The Bronze Bell Part 43

"Hold on!" he cried.

Labertouche pulled up impatiently. "What's the matter?"

"Sophia--!"

"Trust me, dear boy, and come along."

Persuaded, Amber gave in, blundering on after Labertouche, who loped along easily, with the confidence of one who threads known ways, the spot-light from his lamp dancing along the floor several feet before him. Otherwise they moved between walls of Stygian darkness.

It was some time later that Labertouche extinguished his lamp and threw a low word of warning over his shoulder. Synchronously Amber discerned, far ahead, a faint glow of yellow light. As they bore down upon it with unmoderated speed, he could see that it emanated from a rough-hewn doorway, opening off the pa.s.sage. Before it a man stood guard with a naked sword.

"_Johar!_" he greeted them in the Mahar form: "O, warrior!"

"_Johar!_" returned Labertouche, panting heavily. He closed upon the native confidently, but was brought up short by a peremptory sweep of the sword, coupled with an equally imperative demand for an explanation of their haste. The Englishman replied with apparent difficulty, as if half-winded. "It is an order, _Johar_. The woman is to be brought to the Hall of the Bell."

"You have the word?" The Mahar lowered his sword. "It hath been said to me that--"

Labertouche stumbled over his feet, and caught the speaker for support.

The native gurgled in a sodden fashion, dropped his sword, stared stupidly at Labertouche, and put an uncertain hand to his throat. Then he lurched heavily and collapsed upon himself.

The secret-agent stepped back, dropping the knife he had used. "Poor devil!" he said in a compa.s.sionate undertone. "That was cold-blooded murder, Mr. Amber."

"Necessary?" gasped Amber, regarding with horror the bloodstained heap of rags and flesh at his feet.

"Judge for yourself," said Labertouche coolly, stepping over the body.

"Here," he added, pausing by the doorway, "you go first; she knows you."

He pushed Amber on ahead. Stooping, the Virginian entered a small, rude chamber hollowed out of the rock of Kathiapur. A crude lamp in a bracket furnished all its illumination, filling it with a reek of hot oil. Amber was vaguely aware of the figures of two women--one standing in a corner, the other seated dejectedly upon a charpoy, her head against the wall. As he lifted his head after pa.s.sing under the low lintel, the woman in the corner fired at him point-blank.

The Virginian saw the jet of flame spurt from her hand and felt the bullet's impact upon the wall behind his head. He flung himself upon her instantly. There was a moment of furious struggle, while the cell echoed with the reverberations of the shot and the screaming of the woman on the charpoy. The pistol exploded again as he grappled with the would-be murderess; the bullet, pa.s.sing up his sleeve, creased his left arm as with a white-hot iron, and tore out through the cloth on his shoulder. He twisted brutally the wrist that held the weapon, and the woman dropped it with a cry of pain.

"You would!" he cried, and threw her from him, putting a foot upon the pistol.

She reeled back against the wall and crouched there, trembling, her cheeks on fire, her eyes aflame with rage. "You dog!" she shrilled in Hindi--and spat at him like a maddened cat. Then he recognised her.

"Naraini!" He stepped back in his surprise, his right hand seeking instinctively the wrist of his left, which was numb with pain.

His change of position left the pistol unguarded, and the woman swooped down upon it like a bird of prey; but before she could get her fingers on its grip, Labertouche stepped between them, fended her off, and quietly possessed himself of the weapon.

"Your pardon, madam," he said gravely.

Naraini retreated, shaking with fury, and Amber employed the respite to recognise Sophia Farrell in the woman on the charpoy. She was still seated, prevented from rising by bonds about her wrists and ankles, and though unnaturally pale, her anguish of fear and despair had set its marks upon her face without one whit detracting from the appeal of her beauty. He went to her immediately, and as their eyes met, hers flamed with joy, relief and--he dared believe--a stronger emotion.

"You--you're not hurt, Mr. Amber?"

"Not at all. The bullet went out through my sleeve. And you?" He dropped on his knees, with his pocket-knife severing the ends of rope that bound her.

"I'm all right." She took his hands, helping herself to rise. "Thank you," she said, her eyes shining, a flush of colour suffusing her face with glory.

