The Firm of Girdlestone Part 62

Indeed, not a word could be got from her until, entering the dining-room, she perceived her bottle of Hollands upon the table, on which she raised up her voice and cursed the whole company, from the inspector downwards, with the shrillest volubility of invective.

Having satisfied her soul in this manner, she wound up by a perfect shriek of profanity, and breaking away from her guardians, she regained the shelter of her room and locked herself up there, after which they could hear by the drumming of her heels that she went into a violent hysterical attack upon the floor.

Kate had, however, recovered sufficiently to be able to show the police the different rooms, and to explain to them which was which.

The inspector examined the scanty furniture of Kate's apartment with great interest.

"You say you have been living here for three weeks?" he said.

"Nearly a month," Kate answered.

"G.o.d help you! No wonder you look pale and ill. You have a fine prospect from the window." He drew the blind aside and looked out into the darkness. A gleam of moonlight lay upon the heaving ocean, and in the centre of this silver streak was a single brown-sailed fishing-boat running to the eastward before the wind. The inspector's keen eye rested upon it for an instant, and then he dropped the blind and turned away. It never flashed across his mind that the men whom he was hunting down could have chosen that means of escape, and were already beyond his reach.

He examined very carefully the rooms of Ezra and of his father.

Both had been furnished comfortably, if not solidly, with spring mattresses to their beds and carpets upon the floor. The young man's room had little in it beyond the mere furniture, which was natural, as his visits were so short. In the merchant's chamber, however, were many books and papers. On the little square table was a long slip of foolscap covered with complex figures. It appeared to be a statement of his affairs, in which he had been computing the liabilities of the firm.

By the side of it was a small calf-bound diary. The inspector glanced over one of the pages and uttered an exclamation of disgust. "Here are some pretty entries," he cried. "'Feel the workings of grace within me!' 'Prayed that I might be given a livelier interest in the Holy Scriptures!' The book's full of that sort of thing!" he added, turning over the leaves. "The fellow seems to have played the hypocrite even with himself, for he could never have known that other eyes would rest upon this."

"Dere'll be some queer company among de elect if he is dere!" Von Baumser remarked.

"What's all this?" asked the inspector, tumbling a heap of clothes out of the corner with his foot. "Why, here's a monk's dress!"

Kate sprang forward at the words. "Then I did see him!" she cried.

"I had almost persuaded myself that it was a dream."

"What was that?"

Kate told her story as well as she could, and the inspector made notes of it.

"The crafty old dog!" he cried. "No doubt he could reconcile it with his conscience more easily to frighten you to death than to actually kill you. He told you that c.o.c.k-and-a-bull story to excite your imagination, and then, feeling sure that you would sooner or later try and escape by night, he kept guard in this rig. The only wonder is that he didn't succeed in either killing you or driving you mad with fright."

"Never mind now, dear," Tom whispered, as he saw the look of fear spring into her eyes at the recollection of what had pa.s.sed. "Don't think of these terrible things. You will soon be safe in Phillimore Gardens in my mother's arms. In the meanwhile, I think you would be the better for some sleep."

"I think I should, Tom."

"Are you afraid to sleep in your own room?"

"No; I am afraid of nothing, now that I know you are near me. I knew so well that you would come. I have been expecting you all the evening."

"I can never thank my good friends here enough for the help which they have given me!" Tom exclaimed, turning to his companions.

"It is I who should thank them," said Kate earnestly, "I have found friends, indeed. Who can say now that the days of chivalry are past?"

"Me dear young lady," the major answered, bowing with all the innate grace of an Irish gentleman, "ye have warmed us by what ye say.

I personally was, as ye know, under orders which left me no choice but to come. I hope, however, that ye will believe that had Mrs. Scully not occupied the place in me affections which she does, I should still be as prompt as me friends here to hasten to the rescue of a lady.

Tobias Clutterbuck may be ould, Miss Harston, but his heart will niver grow so hardened but that it will milt at the thought of beauty in distriss." With this beautiful sentiment the major placed his fat hand over his heart, and bowed again, even more gracefully than before.

The three foreigners behind made no remark, but they all stood in a line grinning in a most amicable fashion, and nodding their heads as if to intimate that the major was expressing their united sentiments to a nicety. Kate's last recollection of that eventful evening was the smiling visages of Von Baumser, Bulow, and the nameless Russian as they beamed their good night at her.

CHAPTER XLVIII.

CAPTAIN HAMILTON MIGGS SEES A VISION.

Ezra Girdlestone had given many indications during his life, both in Africa and elsewhere, of being possessed of the power of grasping a situation and of acting for the best at the shortest notice. He never showed this quality more conclusively than at that terrible moment, when he realized not only that the crime in which he bad partic.i.p.ated had failed, but that all was discovered, and that his father and he were hunted criminals. With the same intuitive quickness which made him a brilliant man of business, he saw instantly what were the only available means of escape, and proceeded at once to adopt them. If they could but reach the vessel of Captain Hamilton Miggs they might defy the pursuit of the law.

The _Black Eagle_ had dropped down the Thames on the very Sat.u.r.day which was so fruitful of eventful episodes. Miggs would lie at Gravesend, and intended afterwards to beat round to the Downs, there to await the final instructions of the firm. If they could catch him before he left, there was very little chance that he would know anything of what had occurred.

