Ambrotox and Limping Dick

  CHAPTER XIII.

  THE KNIFE-THROWER.

  With the sleeve of his shirt Dick wiped the blood from his cheek, lookeddown at Ockley, and then up at Amaryllis, half-way down the stair.

  "That's four. Where's the fifth?" he asked.

  "He ran out there," she answered. "You frightened him."

  "Come down," said Dick; and when she reached the floor, she found himkneeling by Melchard, searching his pockets.

  She came close and touched him on the shoulder.

  "Let's get out of the house--now, now!" she pleaded, lowering her voicein the presence of so much that looked like death.

  "Pocket these," said Dick, handing behind him some letters and apocket-book.

  With a sharp tug he disengaged the side-pocket wedged between Melchard'sbody and the floor, and from it took out a small parcel wrapped in whitepaper. Of its two seals one had been broken. He peered into the openedend.

  "Small bottle--white powder," he said.

  "That's it," replied Amaryllis. "Do let's go--please."

  "Was there anything else?" he asked.

  "Oh, do come away. I'm frightened," said the girl, imploring.

  "So'm I--badly," said Dick, and rose to his feet.

  The letters from Melchard's pocket were still in her hand. He took them,and picked out a white envelope with no writing on it. The wax seal hadbeen broken.

  He drew from it a sheet of paper, and unfolded it before her.

  "That's the formula--it must be," said Amaryllis.

  "Let's hook it, then," said Dick, buttoning the package and envelopeinto his hip-pocket, and slipping the rest of Melchard's papers into theside pocket of his own jacket, hanging loosely on Amaryllis.

  As they crossed the hall he missed Ockley.

  "My God!" he cried. "The black bloke's gone. Did you see him go--or hearhim?"

  Amaryllis shook her head.

  "I thought I'd given him a five-minute dose at least," said Dick on thethreshold, and taking her left elbow in his hand, began to run. "We'vegot to grease like hell. It's a mile and a half to my car."

  They were half-way to the pretentious gate, and Amaryllis was alreadydistressed by the pace, when they heard behind them the thud of arevolver. A twig with two leaves, cut from a branch above and beyondthem, fell into the road. Dick increased his pace, so that Amaryllis wasonly kept from falling by his firm hold of her arm.

  A second shot hit the drive behind them, spraying their backs withgravel.

  "High. Low, to left--jump!" yelled Dick, swinging the girl leftward pasthis body with a force so sudden that she fell on the grass at theroadside, in the shelter of an artificial knoll covered with shrubs; andthis time Dick heard the bullet close on his right.

  He threw himself on the grass, sharing her cover.

  "All right?" he asked.

  Speechless for lack of breath, Amaryllis nodded, trying to smile.

  "You can't run to the gate," he said, rather as if speaking to himselfthan to her. "Wind's gone already, and it's a hundred yards withoutcover. To the bank of the road's only about twenty-five. Breathe deep.Is my cap in that pocket still?"

  Amaryllis found and gave it to him. Dick, unrolling it, rose slowly tohis knees, facing the rhododendron bush.

  "Oh, don't!" exclaimed the girl.

  "Wouldn't, if I'd got a stick. Listen; he's using an Army Webley, Ithink. Six shots. He's fired three. If I can draw the second threebefore he fills up, it gives us a start while he reloads."

  On his knees, he peered through the bush.

  "Still at the door," he said. "Breathe deep. On the third shot we go forthe embankment. I'll get you up it. Then over the road. There's timberthat side as well as this."

  Again Amaryllis nodded, and Dick, rising a little higher, disposed thecap between two clumps of leaves, where he hoped it would seem supportedby his head.

  "Real G. A. Henty stunt, ain't it?" he said. "But I've shaken him up abit, and it's worth trying."

  He raised the cap slightly, let it drop back again on the rhododendronleaves, and laid himself full length on the ground.

  "Third shot--if it comes. Breathe deep," he repeated.

  There was a pause, agonizing to the girl; and then it came.

  Three shots, thumping in rapid succession, the last of them depositingthe cap almost in her hands. Clutching it, she scrambled to her feet,and Dick, catching her by the arm beneath the shoulder, forced her intoa thirty yards' sprint, in which, while her heart beat as if it wouldburst, her feet seemed to touch the ground barely half a dozen timesbefore the grey stones of the embankment rushed to meet them almost inthe face.