"Did you cut those ropes, Amber?" Labertouche interposed curtly.

"Yes. Why?"

The Englishman explained without turning from his sombre and morose regard of Naraini. "Too bad--we'll have to tie this woman up, somehow.

She's a complication I hadn't foreseen.... Here; you'd better leave me to attend to her--you and Miss Farrell. Go on down the gallery--to the left, I'll catch up with you."

The pistol which he still held lent to his demand a sinister significance of which he was, perhaps, thoughtless. But Sophia Farrell heard, saw, and surmised.

"No!" she cried, going swiftly to the secret-agent. "No!" She put a hand upon his arm, but he shook it off.

"Did you hear me, Amber?" said Labertouche, still watching the queen.

"What do you mean to do?" insisted Sophia. "You can't--you mustn't--"

"This is no time for half-measures, Miss Farrell," Labertouche told her brusquely. "Our lives hang in the balance--Mr. Amber's, yours, mine.

Please go."

"You promise not to harm her?"

"Amber!" cried the Englishman impatiently. "Will you--"

"Please, Miss Farrell!" begged Amber, trying to take the girl's hand and draw her away.

"I won't!" she declared. "I'll not move a step until he promises. You don't understand. No matter what the danger she's--"

"She's a fiend incarnate," Labertouche broke in. "Amber, get that girl--"

"She's my sister!" cried Sophia. "_Now_ will you understand?"

"What!" The two men exclaimed as one.

"She's my sister," the girl repeated, holding up her head defiantly, her cheeks burning--"my sister by adoption. We were brought up together. She was the daughter of an old friend of my father's--an Indian prince. A few years ago she ran away--"

"Thank G.o.d!" said Amber from the bottom of his soul; and, "Ah, you would!" cried Labertouche tensely, as Naraini seized the opportunity, when his attention was momentarily diverted, to break for freedom.

Amber saw the flash of a steel blade in the woman's hand as she struck at the secret-agent, and the latter, stepping back, deflected the blow with a guarding forearm. Then, with the quickness of a snake, Naraini stooped, glided beneath his arms, and slipped from the cell.

With a smothered oath Labertouche leaped to the doorway, lifting his pistol; but he was no quicker than Sophia, who caught his arm and held him back. "No," she panted; "not even for our lives--not at that price!"

He yielded unexpectedly. "Of course you are perfectly right, Miss Farrell," said he, with a little bow. "I'm sorry that circ.u.mstances ...

But come! She'll have this hornet's nest about our ears in a brace of seconds. Hark to that!"

A long, shrill shriek echoed down the gallery. Labertouche shrugged and turned to the left. "Come along," he said. "Amber, take Miss Farrel's hand and keep close to me." He led the way from the cell at a brisk pace--one, indeed, that taxed Sophia's powers of endurance to maintain.

Amber aided her as much as he might, but that was little; the walls of the pa.s.sageway were too close together to permit him to be by her side much of the time. For the most part he had to lead the way, himself guided by the swiftly moving patch of light cast by Labertouche's bull's-eye. But through it all he was buoyed up and exhilarated out of all reason by the consciousness of the hand that lay trustfully in his own; a hand soft and small and warm and (though he could not see it) white, all white! More, it was the hand of his wife to be; he felt this now with an unquestioning a.s.surance. He wondered if she shared the subject of his thoughts ...

The gallery sloped at varying grades, more or less steep--mostly more--and minute by minute the air became more dank and cold. At an unseen turning, where another pa.s.sage branched away, a biting wind swept out of the black nowhere, chilling them to the marrow. Deeper and still deeper, into the very bowels of the earth, it seemed, the secret-agent led them, finding his way with an unfaltering confidence that exalted Amber's admiration of him to the pitch of hero-worship.

At length the gallery dipped and ran level, and now, while still cold, the wind that blew in their faces was cleaner, burdened with less of the clammy effluvium of death and decay; and then, abruptly, the walls narrowed suddenly, so that Amber was forced to surrender possession of the girl's hand and to fall behind her. She went forward without question, following the dancing spotlight.