CHAPTER XII.
THE STAIRS.
The passage ended in an arch, beyond which appeared a balustrade.
The corridor was wider than the archway; and Dick, having made the girlhide behind its projection, stepped delicately out upon the squarelanding, and looked over the rails.
The staircase mounted in a single broad flight from the floor of anentrance hall larger and more pretentious than he had expected. Theattempt at an appearance of comfort was a failure, but money had beenspent, and a sort of bad harmony between furniture and decoration forceditself upon the eye.
Across the hall, to the left, the front door stood open to the sunlight.In the wall facing him and the stair's foot were two closed doors, andothers, doubtless, to match them, beneath the gallery on which he stood.
He had already made up his mind to lead the girl noiselessly down thestair and through the open door, and thence to make, if necessary, arunning fight for it, with the chance of taking his pursuers in detail,when he heard a man's steps, accompanied by a faint tinkle of china,coming towards the hall, he judged, along the corridor immediatelybeneath that which he and Amaryllis had used.
Something, he remembered, had been said of breakfast, to be sent up, andhe waited until there appeared, first the tray and then the man thatcarried it; a thick-set fellow, with heavy boots, shabby clothes, and abald spot among the rough sandy hair of his crown.
It was plain that he was making for the stair, and Dick drew back behindthe projection of the arch, opposite to Amaryllis. He saw the questionsin her eyes and knew she could hear the approaching footsteps.
He made a gesture for silence; a silence which seemed to Amaryllis tolast immeasurable time, while tea-cup tinkled against milk-jug, evernearer and nearer.
She saw him take a swift glance through the arch at the comer she couldnot see, draw back three steps up the passage, and start forward againwith a face that made her heart jump, and a terrific limping rush ofthree or four strides to the stairhead. And she craned forward just intime to see the man with the tray, two steps from the top, receive inhis stomach a kick which lifted, it seemed, the wretched creature andall that he carried in a single flight to the bottom of the stair.
After a little clash of plates and cups on the impact of the kick, therewas a sensible silence before the appalling crash and thud at thestair's foot. Amaryllis held back a scream, but reeled as if fainting.
Dick caught her by the shoulders and shook her, as women will shake achild.
"Buck up," he said; and she clung to his hands a moment. Then,
"I'm all right," she murmured, and stood alone.
Even as she spoke it seemed that in the hall below three doors opened atonce, and that from each rushed a man, clamouring questions; and then,having seen the clutter of tray and crockery, stood aghast.
Dick, after one glimpse of the three so standing, took cover again,drawing the girl with him.
"Looks as if he fell backwards right from the top," said a bass voice,which Dick ascribed to the big man with the black beard who had seemedto carry himself somewhat above the others.
"Slipped 'is foot and pitched backwards, and 'e ain't 'arf copped it."
"But why backwards?" asked Black Beard. And Dick imagined a suspiciousglance at the stairhead.
"I guess 'e try save tray and lose _balanza_ of 'eemself," said a third,whose exotic voice and uneasy English affected Dick with an undefinedreminiscence.
"Carry the fool to his kennel, you two," said Black Beard. And Dickheard the crushing under foot and the kicking aside of broken china, anda shuffling of two pairs of feet.
But they had not gone many yards with their burden, when he heard afourth man enter the hall, and a voice in which langour strove in vainagainst asperity--Melchard's voice, which he had heard for the firsttime while he clung with his fingers to the window-sill of the bedroomand with his shoe-tips to the string-course below it, sinking his headeven below his defenceless knuckles.
At the sound of this voice Dick now stretched himself prone, andwriggled, Amaryllis thought, like some horrid worm, laying his leftcheek to the floor until he reached a point where his right eye got itsline of sight, between the uprights of the gallery's balustrade, on thefour live men and the inert, midway between the door out of sightbeneath him, and the place where the broken tea-pot had spilt itscontents in an ugly pool near the lowest tread of the stair.
"What's that?" Melchard had said. "Oh, put it down." And they laid thebody on the floor.
Melchard looked from Black Beard to the cockney, and back.
"Is it beer again? I said not more than a tumbler of whisky beforelunch. Beer always plays hell with him."
"Then you should give 'im 'arshish, sir," said the cockney. "It's theInjin 'emp 'e needs. But 'e ain't smelt beer since we left Millsborough.Somethin's just appeared to 'im, and 'e ain't 'arf copped it."
"Appeared? Tell me what happened," said Melchard, querulously.
"Fell right down the stair, tray and all," said Black Beard, "just as ifhe'd been pushed."
Melchard was stooping over the scarce breathing body.
"He's not dead," he declared.
"He will be," said Black Beard, "unless you 'phone to Millsborough for adoctor damn quick."
"Don't be a fool, Ockley. Better let him die than bring a sharp-wittedmedical practitioner to _my_ house, to-day of all days."