  How he managed to force her to the top and bundle her over the parapet,she could never remember, any more than she could forget Ockley's nextshot, which was discharged as their figures showed against his sky-linefor the two seconds which it took them to cross the road and flingthemselves recklessly down the slope of its other side.

  "Brace up," said Dick at the bottom. "You've got some guts, anyhow; andonce we're well into that undergrowth, your hairy friend may come afterus with a Vickers and be damned to him."

  To get to it he had to lift her over a swampy patch in a hollow to astony place beyond it; whereafter they were soon as well hidden from theroad as its outline lay exposed to the search of their eyes.

  But Amaryllis at first left the watching to his, closing her own andlying still, in sheer womanly terror of being sick. Somewhere within wasa doubt as to whether she did not already adore him, and a pitiableanxiety that "nothing horrid" should be associated in his mind with herperson.

  Dick, lying at full length, turned his eyes every now and again from hiswatch on the road to look at the girl's face; and saw, with anxiety aswell as pity, how pale it was, and how wasted already by hunger, fearand running--and perhaps by the drug they had given her the nightbefore. He must ask no further exertion of her until she was fed andrested.

  His object was to make his way as quickly as possible to "The Coach andHorses," his car, and safety.

  But he dared not move from this shelter, nor even stand upright, untilhe knew what Ockley intended. Already he had tasted the man's quality,and, with the girl on his hands, held him in healthy fear.

  "They've gone too far," he reflected, "to back out."

  Had Black Beard been playing 'possum when he ought to have been laidout? He must, it would seem, have been pretty fit all the time to getaway without making a sound.

  Then a thought which sent fear through him like a knife:

  "If he saw or heard what we took from that scented swine, no wonder he'sshooting to kill. It's God's judgment on me for a fool--a fool thatbelieved in peace and policemen. Limping Dick on a gaff like thiswithout a gun!"

  And then he saw a figure, clear against the sky, standing on the road,at the head of the path by which, three-quarters of an hour ago, hehimself had gone up to get his first view of "The Myrtles."

  It was Ockley; even at three hundred yards Dick could distinguish theblack beard and heavy shoulders of the enemy, who was gazing from hishigh point, not in the direction of the fugitives, but along themoorland path to "The Coach and Horses"--the path which lay open to hiseye for its whole length.

  "Easy to guess the way I want to go," Dick calculated, "and easier tosee that I haven't dared take it." Then, as Ockley turned his headtowards the trees, "and easiest of all," he added aloud, "to spot theonly cover."

  Amaryllis opened her eyes, and he saw that her face was less grey.

  "What is it?" she asked.

  "The Hairy One," said Dick, "looking for us."

  "But he can't see us, can he?"

  "No. That's why he knows where we are. He's coming down."

  "Don't be worried, Dick," said Amaryllis softly. "You'll get the best ofhim again. You've been splendid."

  "I've been a fool."

  "Why?" she asked.

  "To be caught without a gun. I could have killed him."

  "Would you?"

  "It's he or us."
r />   Her answer surprised him. There was no fear in her face, but sympathyfilled it; and a little colour came.

  "Then you will kill him," she said with assurance. "I'll do whatever yousay, and we'll beat him."

  Dick nodded. "See those hazels?" he said. "We'll scrounge behind 'em tostart with."

  By the time they were settled in the new cover they could hear heavyfeet in the distance, crashing through the low tangle of undergrowth.And Amaryllis, fear cast out by trust, and her physical prostration forthe moment counteracted by the intensity of her interest in him, and byher curiosity to see how next his versatility of resource would showitself, watched Dick's face as he listened to the feet of his enemy.Each step, she thought, had a different shade of meaning for him. Hisleft ear seemed to follow, and his eyes seemed to see each stride of thehunter, and at last he spoke:

  "He's working along this side of the embankment. Now he's in the trackthat cuts through this copse. We're close to it here--see, throughthere, between the beech and the young oak. Hear his feet: stones,puddle, soft rut," he said rhythmically. "Caught his foot. He'sfollowing the path--going slower--walking, and trying to look both sidesat once in the undergrowth."

  A pause, and then he said, with a jerk:

  "Take that coat off."

  Amaryllis obeyed, and lay still.

