Charles Rex Part 32

It was absurd. They had both been absurd to come to this eerie place without a light. Somehow her disappearance, the clanging of that door, had sobered him very effectually. He cursed himself for a fool as he groped his way upwards. The game had gone too far. He ought to have foreseen.

And then suddenly he blundered into an iron-clamped door and swore again.

Yes, this thing was beyond a joke.

The door resisted him, and he wrestled with it furiously as though it had been a living thing obstructing his pa.s.sage.

He had begun to think that she must have bolted it on the outside when abruptly it yielded to his very forcible persuasion, and he stumbled headlong forth into the open starlight. He was out upon the ramparts, and dim wooded park-lands stretched away to the sea before his dazzled eyes.

The first thing that struck him was the emptiness of the place. It seemed to catch him by the throat. There was something terrible about it.

Behind him the door clanged, and the sound seemed the only sound in all that wonderful June night. It had a fateful effect in the silence--like the tolling of a bell. Something echoed to it in his own heart, and he knew that he was afraid.

Desperately he flung his fear aside and moved forward to the parapet. The wall was thick, but between the battlements it was only the height of his knee. Below was depth--sheer depth--stark emptiness.

He looked over and saw the stone terrace dimly lit by the stars far below him. The gardens were a blur of darkness out of which he vaguely discerned the glimmer of the lake among its trees.

His heart was beating suffocatingly; he struggled to subdue his panting breath. She was somewhere close to him of course--of course. But the zest of the chase had left him. He felt dizzy, frightened, sick. He tried to raise his voice to call her, and then realized with a start of self-ridicule that it had failed him. He leaned against the parapet and resolutely pulled himself together.

Then he went forward and found himself in a stone pa.s.sage, actually on the castle wall, between two parapets; the one on his left towering above the inner portion of the castle with its odd, uneven roofs of stone, the one on his right still sheer above the terrace--a drop of a hundred feet or more.

The emptiness and the silence seemed to strike at him with a nebulous hostility as he went. He had a vague sense of intrusion, of being in a forbidden place. The blood was no longer hot in his veins. He even shivered in the warmth of the summer night as he followed the winding walk between the battlements.

But he was his own master now, and as he moved forward through the glimmering starlight he called to her:

"Toby! Toby, I say! Come out! I'm not playing."

He felt as if the silence mocked him, and again that icy construction about the heart made him catch his breath. He put up a hand to his brow and found it wet.

"Toby!" he cried again, and this time he did not attempt to keep the urgency out of his voice. "The game's up. Come back!"

She did not answer him, neither did she come; but he had a strong conviction that she heard. A throb of anger went through him. He strode forward with decision. He knew that the battlement walk ended on the north side of the Castle in a blank wall, built centuries before as a final defence from an invading enemy. Only by scaling this wall could the eastern portion be approached. He would find her here. She could not possibly escape. Something of confidence came back to him as he remembered this. She could not elude him much longer.

He quickened his stride. His face was grim. She had carried the thing too far, and he would let her know it. He rounded the curve of the castle wall. He must be close to her now. And then suddenly he stopped dead.

For he heard her mocking laughter, and it came from behind him, from the turret through which he had gained the ramparts.

He wheeled round with something like violence and began to retrace his steps. He had never been so baffled before, and he was angry,--hotly angry.

He rounded the curve once more, and approached the turret. His eyes were accustomed to the dim half-light, but still he could not see her. Fuming, he went back the whole distance along the ramparts till he came to the iron-clamped door that had banged behind him. He put forth an impatient hand to open it, for it was obvious that she must have eluded him by hiding behind it, and now she was probably on the stair. And then, very suddenly, from far behind him, in the direction of the northern wall, he heard her laugh again.

He swung about in a fury, almost too incensed to be amazed. She had the wings of a Mercury, it was evident; but he would catch her--he would catch her now, or perish in the attempt. Once more he traversed the stony promenade between the double line of battlements, searching each embrasure as he went.

