The Man from Brodney's Part 45

The Princess Genevra lifted her face instantly, a startled expression in her eyes.

"Agnes, you forget yourself!"

"My dear," murmured Lady Agnes sleepily, "forgive me, but I have such a shockingly absent mind." She was asleep a moment later.

In the meantime, Bobby Browne, disdaining all commands and entreaties, refused to be put to bed until he had related the story of their capture and the subsequent events that made the night memorable. He talked rapidly, feverishly, as if every particle of energy was necessary to the task of justifying himself in some measure for the night's mishap. He sat with his rigid arm about his wife's shoulders. Drusilla was stroking one of his hands in a half-conscious manner, her eyes staring past his face toward the dark forest from which he had come. Mr. Britt was ordering brandy and wine for his trembling client.

"After all," said Browne, hoa.r.s.e with nervousness, "there is some good to be derived from our experiences, hard as it may be to believe. I have found out the means by which Rasula intends to destroy every living creature in the chateau." He made this statement at the close of the brief, spasmodic recital covering the events of the night. Every one drew nearer. Chase threw off his spell of languidness and looked hard at the speaker. "Rasula coolly asked me, at one of our resting places, if there had been any symptoms of poisoning among us. I mentioned Pong and the servants. The devil laughed gleefully in my face and told me that it was but the beginning. I tell you. Chase, we can't escape the diabolical scheme he has arranged. We are all to be poisoned--I don't see how we can avoid it if we stay here much longer. It is to be a case of slow death by the most insidious scheme of poisoning imaginable, or, on the other hand, death by starvation and thirst. The water that comes to us from the springs up there in the hills is to be poisoned by those devils."

There were exclamations of unbelief, followed by the sharp realisation that he was, after all, p.r.o.nouncing doom upon each and every one of those who listened.

"Rasula knows that we have no means of securing water except from the springs. Several days ago his men dumped a great quant.i.ty of some sort of poison into the stream--a poison that is used in washing or polishing the rubies, whatever it is. Well, that put the idea into his head. He is going about it shrewdly, systematically. I heard him giving instructions to one of his lieutenants. He thought I was still unconscious from a blow I received when I tried to interfere in behalf of Lady Agnes, who was being roughly dragged along the mountain road. Day and night a detachment of men are to be employed at the springs, deliberately engaged in the attempt to change the flow of pure water into a slow, subtle, deadly poison, the effects of which will not be immediately fatal, but positively so in the course of a few days. Every drop of water that we drink or use in any way will be polluted with this deadly cyanide. It's only a question of time. In the end we shall sicken and die as with the scourge. They will call it the plague!"

A shudder of horror swept through the crowd. Every one looked into his neighbour's face with a profound inquiring light in his eyes, seeking for the first evidence of approaching death.

Hollingsworth Chase uttered a short, scornful laugh as he unconcernedly lifted a match to one of his precious cigarettes. The others stared at him in amazement. He had been exceedingly thoughtful and preoccupied up to that moment.

"Great G.o.d, Chase!" groaned Browne. "Is this a joke?"

"Yes--and it's on Rasula," said the other laconically.

"But even now, man, they are introducing this poison into our systems----"

"You say that Rasula isn't aware of the fact that you overheard what he said to his man? Then, even now, in spite of your escape, he believes that we may go on drinking the water without in the least suspecting what it has in store for us. Good! That's why I say the joke is on him."

"But, my G.o.d, we must have water to drink," cried Britt. Mrs. Saunders alone divined the thought that filled Chase's mind. She clapped her hands and cried out wonderingly:

"I know! I--I took depositions in a poisoning case two years ago. Why, of course!"

"Browne, you are a doctor--a chemist," said Chase calmly, first bestowing a fine smile upon the eager Mrs. Saunders. "Well, we'll distil and double and triple distil the water. That's all. A schoolboy might have thought of that. It's all right, old man. You're f.a.gged out; your brain isn't working well. Don't look so crestfallen. Mr. Britt, you and Mr. Saunders will give immediate instructions that no more water is to be drunk--or used--until Mr. Browne has had a few hours' rest. He can take an alcohol bath and we can all drink wine. It won't hurt us. At ten o'clock sharp Dr. Browne will begin operating the distilling apparatus in the laboratory. As a matter of fact, I learned somewhere--at college, I imagine--that practically pure water may be isolated from wine." He arose painfully and stretched himself. "I think I'll get a little much-needed rest. Do the same, Browne--and have a rub down. By Jove, will you listen to the row my clients are making out there in the woods!

They seem to be annoyed over something."

