Grit Lawless Part 31

When Lawless' hands were securely bound behind him, Van Bleit loosened the noose that had tightened until it stopped the circulation, and drew the loop over the captive's head. Then he picked up the revolver that lay on the veld and sat down facing him. He was enjoying himself immensely. The security of his position as captor, Lawless' utter helplessness, and the certainty of no outside interference, completed a situation which, having no element of risk about it, appealed to him amazingly. He rested his right elbow on his knee, and levelled the revolver at Lawless' breast.

"It would be so simple and so safe to settle you for ever," he remarked pleasantly, "that I wonder I don't do it... Denzil, just hobble those left-overs from the Ark. We shall need them presently. They look as though they'd stand till the crack of doom, but there's just a chance that if this revolver should happen to go off we might lose them, and that would be awkward. When you have done that you can relieve long-eared Grit of what he sneaked from you."

Lawless set his teeth and said nothing. He was beginning to understand that while he had been busy trying to devise a trap for Van Bleit, the Dutchman had got ahead of him, and that in so wily a manner that he had not had the faintest suspicion of trickery when he had listened at the part.i.tion with his eye to the crack. And yet the mere lighting of the candle should have warned him... There would have been no need for a light had it not been intended that he should see. He cursed his folly for tumbling into a pit the digging of which he had been permitted to witness. And the letters! ... The letters that he had been allowed to handle, that he believed he had got so secure...

When Denzil bent over him and drew the sealed packet from his pocket, he made a frantic but futile effort to burst the bonds that fastened his wrists. The rope, already uncomfortably tight, cut into the flesh and caused such pain he was fain to desist. Denzil dangled the packet before his face, jeering, then he gripped it tighter and struck him with it across the eyes.

"One day," Lawless said grimly, "when my hands aren't tied, you'll pay for that."

Van Bleit laughed loudly. The bully in him enjoyed watching aggression that feared no retaliation. To strike a man with his hands tied was infinitely amusing.

"Thought you had a wonderful find in that packet, eh?" he sneered.

"Going to make your fortune--were you?--in another man's gold mine."

"I shouldn't have objected to that idea so much," Denzil interposed in a tone of deep disgust. "But he wouldn't confess to that... He was posing virtuous."

"Ah!" returned Van Bleit, grinning. "Looks virtuous, don't he? ... Job on his rubbish heap! Well, it may ease his virtuous mind to know that so far as the value of that packet is concerned he might be allowed to keep it. It's a fake, old man... got up for your amus.e.m.e.nt, and that of other fellows of an inquiring turn of mind. Almachtig! you don't imagine I'm so green as to carry around letters that are worth a fortune?" He snapped his fingers in derision. "For a cute boy, Grit, you are surprisingly credulous. Those letters that so many mouths are watering for are safe--where you won't get them. I don't cart them round in my suit-case."

He laughed again at the expression of Lawless' face.

"Sold all round, eh? Lord! ain't it funny?"

Then, his mood changing suddenly, he fell to scowling, and eyed Lawless malevolently above the revolver that still pointed direct at his heart.

"You fancy because Tom Hayhurst got hold of them once, it's any man's job. Well, it isn't. And Tom wouldn't have had the chance, only I was fool enough to bring them from Jo'burg to Cape Town. I deserved to lose them for not leaving them safe where they were. But I'm not taking any further risks. That packet of dummy letters is all I carry about...

And I carry them with a purpose--the purpose of discovering such treacherous scoundrels as yourself. You're in Grey's pay. I know that... I found it out long ago. And you profess friendship for me...

start out to win my confidence with the intention of robbing me--killing me, perhaps. You deserve to pay dearly for that. I've half a mind to shoot you... I'll punish you somehow."

He got up, and, pocketing the revolver, approached menacingly. Lawless watched him in silence. Van Bleit, it was clear, meant mischief; and he was powerless to defend himself, incapable of hitting back. The knowledge of his helplessness galled him unspeakably. To have had his hands free! ... just his bare hands, and nothing more...

"It's a safe game you're playing," he observed drily. "If I faced you with my bare fists you wouldn't take this tone."

"Safe game or not," Van Bleit shouted, "I'm going to punish you, my boy.

There's a treatment for treachery that has been found efficacious before."

He s.n.a.t.c.hed at a riding-whip which one of the men had dropped, and struck the strong quiet face he hated again and again with it, raising a dozen weals on the thin tanned cheeks. One blow cut Lawless' lip open, and the blood spurted out and ran down his chin, and stained the blonde moustache. At each blow he winced though he made no sound, but the wince gave Van Bleit immense satisfaction. The score he had to pay off against this man was heavy. To his influence he attributed the coldness of Zoe Lawless... That could only be expatiated with his life; but the taking of human life meant a risk Karl Van Bleit would not again lightly undertake. He had a morbid horror of the hangman's rope since it had dangled so perilously near his own neck.

When he had flogged Lawless in the face, he flogged him again across the shoulders with even greater venom. This being borne without flinching, soon ceased to amuse him, and he flung the whip from him with an oath.

"That's enough for the present, d.a.m.n you! If we meet again you'll know what to expect. I shan't spare your life a second time... It's almost a pity," he reflected, inclination weighing against discretion, "to lose this chance of quieting you. Who's to know if I settle your account for ever?"