  Beside the rutted cart-track, a few yards from where they lay, was apile of brushwood, cut and stacked for fuel. From this, with a cautiouseye and ear on the bend where the track twisted out of sight in thedirection of the high road, he took an armful of sticks and twigs andbuttoned round it the Norfolk jacket. He tore grass in great handfulsand stuffed the ends of the sleeves, Amaryllis helping eagerly as sheseized his purpose.

  He next took the Dutchwoman's knife from the dummy's pocket and draggedthe rude torso to the side of the woodstack furthest from the expectedapproach, pushing it out across the track, so that, buttons downward,with left arm extended beyond the head which was not there, the rightdoubled beneath the breast, and the thrice-perforated cap, with a bunchof grass beneath it, dropped within the bend of the supposed left elbow,and the non-existence of legs concealed by the wood-pile, it might wellbe mistaken, by one coming down the wheel-track from the road, for a manstricken or sleeping.

  Behind them was a small, deep hollow, where the ancient stump of somegreat tree had rotted.

  "Get down there," said Dick. "Don't stand, roll in and curl up."

  And the last she saw of him as she obeyed, was the back of the blackhead and the blue shirt, rising erect some ten yards up the track fromthe wood-pile, making themselves small behind the largest tree-trunk insight, and the gently swaying right hand poising in its palm DutchFridji's knife.

  Then she obeyed orders, curled up in her musty lair, and prayed.

  Heavily nearer came the footsteps--walking--walking--walking--until thegirl feared she must cry out or faint. She bit through a lump of thehandkerchief he had tied round her neck for a stomacher--and then kissedit.

  Suddenly came a hoarse voice, foul words uttered in furious exultation,and the feet were running--nearer--nearer--and once more--twice--thethumping note of the big revolver.

  Oh! the end was coming. Her breast was squeezed in, and her headbursting. Hardly knowing what she did, she peered over the edge of thebeastly, uncovered little grave, just in time to see the black brute,red-faced, in the cart-track; to see the blue arm swing, and a longglitter in the air between them; to hear a horrible sound and see whatsent her back into her hole, with hands over eyes to shut out what wasalready inside.

  And then Dick's voice, and his hand helping her out.

  Standing up, she looked at him. In his face there was no blood under thebrown, but his eyes were more content than she had seen them since justbefore she opened the letter from Melchard--a hundred years ago.

  Her eyes asked him the question she could not put into words, and henodded.

  "You said I should, you know."

  "You just had to, Dick," she answered.

  He looked at her keenly.

  "You're beat," he said. "Food's what you want; but 'The Coach andHorses' over there, where I left my car, is the only place. We must go abit out of our way to keep out of sight of their damned house."

  He went to the dummy to free the coat of its stuffing.

  While he bent over, Amaryllis, fascinated yet repelled by what she couldjust perceive lying in the path, crept towards it--and wished she hadnot.

  She was turning away when her eye was caught by a dull blue gleam fromsomething in the grass beyond the body lying face downward in the deeplyrutted track; and there grew in the dazed mind of the girl an impulse tosee what it might be.

  Averting her eyes from the dead body, she stepped delicately, as iffearing to wake it, to the other side of the way, and picked up therevolver which Ockley had dropped in his fall.

  Her heart gave a great pulse of delight. This was a thing which Dickneeded, and Dick must have everything he desired.

  With an exclamation of pleasure she turned to take it straight to him,forgetting the fearful thing in the road; seeing it but just in time toavoid stumbling.

  At her feet was the back of the dead man's head, the face wedged intothe wheel-rut, with the beard pushed up between the left cheek and thehardened edge of mud. The channel of the rut, where she could see downinto it between ear and shoulder, seemed full of the blood which haddyed the shirt-collar and the shoulder of the coat.

  And aimed at her eyes, like an accusing finger, there stuck out from thehairy neck the point of Dutch Fridji's knife.

  An absurd sense of guilt, maudlin pity for mere death, and dread of theunknown, crowding in cruel rivalry to destroy her weakened self-control,sent her staggering to Dick over ground which seemed to rise and falllike the sea. For she was keeping hold on common sense by the thoughtthat there was something that Dick wanted--what, she had forgotten--butshe had it, and he must have it.

  He had seen her bending over Ockley, and went to meet her.

  Dimly she saw him, and stretched out her hands, lifting the pistol.

  "It's for you," she said; and fainted, falling forward into his arms.