Once Aboard the Lugger Part 64

In heart-stopping panic George dropped the cat, jumped around. The red-headed Pinner boy, whom that morning he had seen in the bar-parlour, was scrambling from beneath the sofa, arms and legs thrusting his flaming pate at full-speed for the door.

"Stop!" George cried, rooted in alarm.

The red-headed Pinner boy got to Ms feet, hurled himself at the door handle.

"Stop!" roared George, struggling with the stupefaction that gripped him. "Stop, you young devil!"

The red-headed Pinner boy twisted the handle; was half through the door as George bounded for him.

"Par-par!" screamed the flaming head, travelling at immense speed down the pa.s.sage. "Par-par! It ain't a hairship. It's a cat!"

George dashed.

"Par-par! Par-par! It's a cat!" The redheaded Pinner boy took the first short flight of stairs in a jump; rounded for the second.

George lunged over the banisters; gripped close in the flaming hair; held fast.

For a full minute in silence they poised--red-headed Pinner boy, on tip-toe as much as possible to ease the pain, in acute agony and great fear; George wildly seeking the plan that must be followed when he should release this fateful head.

Presently, with a backward pull that most horribly twisted the red-headed face: "If you speak a word I'll pull your head off,"

George said. "Come up here."

The pitiful procession reached the sitting-room. "Sit down there,"

George commanded. "If you make a sound I shall probably cut your head clean off. What do you mean by hiding in my room?"

Between gusty pain and terror: "I thought it was a hairship."

"Oh!" George paced the room. What did the vile boy think now? "Oh, well, what do you think it is now?"

"I believe it's the cat wot's in the piper."

"Oh, you do, do you?" Yes, this was a very horrible position indeed.

"Oh, you do, do you? Now, you listen to me, my lad: unless you want your head cut right off you sit still without a sound."

The red-headed Pinner boy sat quite still; wept softly. Life, at the moment, was a bitter affair for this boy.

II.

George paced. The hideous nightmares of the morning had returned now-- snorting, neighing, trampling iron-shod; stampeding in hideous irresistible rushes. This was the beginning of the end. He was discovered--his' secret out.

Flight--immediate flight--that was the essential course. Par-par, thanks to sweet heaven, was at a chapel meeting. The thing could be done. A timetable upon the mantelpiece told him that a down-train left the station at 8.35. It was now eight. Better a down-train than an up.

The further from London the less chance of this infernal _Daily_ with its Country House Outrage. Examining the time-table he determined upon Temple Colney--an hour's run. He had been there once with Bill.

But what of this infernal red-headed Pinner boy? In agony wrestling with the question, George every way ran into the brick wall fact that there was no method of stopping the vile boy's mouth. The red head must be left behind to shriek its discovery to par-par. All that could be done was to delay that shriek as long as possible.

George packed his small hand-bag; placed upon the table money to pay his bill; lifted the crime-stained basket; addressed the red-headed Pinner boy:

"Stop that sniffling. Take that bag. You are to come with me. If you make a sound or try to run away you know what will happen to you. What did I tell you would happen?"

"Cut me 'ead off."

"Right off. Right off--_slish_! Give me your hand; come on."

Through a side door, avoiding the bar, they pa.s.sed into the street.

Kind night gave them cloaks of invisibility; no one was about. In a few minutes they had left the bold village street, were in timid lanes that turned and twisted hurrying through the high hedges.

Half a mile upon the further side of the station George that morning had pa.s.sed a line of haystacks. Now he made for it, skirting the railway by a considerable distance.

The red-headed Pinner boy, exhausted by the pace of their walk, not unnaturally nervous, spoke for the first time: "Ain't you going to the station, mister?"

"Station? Certainly not. Do you think I am running away?"

The red-headed Pinner boy did not answer. This boy was recalling in every detail the gruesome story, read in a paper, of a bright young lad who had been foully done to death in a wood.

George continued: "I shall be back with you at the inn this evening, and I shall ask your father to give you a good thrashing for hiding in my room."

In an earnest prayer the red-headed Pinner boy besought G.o.d that he might indeed be spared to receive that thrashing.

III.

They reached the haystack. George struck a match; looked at his watch.

In seven minutes the train was due.

The ladder George had noticed that morning was lying along the foot of a stack. Uprearing it against one partially demolished, "Put down that bag," he commanded. "Up with you!"

Gustily sniffing in the huge sighs that advertised his terror, the red-headed Pinner boy obeyed. George drew down the ladder. "Stop up there; I shall be back in five minutes. If you move before then--"

He left the trembling boy out of his own agitated fear to fill the unspoken doom. He walked slowly away in the direction opposite from the station until the haystack was merged and lost in the blackness that surrounded it. Then, doubling back, he made for the road; pounded along it at desperate speed.

Most satisfactorily did that bounding, lurching, stumbling run along the dark, uneven lane punish this crime-steeped George. Well he realised, before he had sped a hundred yards, that guilt lashes with a double thong. She had scourged him mentally; now with scorpions she physically lashed him. As it had been racked throbbed that left arm encircling the basket wherein in wild fear the Rose clung to ease the dreadful bruisings that each oscillation gave her; as it were a ton-weight did that hand-bag drag his right arm, thud his thigh; as he were breathing fire did his tearing respirations sear his throat; as a great piston were driving in his skull did the blood hammer his temples.

Topping a low rise he sighted the station lights below.

Simultaneously, from behind a distant whistle there sprang to his ears the low rumble of the coming train.

This history is not to be soiled with what George said at the sound.

With the swiftness and the scorching of flame his dreadful commination leapt from the tortured Rose, terrified in her basket, to the red- headed Pinner boy wrestling in prayer upon the haystack--from the roughness of the lane that laboured his pa.s.sage to the speed of the oncoming train that hammered at his fate.

He hurled himself down the rise; with his last breath gasped for a ticket; upon a final effort projected himself into the train; went p.r.o.ne upon a seat. He was away!

It was when George was some fifteen minutes from Temple Colney that the red-headed Pinner boy, bolstered up with prayer, commended his soul to G.o.d; slipped with painful thud from the haystack; pelted for Par-par.