For the next few seconds Lawless felt his life hung in the balance. His whole being revolted against the thought of death at this man's hands without ever a chance of repaying the insult he had suffered. If his life were spared that day he vowed he would never rest until he had squared their account finally. Some idea of this probability seemed to possess Van Bleit, and inclined him strongly toward committing the foul deed he contemplated; but Denzil, the more timorous, stood out against murder.

"There are the horses, Karl," he urged... "Any amount of awkward questions may be asked."

"All right," Van Bleit said shortly. "We'll leave him as he is. It will take him all he knows to worry his hands free."

He struck his foe again in the face with his open hand, and turning away, walked towards the horses. He mounted, and Denzil following his example, they rode off, leaving their victim seated on the veld, his wrists securely bound, without, so far as they knew, any prospect of freeing them, and with no available means of pursuit. It was a safe game, as Lawless had said.

He remained seated until they were out of sight. Not on any consideration would he have given Van Bleit the satisfaction of watching him rise and proceed on his way with his arms in their present undignified position. When the two men finally disappeared from view he got up, and walking painfully, for the fall from his horse had injured him, made his way slowly back towards the hut. The riders had pa.s.sed quite close behind it after climbing the rise, little guessing that it was tenanted. The noise of the horses' hoofs awoke Tottie. She rubbed her eyes, and half sat up, and so, resting on her elbow, remained still, listening, till the sounds died away in the distance and complete silence reigned once more. No suspicion crossed her mind that anything was amiss.

"Grit's early astir," her thoughts ran as she settled down to sleep again.

She was half-wakeful, half-dozing, when something happened that roused her fully and brought the languid eyes open with a jerk. Abruptly, without warning, the light from the doorless exit was obscured, and a man's figure, bending from the waist, entered, and, straightening itself, stood upright, looking uncertainly about with eyes unaccustomed to the dimness, upon unfamiliar surroundings.

Tottie sat up on her improvised mattress of bush and dried rushes and stared in amaze at the appearance presented by the intruder. The swollen, inflamed face with the ugly weals across it was scarcely recognisable, the blood running down the chin on to the front of his shirt gave it a savage, even a sinister look, that was strangely repellent. She wondered why he made no effort to wipe the blood away, and noticed that he kept his hands behind him, but did not realise that this was owing to compulsion, until he turned suddenly about and requested her shortly to undo the "d.a.m.ned knots."

"Good G.o.d! Grit," she said, "what's happened?"

"Van Bleit's scored this time," he answered. "It's first game to him...

But the rubber isn't won yet. I've merely got my deserts for being a gullible idiot."

She worked at the knots with her teeth, and after a while unbound his raw and bleeding wrists and flung the rope to the floor.

"My word! but they've used you ill," she said... "If I'd only guessed..."

Lawless made no response. He was peering with half-blinded eyes at a huddled object on the ground that he had taken for a bundle of old rags, but now that his sight was growing used to the obscurity discovered to be the sleeping form of a native woman, who lay curled up against the mud wall, like an animal, with her superb arms flung high above her head. She was either fast asleep or feigning slumber, for she made neither sound nor movement, but lay like a dead woman, save for the gentle rise and fall of her bosom under the ochre blanket that formed its sole covering.

"What is the meaning of that?" he said sternly, pointing to the rec.u.mbent figure, his burning gaze on Tottie's face.

She laughed with a slight embarra.s.sment. In the surprise of his entry she had forgotten that the woman was there.

"Oh! that's all right," she answered jerkily. "Couldn't turn her out, you know... The hut belongs to her--in a way. She happened along the first evening, and was for running like a scared rabbit at sight of me, but,"--Tottie laughed again. "Even a n.i.g.g.e.r is companionable," she said.

Lawless looked hard at her.

"She's raw," Tottie explained... "Zulu... only speaks her own tongue.

I know a few words, and so we rub along."

"And her belongings?" Lawless asked. "Has it occurred to you that there's a n.i.g.g.e.r husband somewhere? If she makes this place her home she doesn't live alone here."

"He hasn't shown up so far," Tottie answered comfortably. She touched significantly a holster at her waist. "I'm not scared of n.i.g.g.e.rs, Grit."

"Well, it doesn't matter," he said. "You've done with this. Van Bleit's gone--Denzil too... And they've taken the horses. It's twenty miles to the town, but we've got to do it."

Tottie looked thoughtful.

"There's a nearer way than that, baas," she said. She jerked her head in the direction of the sleeping native. "There's some sort of a farm within reasonable walking distance... _She_ makes the journey for sour milk. They'd let us have a conveyance if we paid enough, I expect...

It's better than tramping, anyhow. We'll rouse her, and make her show us the way."

She stood up, shook out the folds of her skirt, and surveyed herself in the gla.s.s she had brought from the house and hung by a nail on the wall.

One cheek was hectic with artificial colour, the other, on which she had been lying, was white and red in streaks.

"What a guy!" she murmured. "I'll need to repair the ravages before we start, old man... You wouldn't look any the worse for a wash yourself."

She laid a hand affectionately on his arm.

"We'll wipe out that score--you and I--pretty thoroughly. It's come to a point now where I shall be able to help. It won't do for you to follow him, because, plainly, he'll be expecting you. He'll be on the look out. I don't know whether you've got a plan, but I have. We won't follow him... He shall follow me." She chuckled wickedly. "I've always had an idea I should elope with old Karl... You go back to Cape Town, Grit, and leave this to me. When I've got him safely in tow, I'll communicate with you, and you can drop down on us and finish him, if necessary."