Harding's Luck Part 36

"I ought to go," he told himself.

"But think of your father," said something else which was himself too.

He thought so hard that his thoughts got quite confused. His head grew very hot, and his hands and feet very cold. Mrs. Honeysett came in, exclaimed at his white face, felt his hands, said he was in a high fever, and put him to bed with wet rags on his forehead and hot-water bottles to his feet. Perhaps he was feverish. At any rate he could never be sure afterwards whether there really had been a very polite and plausible black mole sitting on his pillow most of the day saying all those things which the part of himself that he liked least agreed with.

Such things as--

"Think of your father.

"No one will ever know.

"d.i.c.kie will be all right somehow.

"Perhaps you only dreamed that about d.i.c.kie being shut up somewhere and it's not true.

"Anyway, it's not your business, is it?" And so on. You know the sort of thing.

Elfrida was not allowed to come into the room for fear Edred should be ill with something catching. So he lay tossing all day, hearing the black mole, or something else, say all these things and himself saying, "I must go.

"Oh! poor d.i.c.kie.

"I promised to go.

"Yes, I will go."

And late that night when Lord Arden had come home and had gone to bed, tired out by a long day's vain search for the lost d.i.c.kie, and when everybody was asleep, Edred got up and dressed. He put his bedroom candle and matches in his pocket, crept down-stairs and out of the house and up to Beale's. It was a slow and nervous business. More than once on the staircase he thought he heard a stair creak behind him, and again and again as he went along the road he fancied he heard a soft footstep pad-padding behind him, but of course when he looked round he could see no one was there. So presently he decided that it was cowardly to keep looking round, and besides, it only made him more frightened. So he kept steadily on and took no notice at all of a black patch by the sweetbrier bush by Beale's cottage door just exactly as if some one was crouching in the shadow.

He pressed his thumb on the latch and opened the door very softly.

Something moved inside and a chain rattled. Edred's heart gave a soft, uncomfortable jump. But it was only True, standing up to receive company. He saw the whiteness of the dog and made for it, felt for the chain, unhooked it from the staple in the wall, and went out again, closing the door after him, and followed very willingly by True. Again he looked suspiciously at the shadow of the great sweetbrier, but the dog showed no uneasiness, so Edred knew that there was nothing to be afraid of. True, in fact, was the greatest comfort to him. He told Elfrida afterwards that it was all True's doing; he could never, he was sure, have gone on without that good companion.

True followed at the slack chain's end till they got to the milestone, and then suddenly he darted ahead and took the lead, the chain stretched taut, and the boy had all his work cut out to keep up with the dog. Up the hill they went on to the downs, and in and out among the furze bushes. The night was no longer dark to Edred. His eyes had got used to the gentle starlight, and he followed the dog among the gorse and brambles without stumbling and without hurting himself against the million sharp spears and thorns.

Suddenly True paused, sniffed, sneezed, blew through his nose and began to dig.

"Come on, come on, good dog," said Edred, "come on, True," for his fancy pictured d.i.c.kie a prisoner in some lonely cottage, and he longed to get to it and set him free and get safe back home with him. So he pulled at the chain. But True only shook himself and went on digging. The spot he had chosen was under a clump of furze bigger than any they had pa.s.sed.

The sharp furze-spikes p.r.i.c.ked his nose and paws, but True was not the dog to be stopped by little things like that. He only stopped every now and then to sneeze and blow, and then went on digging.

Edred remembered the knife he had brought. It was the big pruning-knife out of the drawer in the hall. He pulled it out. He would cut away some of the furze branches. Perhaps d.i.c.kie was lying bound, hidden in the middle of the furze bush.

"d.i.c.kie," he said softly, "d.i.c.kie."

But no one answered. Only True sneezed and snuffed and blew and went on digging.

So then Edred took hold of a branch of furze to cut it, and it was loose and came away in his hand without any cutting. He tried another. That too was loose. He took off his jacket and threw it over his hands to protect them, and seizing an armful of furze pulled, and fell back, a great bundle of the p.r.i.c.kly stuff on top of him. True was pulling like mad at the chain. Edred scrambled up; the furze he had pulled away disclosed a hole, and True was disappearing down it. Edred saw, as the dog dragged him close to the hole, that it was a large one, though only part of it had been uncovered. He stooped to peer in, his foot slipped on the edge, and he fell right into it, the dog dragging all the time.

