First Person Paramount Part 29

"What is the bill of fare?" I jauntily inquired.

The surgeon smiled evilly. "I am too good a host to keep you in suspense!" he said. "For hors d'oeuvre, Jussieu will stroke your soles with red hot needles. Potage--we'll fill you palms with boiling oil.

The entree----"

"Hold, monsieur!" I cried. "You go too fast. You'll spoil my appet.i.te!"

"Your nerve is excellent!" he grudgingly admitted. "But how long will it last? Beudant, be good enough to bare our patient's feet."

Beudant obeyed. I have well-shaped feet, with not a blemish upon either. I was not ashamed to have them publicly exhibited. I could not see them myself because of my position, but Marion looked at them, and her glance was quickly riveted. Her lips were moving, and she seemed to be muttering to herself, although I heard no sound. G.o.d in Heaven! how beautiful she was, and how I hated her!

Within a few minutes, Jussieu re-appeared, bearing an iron plate, upon which was arrayed a brace of steel awls, set in wooden handles. The points glimmered blue and red. At a nod from Sir Charles Venner, my chair was tipped back in order to raise the soles of my feet. My ankles were strapped securely to the legs of the chair.

Jussieu set his plate upon the floor, and taking one of the awls in his hand, glanced up at his master.

"One moment!" cried Marion. She darted to the rack and seized the half-emptied champagne bottle which Beudant had opened for my benefit.

Disdaining the cup, whose rim my lips had touched, she raised the bottle to her mouth and bending back her head drank deeply.

Sir Charles and I exchanged glances of amus.e.m.e.nt. A little later Marion recovered her position, but she continued to hold the bottle. The wine had produced an instantaneous and curious effect. She was snow white, and her eyes were dull and turgid. "I am ready!" she declared.

The surgeon stepped to the side of my chair, and presenting his back to Marion put his fingers on my right wrist.

Jussieu kneeled upon the floor, and pa.s.sed his accursed awl across my instep. The pain was so exquisite that, although I fought like a tiger for control, I writhed and groaned.

The torture seared again, and then I shrieked.

But Marion glided forward, and raising the heavy bottle that she held on high, she brought it down with a crashing blow upon Sir Charles Venner's undefended head. The gla.s.s shivered into fragments, and the surgeon fell without groan or cry, unconscious at my feet.

My chair was unexpectedly released. I swung forward, seated erect again, helpless and suffering intensely, but uplifted to a mental contempt of pain in a sudden rapture of astonishment. Marion, who had stepped back almost to the farthest wall, faced the negroes with a little c.o.c.ked pistol, which did not waver in her grasp. Her face was still ashen coloured, but her eyes were simply on fire.

"M. Jussieu!" said she, her voice was like a silver bell, "take up your master, if you want to live, and carry him into the other cellar!"

The negro did not move. He glared at her from where he kneeled, like a frozen image.

"In five seconds I shall kill you!" said the girl. "One--two--"

Jussieu uttered a raucous cry, and scrambled to his feet. Stooping quickly he seized the body of Sir Charles and staggered off.

"Beudant," said Marion, "lock that door quick!"

Beudant sprang to obey. I heard him slam the door and shoot home the bolts.

"Now," said the girl, "release M. Hume and take care not to hurt him."

In a moment I was free. But I could not move so much as a muscle. I had been four days in the chair, and I was not only cramped, but ill, frightfully ill. There was not an organ in my body that did not begin to give me agony immediately the supporting straps relaxed. Even as I swayed forward, I shrieked with pain and swooned. When I awoke I was stretched out at length upon the floor, and Beudant was kneading my half-naked limbs and body with all the strength and science of a skilled ma.s.seur. Marion, seated at a little distance on the chair, kept the muzzle of her pistol pointed at the negro's head. From the adjoining chamber a curious babel of sounds proceeded. Sir Charles Venner's voice, raised in pa.s.sionate entreaties and commands, mingled with the noise of continual digging. Was Jussieu trying to dig a way out? For a moment I wondered why he did not attack the door with his pick, but then I remembered it was thick and stout and heavily bound with iron.

