Ambrotox and Limping Dick Part 18

"Would you?"

"It's he or us."

Her answer surprised him. There was no fear in her face, but sympathy filled it; and a little colour came.

"Then you will kill him," she said with a.s.surance. "I'll do whatever you say, and we'll beat him."

d.i.c.k nodded. "See those hazels?" he said. "We'll scrounge behind 'em to start with."

By the time they were settled in the new cover they could hear heavy feet in the distance, crashing through the low tangle of undergrowth.

And Amaryllis, fear cast out by trust, and her physical prostration for the moment counteracted by the intensity of her interest in him, and by her curiosity to see how next his versatility of resource would show itself, watched d.i.c.k's face as he listened to the feet of his enemy.

Each step, she thought, had a different shade of meaning for him. His left ear seemed to follow, and his eyes seemed to see each stride of the hunter, and at last he spoke:

"He's working along this side of the embankment. Now he's in the track that cuts through this copse. We're close to it here--see, through there, between the beech and the young oak. Hear his feet: stones, puddle, soft rut," he said rhythmically. "Caught his foot. He's following the path--going slower--walking, and trying to look both sides at 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 a pile of brushwood, cut and stacked for fuel. From this, with a cautious eye and ear on the bend where the track twisted out of sight in the direction of the high road, he took an armful of sticks and twigs and b.u.t.toned round it the Norfolk jacket. He tore gra.s.s in great handfuls and stuffed the ends of the sleeves, Amaryllis helping eagerly as she seized his purpose.

He next took the Dutchwoman's knife from the dummy's pocket and dragged the rude torso to the side of the woodstack furthest from the expected approach, pushing it out across the track, so that, b.u.t.tons downward, with left arm extended beyond the head which was not there, the right doubled beneath the breast, and the thrice-perforated cap, with a bunch of gra.s.s beneath it, dropped within the bend of the supposed left elbow, and the non-existence of legs concealed by the wood-pile, it might well be mistaken, by one coming down the wheel-track from the road, for a man stricken or sleeping.

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

"Get down there," said d.i.c.k. "Don't stand, roll in and curl up."

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

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

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

Suddenly came a hoa.r.s.e voice, foul words uttered in furious exultation, and the feet were running--nearer--nearer--and once more--twice--the thumping note of the big revolver.

Oh! the end was coming. Her breast was squeezed in, and her head bursting. Hardly knowing what she did, she peered over the edge of the beastly, 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 long glitter in the air between them; to hear a horrible sound and see what sent her back into her hole, with hands over eyes to shut out what was already inside.

And then d.i.c.k's voice, and his hand helping her out.

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

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

"You said I should, you know."

"You just had to, d.i.c.k," she answered.

He looked at her keenly.

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

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

While he bent over, Amaryllis, fascinated yet repelled by what she could just perceive lying in the path, crept towards it--and wished she had not.

She was turning away when her eye was caught by a dull blue gleam from something in the gra.s.s beyond the body lying face downward in the deeply rutted track; and there grew in the dazed mind of the girl an impulse to see what it might be.

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

Her heart gave a great pulse of delight. This was a thing which d.i.c.k needed, and d.i.c.k 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 to avoid stumbling.

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

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

An absurd sense of guilt, maudlin pity for mere death, and dread of the unknown, crowding in cruel rivalry to destroy her weakened self-control, sent her staggering to d.i.c.k over ground which seemed to rise and fall like the sea. For she was keeping hold on common sense by the thought that there was something that d.i.c.k wanted--what, she had forgotten--but she 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.

CHAPTER XIV.

PENNY PANSY.

d.i.c.k Bellamy lifted the girl and carried her to a spot where he could lay her down with head a little lower than heels; watched her until the colour of the face improved and the breath became more regular; and then made use of her insensibility to pay his last duty to the dead.

Without moving the body, he went through the pockets, finding nothing worth keeping except a few letters and a bunch of keys; for revolver cartridges there were none.

For a moment he regarded the grim dagger point, deciding to leave it where it was.

"If Melchard finds it," he thought, "he'll think it's something to do with his little Dutch trollop."

Returning to Amaryllis, he stood once more looking down at her.

He could not carry her in her present state two miles across the moor in the growing heat, and with only one of their five enemies safely dead, while the four others hung on his flank, cunning and desperate, if able to think and act.

And there was Fridji--she was surely herself again--either screaming or at liberty.