The Bronze Bell Part 11

His voice trailed off into silence and he sat staring into the flickering flames that played about the driftwood. Now and again his lips moved noiselessly.

With a wrench Amber pulled himself together. He had been mentally a witness to the murder--had seen the Bengali, obese, monstrous, flabby, his unclean carca.s.s a gross casing for a dark spirit of iniquity and treachery, writhing and whining in the throes of death.... "Rutton," he demanded suddenly, without premeditation, "what are you going to do?"

"Do?" Rutton looked up, his eyes perplexed.

"Why, what is there to do? Get away as best I can, I presume--seek another hole to hide in."

"But how about the law?"

"The law? Why need it ever be known--what has happened to-night? I can count on your silence--I have no need to ask. Doggott would die rather than betray me. He and I can dispose of--it. No one comes here at this time of the year save hunting parties; and their eyes are not upon the ground. You will go your way in the morning. We'll clear out immediately after."

"You'd better take no chances."

Suddenly Rutton smote the table with his fist. "By Indur!" he swore strangely, his voice quavering with joy; "I had not thought of that!"

He jumped up and began to move excitedly to and fro. "I am free! None but you and I know of the pa.s.sing of the Token and the delivery of the message--none can possibly know for days, perhaps weeks. For so much time at least I am in no danger of--"

He shut his mouth like a trap on words that might have enlightened Amber.

"Of what?"

"Let me see: there are still waste places in the world where a man may lose himself. There's Canada--the Hudson Bay region, Labrador...."

A discreet knock sounded on the door in the part.i.tion, and it was opened gently. Doggott appeared on the threshold, pale and careworn.

Rutton paused, facing him.

"Well?"

"Any orders, sir?"

"Yes; begin packing up. We leave to-morrow."

"Very good, sir."

"That is all to-night."

"Yes, sir. Good-night. Good-night, Mr. Amber." The man retired and at intervals thereafter Amber could hear him moving about, apparently obeying orders.

Rutton replenished the fire and stood with his back to it, smiling almost happily. All evidence of remorse had disappeared. He seemed momentarily almost light-hearted, certainly in better spirits than he had been at any time that night. "Free!" he cried softly. "And by the simplest of solutions. Strange that I should never have thought before to-night of--" He glanced carelessly toward the window; and it was as if his lips had been wiped clean of speech.

Amber turned, thrilling, his flesh creeping with the horror that he had divined in Rutton's transfixed gaze.

Outside the gla.s.s, that was lightly silvered with frost, something moved--the spectral shadow of a turbaned head--moved and was stationary for the s.p.a.ce of twenty heartbeats. Beneath the turban Amber seemed to see two eyes, wide staring and terribly alight.

"G.o.d!" cried Rutton thickly, jerking forth his pistol.

The shadow vanished.

With a single thought Amber sprang upon Rutton, s.n.a.t.c.hed the weapon from his nerveless fingers, and, leaping to the door, let himself out.

The snow had ceased; only the wind raved with untempered force.

Overhead it was blowing clear; through rifts and rents in the fast-moving cloud-rack pale turquoise patches of moonlit sky showed, here and there inlaid with a far shining star. The dunes were coldly a-glimmer with the meagre light that penetrated to the earth and was cast back by its white and spotless shroud.

But Amber, at pause a few paces beyond the doorstep, his forefinger ready upon the trigger of the automatic pistol, was alone in the hollow.

Cautiously, and, to be frank, a bit dismayed, he made a reconnaissance, circling the building, but discovered nothing to reward his pains. The snow lay unbroken except in front of the cabin, where the traces of feet existed in profuse confusion; Amber himself, Rutton, Doggott, the babu, and perhaps another, had pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed there; the trail they had beaten streamed out of the vale, to the eastwards. Only, before the window, through which he had seen the peering turbaned head, he found the impressions of two feet, rather deep and definite, toes pointing toward the house, as though some one had lingered there, looking in. The sight of them rea.s.sured him ridiculously.

"At least," he reflected, "disembodied spirits leave no footprints!"

He found Rutton precisely as he had left him, his very att.i.tude an unuttered question.

"No," Amber told him, "he'd made a quick getaway. The marks of his feet were plain enough, outside the window, but he was gone, and ... somehow I wasn't over-keen to follow him up."

"Right," said the elder man dejectedly. "I might have known Chatterji would not have come alone. So my crime was futile." He spoke without spirit, as if completely f.a.gged, and moved slowly to the door. "I don't want another interruption to-night," he continued, shooting the bolts.

He turned to the windows, "Nor peeping Toms," he added, drawing the shade of one down to the sill.

Amber started for him in a panic. "Get away from that window, Rutton!

For the love of heaven don't be foolhardy!"

Rutton drew the second shade deliberately. "Dear boy!" he said with his slow, tired smile, "I'm in no danger personally. Not a hair of my head will be touched until...." Again he left his thought half-expressed.

"But if that fellow out there was Chatterji's companion----!"

"He undoubtedly was. But you don't understand; my life is not threatened--yet."

"Chatterji fired at you," Amber argued stubbornly.

"Only when he found it was his life or mine. I tell you, David, if our enemy in the outer darkness were the babu's brother, he would not touch a hair of my head unless in self-defense."

"I don't understand. It's all so impossible!" Amber threw out his hands helplessly, "Unbelievable! For G.o.d's sake wake me up and tell me I've had a nightmare!"

"I would that were so, David. But the end is not yet."

"What do you mean by that?" demanded Amber, startled.

"Simply, that we have more to endure, you and I. Consider the limitations of the human understanding, David; a little while ago I promised to ask your aid if ever the time should come when I might be free to do so; I said, 'That hour will never strike.' Yet already it is here; I need you. Will you help me?"

"You know that."

"I know.... One moment's patience, David." Rutton glanced at the clock.

"Time for my medicine," he said; "that heart trouble I mentioned...."

He drew from a waistcoat pocket a small silver tube, or phial, and uncorking this, measured out a certain number of drops into a silver spoon. As he swallowed the dose the phial slipped from his fingers and rang upon the hearthstone, spilling its contents in the ashes. A pungent and heady odour flavoured the air.

"No matter," said Rutton indifferently. "I shan't need it again for some time." He picked up and restored the phial to his pocket. "Now let me think a bit." He took a quick turn up the room and down again. Amber remarked that the medicine was having its effect; though the brilliance of Rutton's eyes seemed somewhat dimmed a dull flush had crept into his dark cheeks, and when he spoke it was in stronger accents--with a manner more a.s.sured, composed.

"A mad dance," he observed thoughtfully: "this thing we call life. We meet and whirl asunder--motes in a sunbeam. To-night Destiny chose to throw us together for a little s.p.a.ce; to-morrow we shall be irrevocably parted, for all time."

"Don't say that, Rutton."