able to utter a word.
"Jane," murmured Lewis at last, "how could you have come to rescue me?"
"I'll tell you later," Jane answered. "But tell me about yourself first. Tell me how you got here."
"What do you think I can tell you?" exclaimed Lewis, with a gesture of despair. "I don't understand it myself. It was five months ago, on the 30th of November, when in my own office, I was knocked out by a violent blow on the back of the neck. When I recovered consciousness I was trussed up, gagged, and thrust into a chest. I've been carried about in a score of ways, like a parcel. Where am I? I don't know. Over more than four months I've never left this dungeon, and every day they lacerate my flesh with pincers, or sometimes with a whip. . . ."
"Oh! . . . Lewis! . . . Lewis!" groaned Jane, who was still sobbing. "But who torments you like that?"
"That's the worst of it all," Lewis replied distressfully. "You could never
imagine who it is that is guilty of these atrocities. It is. ..."
He stopped abruptly. His outstretched arm indicated something in the corridor, and his eyes, his whole face, showed all the signs of extreme fear.
Jane looked in the direction towards which he was pointing. She turned pale, and her hand, which unobtrusively slid into her clothing, grasped the weapon she had found in the tomb at Koubo. His eyes bloodshot and his" mouth, from which flowed a dribble of saliva, contorted into the snarl of a wild beast, fierce, terrifying, hideous, there stood Harry Killer.
CHAPTER XII
HARRY KILLER
"Harry Killer!" cried Jane.
"Harry Killer?" Lewis Blazon repeated, doubtfully, as he stared in amazement at his sister.
"Himself," growled Harry Killer in a raucous voice.
He took a pace forward. Pausing on the threshold of the open door, which his athletic figure completely filled, he leaned against the doorpost, his equilibrium still affected by the nights carousings.
"So this is what brought you here?" he stammered wrathfully. "Well, well, so mademoiselle has an assignment unbeknownst to her future husband!"
"Her husband?" repeated Lewis even more bewildered than before.
"Did you think I could be bamboozled so easily?" went on Harry Killer, advancing into the dungeon and stretching out his enormous hairy hands towards Jane.
But she was brandishing the weapon she had taken from her clothing: "Keep your distancel" she cried.
"Well! . . . Well!" . . ." said Harry Killer sarcastically. "So the wasp has a sting!"
In spite of his sarcasm, he was prudent enough to stop. He stood there motionless, in the middle of the dungeon, his eyes fixed on the dagger with which Jane was menacing him.
Taking advantage of his indecision, the girl, leading her brother with her, had gone towards the door, thus cutting off the retreat of an adversary whom she regarded with fear.
"Yes, I have a weapon," she replied, trembling. "And what a weaponl I found this dagger in a grave ... at Koubo!"
"At Koubo?" Lewis repeated. "Wasn't it there that George? . .."
"Yes," said Jane, "it was at Koubo that George fell, it was there that he died, slain not by the bullets, but by this weapon, and it bears a name engraved upon it: the name of the assassin, Killer."
Harry Killer had taken a pace backwards at that mention of the tragedy at Koubo. Pale, overcome, he was leaning against the dungeon wall, and looking at Jane as though terrified.
"Killer, did you say?" exclaimed Lewis. "But you're wrong, Jane. That isn't this man's name. He has another name, even worse than Killer another name which will not be new to you." "Another name?"
"Yes. . . . You were too young when he left us to recognize him now, but you've often heard him talked about. When your mother married your father she had a son. That son is the very man whom you see here, it is your half-brother, William Forney!"
This revelation had opposite effects on the other two.
While Jane, half-fainting, let fall her nerveless hand, William Forney, who must now be allowed his rightful name, seemed to have regained his self-assurance. At the same time his drunkenness had vanished. He stood erect, and faced the little group formed by Jane and Lewis, towards whom he was darting looks alive with hatred and full of an implacable cruelty.
"All, so you are Jane Blazon," he said in menacing tones. Then he repealed, grinding his teeth, "So you are Jane Blazon!"
Then suddenly, all the evil sentiments which strangled him finding vent at once, he spoke, spoke so quickly that he had no time to put his words together. He spoke in short abrupt phrases, his chest heaving, his voice thick, his eyes flaming:
"Well, I'm glad! . . . Yes, indeed, I'm very glad. . . . Well, so you went to Koubo! . . . Yes, granted, it was I who killed him . . . your brother George . . . that fine fellow George . . . whom the Blazon family were so proud of! ... I even killed him twice . . . first in his soul . . . and then in his body . . . and now I've got you here, the two of you ... in my power, under my feet! You belong to me! . . . I can do what I like with you! . . ."
The words his throat emitted could hardly be understood. He was stammering, drunk with joy, exulting, triumphant.
"When I remember that I'd got one . . . and that the other came to me of her own accordl . . . It's too funny! ..."
He took a step forward, while neither Jane nor Lewis, who were clutching one another, moved. Leaning towards them, he continued:
"You think you know a lot, don't you? But you don't know anything. . . . But I'm going to tell you everything . . . Everything! ... It will be a pleasurel Well, he drove me out, your father! ... He can be very glad of thatl . . . But only one thing mars my delight. ... I want him to know . . . before he dies . . . whose hand struck those blows. . . . That hand .. . look at it ... it was mine! . . ."