"Stop, True; lie down, sir!" he said, and the dog paused, though the chain was still strained tight.

Then Edred was glad of his bedroom candle. He pulled it out and lighted it and blinked, perceiving almost at once that he was in the beginning of an underground pa.s.sage. He looked up; he could see above him the stars plain through a net of furze bushes. He stood up and True went on.

Next moment he knew that he was in the old smugglers' cave that he and Elfrida had so often tried to find.

The dog and the boy went on, along a pa.s.sage, down steps cut in the rock, through a rough, heavy door, and so into the smugglers' cave itself, an enormous cavern as big as a church. Out of an opening at the upper end a stream of water fell, and ran along the cave clear between sh.o.r.es of smooth sand.

And, lying on the sand near the stream, was something dark.

True gave a bound that jerked the chain out of Edred's hand, and leaped upon the dark thing, licking it, whining, and uttering little dog moans of pure love and joy. For the dark something was d.i.c.kie, fast asleep. He was bound with cords, his poor lame foot tied tight to the other one.

His arms were bound too. And now he was awake.

"Down, True!" he said. "Hush! Ssh!"

"Where are they--the man and woman?" Edred whispered.

"Oh, Edred! You! You perfect brick!" d.i.c.kie whispered back. "They're in the further cave. I heard them snoring before I went to sleep."

"Lie still," said Edred; "I've got a knife. I'll cut the cords."

He cut them, and d.i.c.kie tried to stand up. But his limbs were too stiff.

Edred rubbed his legs, while d.i.c.kie stretched his fingers to get the pins and needles out of his arms.

Edred had stuck the candle in the sand. It made a ring of light round them. That was why they did not see a dark figure that came quietly creeping across the sand towards them. It was quite close to them before Edred looked up.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'ELFRIDA!' SAID BOTH BOYS AT ONCE"

_Page_ 272]

"Oh!" he gasped, and d.i.c.kie, looking up, whispered, "It's all up--_run_.

Never mind me. I shall get away all right."

"No," said Edred, and then with a joyous leap of the heart perceived that the dark figure was Elfrida in her father's ulster.

("I hadn't time to put on my stockings," she explained later. "You'd have known me a mile off by my white legs if I hadn't covered them up with this.")

"Elfrida!" said both boys at once.

"Well, you didn't think I was going to be out of it," she said. "I've been behind you all the way, Edred. Don't tell me anything. I won't ask any questions, only come along out of it. Lean on me."

They got him up to the pa.s.sage, one on each side, and by that time d.i.c.kie could use his legs and his crutch. They got home and roused Lord Arden, and told him d.i.c.kie was found and all about it, and he roused the house, and he and Beale and half-a-dozen men from the village went up to the cave and found that wicked man and woman in a stupid sleep, and tied their hands and marched them to the town and to the police-station.

When the man was searched the letter was found on him which the man--it was that redheaded man you have heard of--had taken from Talbot Court.

"I wish you joy of your good fortune, my boy," said Lord Arden when he had read the letter. "Of course we must look into things, but I feel no doubt at all that you _are_ Lord Arden!"

"I don't want to be," said d.i.c.kie, and that was true. Yet at the same time he did want to be. The thought of being Richard, Lord Arden, he who had been just little lame d.i.c.kie of Deptford, of owning this glorious castle, of being the master of an old name and an old place, this thought sang in his heart a very beautiful tune. Yet what he said was true. There is so often room in our hearts for two tunes at a time. "I don't want to be. You ought to be, sir. You've been so kind to me," he said.

"My dear boy," said the father of Edred and Elfrida, "I did very well without the t.i.tle and the castle, and if they're yours I shall do very well without them again. You shall have your rights, my dear boy, and I shan't be hurt by it. Don't you think that."

d.i.c.kie thought several things and shook the other's hand very hard.

The tale of d.i.c.kie's rescue from the cave was the talk of the countryside. True was praised much, but Edred more. Why had no one else thought of putting the dog on the scent? Edred said that it was mostly True's doing. And the people praised his modesty. And n.o.body, except perhaps Elfrida, ever understood what it had cost Edred to go that night through the dark and rescue his cousin.