A Bid for Fortune Part 18

I took out my watch, which had not been taken from me as I might have expected, and examined the dial. It wanted five minutes of six o'clock.

So putting it back into my pocket, I set myself for the second time to try and discover where we were. By reason of my position and the chain that bound me, this could only be done by listening, so I shut my eyes and put all my being into my ears. For some moments no sound rewarded my attention. Then a c.o.c.k in a neighbouring yard on my right crowed l.u.s.tily, a dog on my left barked, and a moment later I heard the faint sound of some one coming along the street. The pedestrian, whoever he might be, was approaching from the right hand, and, what was still more important, my trained ear informed me that he was lame of one leg, and walked with crutches. Closer and closer he came. But to my surprise he did not pa.s.s the window; indeed, I noticed that when he came level with it the sound was completely lost to me. This told me two things: one, that the window, which was boarded up, did not look into the main thoroughfare; the other, that the street itself ran along on the far side of the very wall to which my chain was attached.

As I arrived at the knowledge of this fact, Beckenham opened his eyes; he sat up as well as his chain would permit, and gazed about him in a dazed fashion. Then his right hand went up to the iron collar enclosing his neck, and when he had realized what it meant he appeared even more mystified than before. He seemed to doze again for a minute or so, then his eyes opened, and as they did so they fell upon me, and his perplexity found relief in words.

"Mr. Hatteras," he said, in a voice like that of a man talking in his sleep, "where are we and what on earth does this chain mean?"

"You ask me something that I want to know myself," I answered. "I cannot tell you where we are, except that we are in Port Said. But if you want to know what I think it means, well, I think it means treachery. How do you feel now?"

"Very sick indeed, and my head aches horribly. But I can't understand it at all. What do you mean by saying that it is treachery?"

This was the one question of all others I had been dreading, for I could not help feeling that when all was said and done I was bitterly to blame. However, unpleasant or not, the explanation had to be got through, and without delay.

"Lord Beckenham," I began, sitting upright and clasping my hands round my knees, "this is a pretty bad business for me. I haven't the reputation of being a coward, but I'll own I feel pretty rocky and mean when I see you sitting there on the floor with that iron collar round your neck and that chain holding you to the wall, and know that it's, in a measure, all my stupid, blundering folly that has brought it about."

"Oh, don't say that, Mr. Hatteras!" was the young man's generous reply.

"For whatever or whoever may be to blame for it, I'm sure you're not."

"That's because you don't know everything, my lord. Wait till you have heard what I have to tell you before you give me such complete absolution."

"I'm not going to blame you whatever you may tell me; but please go on!"

There and then I set to work and told him all that had happened to me since my arrival in London; informed him of my meeting with Nikola, of Wetherell's hasty departure for Australia, of my distrust for Baxter, described the telegram incident and Baxter's curious behaviour afterwards, narrated my subsequent meeting with the two men in the _Green Sailor Hotel_, described my journey to Plymouth, and finished with the catastrophe that had happened to me there.

"Now you see," I said in conclusion, "why I regard myself as being so much to blame."

"Excuse me," he answered, "but I cannot say that I see it in the same light at all."

"I'm afraid I must be more explicit then. In the first place you must understand that, without a shadow of a doubt, Baxter was chosen for your tutor by Nikola, whose agent he undoubtedly is, for a specific purpose.

Now what do you think that purpose was? You don't know? To induce your father to let you travel, to be sure. You ask why they should want you to travel? We'll come to that directly. Their plan is succeeding admirably, when I come upon the scene and, like the great blundering idiot I am, must needs set to work unconsciously to a.s.sist them in their nefarious designs. Your father eventually consents, and it is arranged that you shall set off for Australia at once. Then it is discovered that I am going to leave in the same boat. This does not suit Nikola's plans at all, so he determines to prevent my sailing with you. By a happy chance he is unsuccessful, and I follow and join the boat in Naples.

Good gracious! I see something else now."

"What is that?"

"Simply this. I could not help thinking at the time that your bout of sea-sickness between Naples and this infernal place was extraordinary.