It was a fortunate chance that the next day was Sunday, and there would be no morning paper to enlighten him as to the doings in Hampshire.

They had only to invent some plausible excuse for their wish to accompany him, and get him to drop them upon the Spanish coast. Once out of sight of England and on the broad ocean, what detective could follow their track?

Of course upon Sampson's return all would come out. Ezra reckoned, however, that it would be some time before the fisherman got back from his journey. What was a favourable wind going would be dead in his teeth coming back. It might take him a week's tacking and beating about before he got home. By that time Ezra hoped to be beyond the reach of all danger. He had a thousand five pound Bank of England notes sewn into the back of his waistcoat, for knowing that a crash might come at any moment, he had long made provision against it. With this he felt that he could begin life again in the new world, and with his youth and energy he might hope to attain success. As to his father, he was fully determined to abandon him completely at the first opportunity.

Through the whole of that wintry night the fishing-boat scudded away to the eastward, and the two fugitives remained upon deck, drenched through with rain and with spray, but feeling that the wild turmoil around them was welcome as a relief to their own thoughts. Better the cutting wind and the angry sea than the thought of the dead girl upon the rails and of the bloodhounds of the law.

Ezra pointed up once at the moon, on whose face two storm wreaths had marked a rectangular device.

"Look at that!" he cried. "It looks like a gallows."

"What is there to live for?" said his father, looking up with the cold light glittering on his deep-set eyes.

"Not much for you, perhaps," his son retorted. "You've had your fling, but I am young and have not yet had a fair show. I have no fancy to be scragged yet."

"Poor lad!" the father muttered; "poor lad!"

"They haven't caught me yet," said Ezra. "If they did I question whether they could do much. They couldn't hang three for the death of one. You would have to swing, and that's about all."

About two in the morning they saw a line of lights, which the fisherman informed them was from the town of Worthing. Again before daybreak they scudded past another and far brighter and larger area of twinkling points, which marked the position of Brighton. They were nearly half-way upon their journey already. As the dawn approached the dark storm-clouds gathered away to the northern horizon and lay in a great shadow over the coast. On all other points the sky was clear, save that here and there a single puff of white vapour sailed along like the feather of some gigantic bird floating in the ocean of air.

These isolated clouds, which had been pearly grey in the dim light of early day, gradually took a lilac tint, which deepened into pink, and then blushed suddenly to a fiery scarlet as the red rim of the sun rose majestically over the horizon. All the heaven was filled with colour from the palest, lightest blue at the zenith to the most brilliant crimson in the east, as though it were nature's palette on which she had dashed every tint that she possessed. The sea reflected the rich glow, and the tossing waves were gashed with scarlet streaks. "It looks like a sea of blood," the merchant remarked with a shudder, as he gazed at the wonderful spectacle.

By the returning light the two fugitives were able to notice each other's appearance. Both were pale, haggard, dishevelled, with bloodshot, dark-rimmed eyes and anxious, weary faces.

"This won't do!" remarked Ezra. "If Miggs sees us like this he'll smell a rat."

He dipped a bucket overboard, and after some search a small piece of soap and a broken comb were extracted from one of the lockers.

With these materials they managed to perform their toilets.

They re-arranged and cleaned each other's clothing too, and Ezra purchased a yachting-cap from Sampson for his father, the jaunty nature of which contrasted strangely with the old man's grim angular visage.

"There's a fine view!" Sampson observed, pointing towards the land, just as his two pa.s.sengers had finished their toilet.

They were pa.s.sing a high range of cliffs which ran along for a great distance. Some were of chalk and others were brownish, as though consisting of some sort of earth. There was one which terminated the line towering up above the rest, and as remarkable for the boldness of its outline as for its height. A lighthouse stood upon the summit, and the whole showed up so clearly in the bright morning air that the fugitives could see the green gra.s.s round the house and the coastguardsman at the signal station, who was strolling leisurely about and looking down from his elevation at their little craft. To the eastward of this chalk promontory was a large fine-looking town, which stretched in a wide semicircle round the sh.o.r.es of a curving bay.

"That's Beachy Head," said Sampson, pointing at the cliff. "It's the hoiest p'int down Channel, and they have a look-out place up there to report ships as pa.s.s. It was a Muster Lloyd as put it up. I doan't know who he be, that same Muster Lloyd, but he do seem to take a powerful deal of interest in everythink which has to do wi' shipping.

He's an admiral belike, or something o' the sort."

Neither of the Girdlestones appeared inclined to enlighten him upon the point.

"What's the town?" asked Ezra.

"Eastbourne," the fisherman answered shortly, and lounged away into the bows, while his son remained at the tiller.

The two fugitives had their breakfast; but as it consisted of nothing more appetising than tinned corned-beef and ships' biscuits, and as neither of them had much inclination for food, it was not a very lengthy meal. Then they sat in the sheets once more, watching the grand panorama of green woodland and swelling down and towering cliff, which pa.s.sed before them on the one side while on the other the great ocean highway was dotted with every variety of vessel, from the Portland ketch or the Sunderland brig, with its cargo of coals, to the majestic four-masted liner which swept past, with the green waves swirling round her forefoot and breaking away into a fork of eddying waters in her wake.