For another hour Beudant continued his ma.s.sage, and Marion uttered no word nor made one move. I could not speak, because the pain I suffered obliged me to lock my teeth to keep from shrieking, and even as it was I often groaned. Beudant paused at last in sheer fatigue, and Marion permitted him to rest. Afterwards the negro dressed me, and bound up my wounded foot. He also gave me more champagne and a.s.sisted me to rise. I found that I could stand, but my muscles were flaccid and unstrung, while every nerve was raw and quivering. I could not move without a.s.sistance. At Marion's command Beudant took me in his arms. He was very strong, that negro, and he bore me as easily as I might have done a child. She opened the door, and we pa.s.sed out before her, and mounted a flight of brick steps into a kitchen above. Marion bolted the door and followed us like a shadow. I was carried thence out into the night, across a long flagged yard into a stable, Marion always close behind us, with a lanthorn in her hand. I was deposited upon a truss of straw, from which vantage post I watched Beudant, under the guidance of the pistol, harness a quiet-looking horse, and attach it to the shafts of a small basket phaeton. The negro then lifted me into the body of the vehicle, and mounting to the box took up the reins. Marion climbed in and sat beside me. "Drive to London, Beudant," she said quietly, "and if you value your life keep your eyes before you!"

Heaven preserve me from the horrors of such another drive. At every jolt and rumble of the phaeton I felt as though I were being torn apart upon a rack. My moans made such hideous music for the road, that often we were stopped by travellers with courteous questions of my state.

Marion addressed me several times with the same request: "For G.o.d's sake, monsieur, let me give you an injection of morphia. It will ease your pain!"

But I loathed her, and distrusted her.

"Better the pain," was my invariable response. "Better the pain!"

"How you hate me," she would cry. "How you hate me!"

Sometimes I felt her shiver, but not often, for I kept as closely to my corner as I could, and if by chance she touched me, curses trembled to my lips which I had work to stifle.

We drove so slowly that morning had already dawned before we reached the outskirts of the city. We stopped then at an inn, where Beudant's shouts procured a flask of spirits, which I drank to drug my suffering.

Afterwards I did not groan, for though the brandy scarcely eased my pain, it gave me strength to smother its expression.

Marion put away her pistol soon, for the road was full of vehicles, and Beudant was no longer to be feared. The girl's face in the early morning light was pitifully lined and haggard. I watched her, but she kept her gaze set straight before, as though conscious of my stern regard. Every now and then too, she caught her breath, and shuddered as though she were remembering. Our silence lasted until we came to Notting Hill, when I became aware of a certain chilling curiosity concerning her.

"Now that you have broken with your friends," I muttered suddenly, "what will you do?"

She did not move, yet she answered at once in tones of deep humility.

"Whatever you wish, monsieur!"

"Whatever I wish," I sneered. "What has my wish to do with you?"

She turned her head and looked into my eyes. "I have used you very ill, monsieur! I would make atonement, though, if you will let me!"

"How?"

"In any way you please."

"Would you marry me, mademoiselle?"

"Yes, monsieur."

"You conceive then that you owe me extraordinary reparation?"

"The greatest possible," she answered very softly.

I knew then that I loved her still, in spite of better cause for hate than love; but so deep was my bitterness and sense of injury against her, that I felt perfectly incapable of magnanimity.

"Your penitence is of sudden growth," I sneered.

"It is none the less sincere, monsieur!"

"And your humility?"

"That too, monsieur."

"I need a wife less than a servant who will nurse me!" I said coldly.

"I will serve you, monsieur."

I looked away and reflected deeply on her words. But though I tried, I could not understand her, and ignorance intensified distrust. Yet I foresaw that a period of sickness lay before me, and I could not believe that she had saved me to again betray me. Some one I must lean upon--it was imperative. She watched me in most evident anxiety, scarcely breathing the while.