High Noon Part 19

Nor was she wrong. For at last, after a cruel ride, in which they covered the journey in half the usual time, the steaming, panting horses were urged up a smooth road, which climbed in curves up the face of a steep hill. Then they came to a small plateau and stopped soon before a gate on which someone knocked loudly.

Several fierce dogs began baying. Light began to show in the east now, and Natalie saw a man push open the ma.s.sive gate. Then, in another minute, she was in the chateau.

In a waiting-room, which projected over a vast cliff, Boris faced his captive. As he stood there a woman entered--the red-haired creature whom Boris had introduced to Paul as his sister.

He beckoned her to draw near.

"This," he said to Natalie, "is Madame Estelle. You see, I have provided a chaperone," he remarked with something like a sneer.

Natalie looked coldly at the two, but said nothing.

Madame Estelle flushed slightly under Natalie's scornful scrutiny as she led the way into an immense dining-room.

To reach this room they had traversed a long pa.s.sage, and Natalie appreciated the fact that the chateau was very curiously built. It consisted, indeed, of two portions, which were linked together by a long stone-flagged corridor.

Boris helped himself liberally to neat brandy, while Madame Estelle sent for a servant and told him to order tea.

Natalie had been filled with an intense foreboding as she entered the house, a foreboding which increased as she slowly recognized that she and Madame Estelle were apparently the only women in the place.

For the tea was brought in by a man, not a farmhand or an honest countryman, but a villainous-looking individual with a pock-marked face and little gold earrings in the lobes of his frost-bitten ears.

He walked with his feet wide apart, and with a slightly rolling gait.

He had an immense bull neck, and the hands with which he grasped the tray were large, grimy and hairy. Natalie set him down as a sailor; nor was she wrong.

When tea was over, Boris lit a cigarette, and drawing Madame Estelle on one side conversed with her for some time in whispers.

At the end of the conference between the two the woman left the room without so much as a word to Natalie or even a glance in her direction.

Boris turned round with a baleful light in his eyes.

"Now, my lady," he said, "we can have this matter out."

Natalie's afflictions had only increased her old habit of command and her natural dignity. Though in reality she was the prisoner, she might have been the captor.

"Before you speak, Boris," she said, "I also have something to say.

How long do you intend to keep me here? I ask this, not for my own sake, but for my brother's."

"That," said Boris, with a malicious grin, "depends entirely on yourself."

"By this time, of course," Natalie continued, "a great hue-and-cry will have been raised after me. Again I ask this question for my brother's sake. He should be informed of my whereabouts at once; for you must remember that he will take this very much to heart."

"He will not be informed of your whereabouts at present," said Boris, shortly. "Because," he continued, with a villainous leer, "I am only cruel to be kind. I want to have all the details of our marriage settled as soon as possible. A night of waiting will soften your dear brother's heart, and he will probably listen to reason in the morning."

Natalie shuddered and drew a little further away from Boris. "You coward," she said, and looked at him with infinite contempt.

Again a dangerous light leapt into his eyes.

"Have a care," he cried, "what names you call me here. I do not wish to be compelled to make you feel your position. But if necessary I shall--"

Natalie did not take her scornful eyes from his face, and Boris at last looked shiftily away.

As he apparently did not intend to speak again, she put to him another question:

"Who is the woman," she asked, "you have here with you?"

"That is no business of yours," snarled Boris, "though you can, if you wish to speak to or allude to her, call her Madame Estelle, as I introduced her to you."

"I merely asked," said Natalie, "because I was curious to know how she came to be a.s.sociated with a rascal like you."

"Ah! my dear cousin, that is something you will understand better a little later." He said this with an insinuating air which filled Natalie with loathing.

"Boris," she said coldly, "I decline altogether to allow you to insult me."

She turned her back on him, and Boris swore at her without disguise.

But she paid no heed.

Presently he walked round the room so that he could come face to face with her.

"It is early," he said, "but early hours will do you good. If you will be so kind as to accompany me I will show you to your room."

He led the way up three flights of stairs till they came to a small landing. Out of this there opened only one door, and through this Boris pa.s.sed.

Natalie now found herself in a large, square room, simply and yet fairly well furnished, partly as a bedroom and partly as a sitting-room.

"It is here," said Boris, "that I am unfortunately compelled to ask you to make your decision.

"You are at perfect liberty to scream to your heart's content. There is no one here who will mind in the least. You are also at perfect liberty to make what efforts at escape you choose. I fear that you will only find them futile."

He went out quickly and closed the door after him. Natalie, listening in the badly-lighted room, could hear a key grate in the lock and bolts shot in both at the top and the bottom of the door.

Quickly and methodically she made an examination of her prison. She looked into the cupboards and into the drawers and the ma.s.sive bureau.

But there was nothing about the room of the remotest interest to her which offered the faintest suggestion, sinister or otherwise.

It was, indeed, only when she looked out of the windows, of which there were three, that she discovered to the full how utterly helpless was her position.

The window on the south side was apparently over the window of the dining-room, and, as she peeped over the sill, looked sheer down the face of the precipice beneath her.

The west window, she found, looked down into a stone court-yard, while the window on the east overhung the moat. Apparently she was imprisoned in a tower.

When Boris had reached the ground floor he sought out Madame Estelle, and drew a chair to the table at which Madame sat at breakfast.

"Estelle," he said, "the crisis in our fortunes has arrived to-day. I want all the help you can give me, and you will want all your nerve."

Madame Estelle eyed him calmly.

"Indeed," she said. "But even though the crisis in our fortunes arrived within the next ten minutes there are certain questions which I must ask you first."

Boris fidgeted impatiently. He realized that he could no longer baulk the question of Natalie, and the sooner he got himself out of the difficulty the better for his day's work. He had all along concealed from Estelle the fact that he meant to marry his cousin.