Outside the walls the islanders were shouting and calling to each other; rifles were cracking, far and near, voicing, in their peculiarly spiteful way, the rage that reigned supreme.

As Chase ascended the steps Bobby Browne and his wife came up beside him.

"Chase," said Browne, in a low voice, his face turned away to hide the mortification that filled his soul, "you are a man! I want you to know that I thank you from the bottom of my heart."

"Never mind, old man! Say no more," interrupted Chase, suddenly embarra.s.sed.

"I've been a fool, Chase. I don't deserve the friendship of any one--not even that of my wife. It's all over, though. You understand? I'm not a coward. I'll do anything you say--take any risk--to pay for the trouble I've caused you all. Send me out to fight----"

"Nonsense! Your wife needs you, Browne. Don't you, Mrs. Browne? There, now! It will be all right, just as I said. I daresay, Browne, that I wouldn't have been above the folly that got the better of you. Only--"

he hesitated for a minute--"only, it couldn't have happened to me if I had a wife as dear and as good and as pretty as the one you have."

Browne was silent for a long time, his arm still about Drusilla's shoulder. At the end of the long hall he said with decision in his voice:

"Chase, you may tell your clients that so far as I am concerned they may have the beastly island and everything that goes with it. I'm through with it all. I shall discharge Britt and----"

"My dear boy, it's most magnanimous of you," cried Chase merrily. "But I'm afraid you can't decide the question in such an off-hand, _degage_ manner. Sleep over it. I've come to the conclusion that it isn't so much of a puzzle as to how you are to _get_ the island as how to get _off_ of it. Take good care of him, Mrs. Browne. Don't let him talk."

She held out her hand to him impulsively. There was an unfathomable, unreadable look in her dark eyes. As he gallantly lifted the cold fingers to his lips, she said, without taking her almost hungry gaze from his face:

"Thank you, Mr. Chase. I shall never forget you."

He stood there looking after them as they went up the stairway, a puzzled expression in his face. After a moment he shook his head and smiled vaguely as he said to himself:

"I guess he'll be a good boy from now on." But he wondered what it was that he had seen or felt in her sombre gaze.

In fifteen minutes he was sound asleep in his room, his long frame relaxed, his hands wide open in utter fatigue. He dreamed of a Henner girl with Genevra's brilliant face instead of the vague, greenish features that haunt the vision with their subtle mysticism.

He was awakened at noon by Selim, who obeyed his instructions to the minute. The eager Arab rubbed the soreness and stiffness out of his master's body with copious applications of alcohol.

"I'm sorry you awoke me, Selim," said the master enigmatically. Selim drew back, dismayed. "You drove her away." Selim's eyes blinked with bewilderment. "I'm afraid she'll never come back."

"Excellency!" trembled on the lips of the mystified servant.

"Ah, me!" sighed the master resignedly. "She smiled so divinely. Henner girls never smile, do they, Selim? Have you noticed that they are always pensive? Perhaps you haven't. It doesn't matter. But this one smiled. I say," coming back to earth, "have they begun to distil the water? I've got a frightful thirst."

"Yes, excellency. The Sahib Browne is at work. One of the servants became sick to-day. Now no one is drinking the water. Baillo is bringing in ice from the storehouses and melting it, but the supply is not large.

Sahib Browne will not let them make any more ice at present." Nothing more was said until Chase was ready for his rolls and coffee. Then Selim asked hesitatingly, "Excellency, what is a bounder? Mr. Browne says----"

"I believe I did call him a bounder," interrupted Chase reminiscently.

"I spoke hastily and I'll give him a chance to demand an explanation.

He'll want it, because he's an American. A bounder, Selim? Well,"

closing one eye and looking out of the window calculatingly, "a bounder is a fellow who keeps up an acquaintance with you by persistently dunning you for money that you've owed to him for four or five years.

Any one who annoys you is a bounder."

Selim turned this over in his mind for some time, but the puzzled air did not lift from his face.

"Excellency, you will take Selim to live with you in Paris?" he said after a while wistfully. "I will be your slave."

"Paris? Who the d.i.c.kens said anything about Paris?" demanded Chase, startled.

"Neenah says you will go there to live, sahib."

"Um--um," mused Chase; "what does she know about it?"

"Does not the most glorious Princess live in Paris?"

"Selim, you've been listening to gossip. It's a frightful habit to get into. Put cotton in your ears. But if I were to take you, what would become of little Neenah?"

"Oh, Neenah?" said Selim easily. "If she would be a trouble to you, excellency, I can sell her to a man I know."

Chase looked blackly at the eager Arab, who quailed.

"You miserable dog!"