Well, if I'm not very much mistaken, _you were physicked, and it was Baxter's doing_."

"But why?"

"Ah! That's yet to be discovered. But you may bet your bottom dollar it was some part of their devilish conspiracy. I'm as certain of that as that we are here now. Now here's another point. Do you remember my running out of the Casino last night? Well, that was because I saw Nikola standing in the roadway."

"Are you certain? How could he have got here? And what could his reasons be for watching us?"

"Why, can't you see? To find out how his plot is succeeding, to be sure."

"And that brings us back to our original question--what is that plot?"

"That's rather more difficult to answer! But if you ask my candid opinion I should say nothing more nor less than to make you prisoner and blackmail your father for a ransom."

For some few minutes neither of us spoke. The outlook seemed too hopeless for words, and the Marquis was still too weak to keep up an animated conversation for any length of time. He sat leaning his head on his hand. But presently he looked up again. "My poor father!" he said.

"What a state he will be in!"

"And what worries me more," I answered, "is how he will regret ever having listened to my advice. What a dolt I was not to have told him of my suspicions."

"You must not blame yourself for that. I am sure my father would hold you as innocent as I do. Now let us consider our position. In the first place, where are we, do you think? In the second, is there any possible chance of escape?"

"To the first my answer is, 'don't know'; to the second, 'can't say.' I have discovered one thing, however, and that is that the street does not lie outside that window, but runs along on the other side of this wall behind me. The window, I suspect, looks out on to some sort of a courtyard. But unfortunately that information is not much use to us, as we can neither of us move away from where we are placed."

"Is there no other way?"

"Not one, as far as I can tell. Can you see anything on your side?"

"Nothing at all, unless we could get at the door. But what's that sticking out of the wall near your feet?"

To get a better view of it I stooped as much as I was able. "It looks like a pipe."

The end of a pipe it certainly was, and sticking out into the room, but where it led to, and why it had been cut off in this peculiar fashion, were two questions I could no more answer than I could fly.

"Does it run out into the street, do you think?" was Beckenham's immediate query. "If so, you might manage to call through it to some pa.s.ser-by, and ask him to obtain a.s.sistance for us!"

"A splendid notion if I could get my mouth anywhere within a foot of it, but as this chain will not permit me to do that, it might as well be a hundred miles off. It's as much as I can do to touch it with my fingers."

"Do you think if you had a stick you could push a piece of paper through? We might write a message."

"Possibly, but there's another drawback to that. I haven't the necessary piece of stick."

"Here is a stiff piece of straw; try that."

He harpooned a piece of straw, about eight inches long, across the room towards me, and, when I had received it, I thrust it carefully into the pipe. A disappointment, however, was in store for us.

"It's no use," I reported sorrowfully, as I threw the straw away. "It has an elbow half-way down, and that would prevent any message from being pushed through."

"Then we must try to discover some other plan. Don't lose heart!"

"Hush! I hear somebody coming."

True enough a heavy footfall was approaching down the pa.s.sage. It stopped at the door of the room in which we were confined, and a key was inserted in the lock. Next moment the door swung open and a tall man entered the room. A ray of sunlight, penetrating between the boards that covered the window, fell upon him, and showed us that his hair was white and that his face was deeply pitted with smallpox marks. Now, where had I met or heard of a man with those two peculiarities before? Ah! I remembered!

He stood for a moment in the doorway looking about him, and then strolled into the centre of the room.

"Good-morning, gentlemen," he said, with an airy condescension that stung like an insult; "I trust you have no fault to find with the lodging our poor hospitality is able to afford you."

"Mr. Prendergast," I answered, determined to try him with the name of the man mentioned by my sweetheart in her letter. "What does this mean?

Why have we been made prisoners like this? I demand to be released at once. You will have to answer to our consul for this detention."

For a brief s.p.a.ce he appeared to be dumbfounded by my knowledge of his name. But he soon recovered himself and leaned his back against the wall, looking us both carefully over before he answered.

"I shall be only too pleased," he said sneeringly, "but if you'll allow me to say so, I don't think we need trouble about explanations yet awhile."