All the way back to the wall on the north side he pursued his way with fierce intention, inwardly raging, outwardly calm. He reached the obstructing wall, and found nothing. The emptiness came all about him again. The ghostly quiet of the place clung like a tangible veil. She had evaded him again. He was powerless.

But at that point his wrath suddenly burst into flame, the hotter and the fiercer for its long restraint. He wheeled in his tracks with furious finality and abandoned his quest.

His intention was to go straight down by the way he had come and leave her to play her will-o'-the-wisp game in solitude. It would soon pall upon her, he was a.s.sured; but in any case he would no longer dance to her piping. She had fooled him to the verge of frenzy.

Again he rounded the curve of the wall and came to the door of the turret. A great bastion of stone rose beside this, and as he reached it a small white figure darted forward from its shadow with dainty, b.u.t.terfly movements, pulled at the heavy oak door and held it open with an elaborate gesture for him to pa.s.s.

It was a piece of exquisite daring, and with an older man it would have taken effect. Saltash would have laughed his quizzing, cynical laugh and accepted his defeat with royal grace. But Bunny was young and vehement of impulse, and the flame of his anger still scorched his soul with a heat intolerable. She had baffled him, astounded him, humiliated him, and his was not a nature to endure such treatment tamely.

He hung on his stride for a single moment, then hotly he turned and s.n.a.t.c.hed her into his arms.

CHAPTER XIII

THE END OF THE GAME

She cried out sharply as he caught her, and then she struggled and fought like a mad creature for freedom. But Bunny held her fast. He had been hard pressed, and now that the strain was over, all the pent pa.s.sion of that long stress had escaped beyond control. He held her,--at first as a boy might hold a comrade who had provoked him to exasperation; then, as desperately she resisted him, a new element suddenly rushed like fire through his veins, and he realized burningly, overwhelmingly, that for the first time in his life he held a woman in his arms.

It came to him like a blinding revelation, and forth-with it seemed to him that he stepped into a new world. She had tried him too far, had thrown him off his balance. He was unfit for this further and infinitely greater provocation. His senses swam. The touch of her intoxicated him as though he had drunk a potent draught from some goblet of the G.o.ds. He heard himself laugh pa.s.sionately at her puny effort to resist him and the next moment she was at his mercy. He was pressing fevered kisses upon her gasping, quivering lips.

But she fought against him still. Though he kissed her, she would have none of it. She struck at him, battering him frantically with her hands, stamping wildly with her feet, till he literally swung her off the ground, holding her slender body against his breast.

"You little madcap!" he said, with his hot lips against her throat. "How dare you? Do you think I'd let you go--now?"

The quick pa.s.sion of his voice or the fiery possession of his hold arrested her. She suddenly ceased to battle with him, and stiffened in his grasp as if turned to stone.

"Let me go!" she said tensely.

"I will not," said Bunny.

He was mad with the fever of youth; he held her with a fierce exultation.

There could be no returning now, nor did he wish to return.

"You little wild b.u.t.terfly!" he said, and kissed the throbbing white throat again. "I've caught you now and you can't escape."

"You've--had your revenge," Toby flung back gaspingly. "You--you--you're a skunk if you take any more."

Oddly that sobered him as any protest more feminine would have failed to do. He set her on her feet, but he held her still.

"I haven't done with you," he said, with a certain doggedness.

"Oh, I know that," she returned very bitterly. "You're like all the men.

You can't play fair. Men don't know how."

That stung him. "Fair or unfair, you've done all the playing so far," he said. "If you thought I was such a tame fool as to put up with it--well, that's not my fault."

"No, it's never your fault," said Toby. She made a little vehement movement to extricate herself, but finding him obdurate, abandoned the attempt. "You're not a fool, Bunny Brian. You're a beast and a coward,--there!"

"Be careful!" warned Bunny, his dark eyes gleaming ominously.

But she uttered a laugh of high defiance. "Oh, I'm not afraid of you.

You're not full-grown yet. You're ashamed of yourself already."

He coloured deeply at the taunt, but he maintained his hold upon her.