He advanced further. He was almost touching the brother and sister, who recoiled, terrified by this attack of insane ferocity.
"Well, they drove me out! What could I have done with the beggarly pittance they offered me? ... I wanted gold, plenty of gold, mountains of gold! ... I got it . . . gold ... by the shovel full ... in heaps . . . without your help . . . without the help of anyone ... all by myself! .. . And what did I do to get it? . . . Ha!... What the people of your sort call crimes. . . . I've robbed . . . killed . . . murdered .. . every . . . every crime . . . Ha!
"But gold wasn't enough for me. . . . My strongest motive was the hate I feel for you ... for you all . . . the wretched House of Glenor! . . . That's why I came to Africa ... I trailed George Blazon's column ... I was taken to him. ... I played a fine comedy . . . regret . . . repentance . . . remorse ... I was a liar, a cheat, a hypocrite. ... It was war, wasn't it? . . . The fool let himself be taken in. . . . He welcomed me with open arms. ... I shared his tent, his table. . . . Ha! I took full advantage of his stupid confidence. . . . Every day a little more powder in his food. . . . That powder? . . . What does that matter? Opium . . . hashish ... or something of the kind . . . that's my business. . . . Go and find George Blazon. ... A child, a little helpless child.
"The leader? . . . Myself! . . . Then, what a triumph!. . . The papers were full of it. . . . George Blazon goes insane . . . George Blazon the murderer . . . George Blazon the traitor . . . That was all they talked about. . . . Who was it laughed, later on, when he read the papers? ... I think it was me. . . . But let's get on. . . . One day the soldiers came. George Blazon dead, that was good . . . dishonoured, that was better still. ... So I killed him to shut his mouth.
"Then I came on here, and I founded this city. . . . Not too bad, was it, for somebody who was kicked out in disgrace? Here, I'm the boss . . . the master, the king . . . the emperor ... I give orders, and the others obey. . . . Still, I wasn't quite satisfied. . . . Your father still had a son and a daughter. That wasn't to be borne. . . . First the son. . . . One day when I wanted money I took his . . . and him into the bargain. . . . Ha, ha! Knocked out, the son was . . . trussed up like a chicken, the son was . . . stuffed into a trunk, the son was. . . . Then off we go. . . . Trains, steamships, heliplanes, oft we gol Right down here ... to me ... in my kingdom! . . . And I shall kill him . . . like the other . . . but not so quickly . . . slowly . . . day after dayl . . . And meanwhile . . . down there ... in England . . . the father . . . Oh, a noble lord! . . . and rich! . . . the father knows that his son has vanished . . . taking the cashbox with him. . . . Nicely worked out, all that, God damn my soul!
"But there's still the girl . . . my sister. . . . Ha, ha, my sister. . . . Now it's her turn. . . . What shall I do to her? . . . I've thought about it. I've cudgelled my brains. . . . Good, she's come here! . . . Here's my chance! . . . Not so long ago I was going to make her my wife! . . . Just to torture herl . . . My wife! . . . Not a bit of it! . . . The wife of the lowest of my slaves . . . the vilest of my Negroes!
"Then what will be left ... for the old lord ... in spite of all his titles and his wealth? . . . His two sons one a t
raitor . . . one a thief. . . . His daughter? . . . Gone vanished, nobody knows where. . . . And he . . . left alone . . . with his old fashioned notions. . . . There's a fine ending for the House of Glenorl"
Uttered in a gasping voice, these frightful curses ended in nothing less than a howL
William Femey paused, completely out of breath, stifled with rage. His eyes were starting out of their sockets. He stretched towards his victims his clutching hands, ready to tear their hated flesh. He was no longer human. He was a homicidal maniac in the grip of lunacy, a ferocious beast, seeking only to destroy.
Alarmed more for him even than for themselves, Jane and Lewis Blazon gazed horror stricken at the madman. How could the human heart cherish so frightful a hatred?
"For tonight," the monster continued, when he had regained his breath, "I'm going to leave you together, as that seems to amuse you. But tomorrow. . . ."
The noise of an explosion, which certainly must have been great to reach the dungeon, suddenly drowned his voice. He stopped abruptly, surprised, uneasy, listening anxiously. .. .
The explosion was followed by several minutes of complete silence, then they heard a noise. . . . Cries, distant howlings, all the din of a frantic mob, mingled now and again with rifle or revolver shots.. ..
William Femey was no longer thinking about Jane nor about Lewis Blazon. He was listening, trying to understand the meaning of the din.
The man from the Black Guard posted at the entrance to the dungeon suddenly rushed in, "Master," he cried, as though panic stricken. The town is on fire!"
Ferney gave vent to a frightful oath; then, contemptuously thrusting aside Jane and Lewis Blazon as they tried to bar his way, he dashed down the corridor and vanished.
The interruption had taken place so quickly that the brother and sister had not had time to comprehend. In their bewilderment they had hardly noticed the explosion and the uproar which had freed them from their executioner. For an instant they failed to realize that they were alone. Still holding tightly on to one another, and overcome by the disgusting scene they had just witnessed, enfeebled by their recent sufferings, thinking of the old man who was dying in despair and shame, they were sobbing bitterly.