"If we have a death here in _your_ house," Ockley retorted, "they'llwant to know _how_ and _why_ and _when_. And 'no doctor called'--and'this shady Mr. Melchard'--and all the damned things that always happen.Will that be good for your health--with the whole game in your hands,too?"
Melchard was hit, and Dick thought that he saw his face lose colour.
"Well?" he said nervously.
"Either fetch medical aid," replied Ockley, "or bury him under theash-heap. And that's going a bit far for an accident."
"Was he pushed? I wonder," said Melchard; and the pair, with headstogether, spoke in whispers inaudible to Dick, who writhed himself sixinches back from the baluster, in fear of the upward glance which mightcome at any moment.
He had heard enough, and his usual policy came into play.
Amaryllis was able to watch him without exposing herself to the eyes ofthe enemy; for they had gathered round the injured tray-bearer so nearto her side of the hall that the floor of the gallery shut off theirview of anything below the top of the arch round whose side she peered,crouching low.
Dick, then, she saw moving snake-wise to the stair; and she marvelledthat, even in the hush of the voices below, no slightest sound of hismovement reached her ear. Chin first, his head disappeared over thefirst step, the long body dragging after it, half-inch by half-inch,until all of him that she could see was the thick soles of his boots,clinging, as it appeared, by their toes to the edge of the highest step.
Her heart shook for his danger, which now so closely embraced her ownthat she forgot its separate significance.
The voices rose again.
"But you're a qualified man yourself," said Melchard. "You'll beresponsible."
"Fat lot of good that'll do you," replied Black Beard. "Qualified, byGod! When I can't prove it without proving also that I'm off theregister, and that my name's not Ockley!" He broke off with an uglylaugh, then added: "Let's go up and see."
And now Amaryllis saw her serpent shoot up to a great rod of vengeance.Before she could ask herself, "What is he going to do?" Dick Bellamy haddone it; vaulting, even as he rose, over the rail of the stair, and,with an appalling scream which might have come from a maniac in frenzy,or the mortal agony of a wounded beast, literally falling upon hisenemies.
His right foot caught Melchard between jaw and shoulder, shooting himsupine and headlong upon the polished floor until his head hit thecorner of the stone kerb about the hearth; while the left kneesimultaneously struck the cockney, who fell, with Dick's crouchingweight full upon him, heavily to the ground; and Amaryllis, fearforgotten, leaning over the rail, heard at the same
moment, but asseparate sounds, the blow of the under man's head upon the boards andthat of Dick's right fist on its left jaw.
Then Dick was on his feet again, but barely in time. For in the clamourand rushing fall of this wild figure, clad in grey flannel trousers andblue shirt, with lank black hair flying stiffly up and away from thesavage mouth and blazing blue eyes, Ockley had leapt back out of reach.But the little Spaniard, standing apart, was astonished; his dark eyesshowed wide rings of white eyeball, and the open mouth teeth evenwhiter, as he stared, aghast yet curious, at the living thunderboltwhich had fallen so near to him.
Ockley, however, directly his eyes had taken in what he had leapt backfrom, had begun what even Amaryllis could see was the rush of an expert.He did not, indeed, catch Dick upon his knees, as she had feared, butleft him little time to steady himself. She could see that the big manwas brave, and as strong as a bull, so that hers looked slender bycomparison.
But Dick was less unprepared than he seemed. Arms hanging and facevacuous, he side-stepped smartly to the left, escaping a swinging rightaimed at his head, and, as the great body passed, drove a short, heavyleft punch under the still raised right arm, which shook Ockley severelyand, increasing the impetus of his attack, sent him staggering againstthe balustrade of the stair.
And now the Spaniard found what he had been looking for.
"Por Dios!" he wailed, "it iss Limping Deek!" and so fled.
Dick followed up his advantage, forcing the pace, but Ockley would havenone of it until he had worked himself into the middle of the floor;then suddenly coming again, got home with a tremendous right which Dickfailed to stop with anything better than his left cheek-bone.
The blow was well timed and delivered with the full force of a strongman fighting scientifically, perhaps for his life; and Dick Bellamy knewthat, hard as he kept himself, he could not afford to take another ofits kind.
Crouching, he watched Black Beard between his fists which protected hisface, the perpendicular fore-arms guarding his body; and in the momentwhile his sight was clearing, he heard, from somewhere above him, alittle agonized moan, and found himself again.
Ockley, elated, pursued his advantage with a savage left drive whichmight have proved worse for Dick than the right which had just split hischeek, had he not, ducking to his right in perfect time, met the big manwith a heavy left jolt in the mouth, and, simultaneously advancing hisright foot and straightening his body, followed it up with a right tothe jaw that knocked his opponent full length. He fell and lay beyondthe projection of the hearth on the other side of which was Melchard,still as death.