Ambrotox and Limping Dick Part 34

Then, encouraged by the faint colour creeping back to her cheeks, he sat beside her in the road and lifted her shoulders in his left arm, coaxing her to life and forcing between her pale lips burning drops of "Robbie Burns."

So that, when her eyes came open, and a little sense into her ears, this was the kind of thing that she heard:

"Oh, yes, but you must! It's three stars, and there's only a pair of twins in your eyes. Proof strength, and yours isn't, you darling! Drink, will you, you wicked girl? I tell you, it's all-malt, and not a jim-jam to the cask. That's the way, my beauty! Now another! It's Pre-War--fitting prize for Our Brave Women Who Showed The Tommies How To Fight!"

"How silly you are, d.i.c.k, dear!" she said at last, wiping her lips. "And what perfectly beastly brandy!"

d.i.c.k tasted the stuff, and frankly spat it out.

"I suppose it might be worse, seeing its called whisky, and allowing for the label," he said. "Young woman, I'm going to kiss you somethin' crool in a minute. 'Course I'm silly! What was it you did, when I was only taking a snooze?"

"Cried," she answered.

"And I laugh to see you all right again."

But Amaryllis was looking about her.

"Is it gone, that awful thing?" she asked, whispering.

"Gone for good," said d.i.c.k.

"And, oh! the car? How did you ever stop it?"

"You stopped it, you wonder-child. And there's a great deal more 'how'

about that."

"Then--then it's the same thing as last time?" she said, her face paling once more.

"The same thing," admitted d.i.c.k. "It was him or us, you know. And there's not much egoism in saying we're better worth keeping, is there?"

Though she shuddered again and bore a grave face, he could see that she was relieved.

Rising with the help of his hand, she tried to smooth her rumpled feathers, and said:

"Hadn't we better go on?"

"I've got to move something from the car first," he replied, with ambiguity merely euphemistic. "You stand here and keep a look-out towards Harthborough."

"All right," she answered, understanding very well what he had to do.

She turned away, and then, with an effort, her face still averted, "Can't I help you, d.i.c.k?" she asked.

"Yes--by sitting on that stone and not turning round till I let you."

And he went back to the car, taking the "Robbie Burns" with him.

In his shaken and exhausted condition, the task of dragging that revolting corpse from the car was not easy. Heavy he had known the body would be, but when he had opened the door on the off-side, and would have pulled the dead thing out by the heels, he was surprised to find that he could not move it. On a second effort the slight yielding of the ma.s.s was accompanied by a sound of rending and he remembered Mut-mut's right hand, armed with a weapon of unspeakable cruelty, which only once before in his life had he seen--the Mahratta baag-nouk, or Tiger's Claw.

He went round to the car's-near side, and there found, as he had expected, the dead right hand anch.o.r.ed to the lining-cushions by what was, he supposed, a unique specimen, made to the fancy of the creature that wore it; for, in addition to the leather strap across the back of the hand, two rings were welded to the instrument, through which to pa.s.s the second and third fingers, thus keeping in position the four short, razor-edged steel claws hidden in the palm.

d.i.c.k loosened the buckle of the strap, and drew the hand, already cold, from the rings; picked the baag-nouk from the cushion, wrapped it in a greasy cloth out of the tool-box, and hid it under the seat.

The thought of that gruesome weapon, more frightful than the unsheathed claws of the royalest Bengal tiger, hanging over the head of his chosen among women, stung d.i.c.k Bellamy to very unceremonious removal of the body, which, after rifling it of a handful of cartridges, he flung by the roadside; and then, lest Amaryllis should see the awful head again, even in death, he covered the whole corpse with an overcoat of Melchard's from the car.

The engine had run down. As he cranked it up, d.i.c.k was seized by a sudden savage desire to have in his hands the man who had brought all his outrage, suffering and terror to the girl whose uncovered head and patient back he could see waiting for him down the road.

A fierce rage, such as he had seldom felt, and never since boyhood, flooded his body with a dry heat, and stimulated his intelligence.

For with these thoughts of the evil Melchard came sudden insight into the man's purpose at the foot of the Bull's Neck, and his probable action at the present moment.

"He was shooting to drive us into Mut-mut's arms, and to make us believe our danger was all behind us," he reasoned. "And it's a white elephant to a dead rat he's trudging up this road now to find what Mut-mut's left of us. Perhaps he's heard the two shots, and me cranking up."

Not daring to call Amaryllis, he trusted her precise obedience to his orders, and sank, almost as swiftly as Pepe into the landscape.

Crouching, crawling, worming himself on his belly from tree-stump to boulder he mounted some ten feet above the road on the side away from the car, and then, invisible from the road level, continued his course until he had retraced about fifty yards of the way they had travelled.

Then he stopped, lying p.r.o.ne where two rocks, standing so little apart that they seemed long years ago to have formed a single ma.s.s, gave him view of the road's whole width.

He laid one ear against the rock, and over the other a hand.

After a minute's waiting, footsteps; three more, and a weary figure came in sight where the level road began.

The joy he felt kept him patient until Melchard, unmistakable, was right beneath him.

"Hi! Melchard!" he cried.

Melchard started, stopped, and looked anxiously round.

"Never heard the voice before? You'll hear it often, and lots of it, soon, Melchard. Pull out your gun."

The man in the road made no attempt to obey. From Mut-mut's revolver d.i.c.k sent a bullet which threw up the dust at Melchard's feet.

"Two inches to the right of your feet."

He fired again. Again the little puff of dust.

"An inch and a half to the left of your feet," he sang out cheerfully.

"The next'll be half-way between and three feet higher. Put down your gun."

Melchard produced his automatic and dropped it.

"Kick it away from you."

Melchard obeyed, and his weapon lay three yards out of reach.

"Move an inch, and I'll put a hole in your slimy heart."

Melchard stood, still game enough to control in some measure the trembling which had seized him.

Then d.i.c.k raised his voice.