The Moonlit Way Part 84

He came toward her stealthily, moving more swiftly as she put the stone basin of the pool between them and cast an agonised glance up at the distant terrace.

"Jim!" she cried frantically. "Jim! Help me, Jim!"

The gay din of the music above drowned her cry; she fled as Ferez darted toward her, but again he doubled and sprang back to bar the stone steps, and she halted, white and breathless, yet poised for instant flight.

Again and again she called out desperately for aid; the noise of the orchestra smothered her cry. And if, indeed, anybody from the terrace above chanced to glance down, it is likely that they supposed these two were skylarking merrymakers at some irresponsible game of catch-who-can.

Suddenly Thessalie remembered the lower level, where the automobiles were parked, and from which Ferez had first appeared. She could escape that way. There were the steps, not very far behind her. The next instant she turned and ran like a deer.

And after her sped Ferez, his broad, thin-bladed knife pressed flat against the crimson sash across his breast, his dead-white visage distorted with that blind, convulsive fear which makes murderers out of cowards.

XXVIII

GREEN JACKETS

Thoroughly worried by this time over the sudden disappearance of Thessalie Dunois, and unable to discover her anywhere on the terrace or in the house, Westmore, Barres and Dulcie Soane had followed the winding main drive as far as the level, where their car was waiting among scores of other cars.

But Thessalie was not there; the chauffeur had not seen her.

"Where in the world could she have gone?" faltered Dulcie. "She was standing up there on the terrace with us, a moment ago; then, the very next second, she had vanished utterly."

Westmore, grim and pallid, walked back along the drive; Dulcie followed with Barres. As they overtook Westmore, he cast one more glance back at the ranks of waiting cars, then stared up at the terraced hill above them, over which the artificial moon hung above the lindens, glowing with pallid, lambent fires.

There was a vague whitish object on one of the gra.s.sy slopes--something in motion up there--something that was running erratically but swiftly--as though in pursuit--or _pursued_!

"My G.o.d! What's that, Garry!" he burst out. "That thing up there on the hillside!"

He sprang for the steps, Barres after him, taking the ascent at incredible speed, up, up, then out along a shrub-set gra.s.sy slope.

"Thessa!" shouted Westmore. "Thessa!"

But the girl was flat on her back on the gra.s.s now, fighting st.u.r.dily for life--twisting, striking, baffling the whining, panting thing that knelt on her, holding her and trying to drive a knife deep into the lithe young body which always slipped and writhed out of his trembling clutch.

Again and again he tore himself free from her grasp; again and again his armed hand sought to strike, but she always managed to seize and drag it aside with the terrible strength of one dying. And at last, with a last crazed, superhuman effort, she wrested the knife from his unnerved fist, tore it out of his spent fingers.

It fell somewhere near her on the gra.s.s; he strove to reach it and pick it up, but already her dauntless resistance began to exhaust him, and he groped for the knife in vain, trying to pin her down with one hand while, with desperate little fists, she rained blows on his bloodless face that dazed him.

But there was still another way--a much better way, in fact. And, as the idea came to him, he ripped the red-silk sash from his breast and, in spite of her struggles, managed to pa.s.s it around her bare neck.

"Now!" he panted. "I keep my word at last. C'est fini, ma pet.i.te Nihla."

"Jim! Help me!" she gasped, as Ferez pulled savagely at the silk noose, tightened it with all his strength, knotted it. And in that same second he heard Westmore crashing through the shrubbery, close to him.

Instantly he rose to his knees on the gra.s.s; bounded to his feet, leaped over the low shrubs, and was off down the slope--gone like a swift hawk's shadow on the hillside. Barres was after him.

The soul of Thessalie Dunois was very near to its escape, now, brightening, glistening within its unconscious chrysalis, stretching its glorious limbs and wings; preparing to arise from its spectral tenement and soar aloft to its myriad sisters, where they swarmed glittering in the zenith.

Had it not been for the knife lying beside her on the gra.s.s--the blade very bright in the starlight--truly the youthful soul of Thessalie had been sped.

At the edge of the Gerhardts' pine woods, Barres, at fault, baffled, furious, out of breath and glaring around him in the dark, sullenly gave up the hopeless chase, turned in his tracks, and came back.

Thessalie, lying in Dulcie's arms, unclosed her eyes and looked up at him.

"Are you all right?" he asked, kneeling and bending over her.

"Yes ... Jim came."

Westmore's voice was shaky.

"We worked her arms--Dulcie and I--started respiration. She was nearly gone. That beast strangled her----"

"I lost him in those woods below. Who was he?"

"Ferez Bey!"

Thessalie sighed, closed her eyes.

"She's about all in," whispered Westmore. And, to Dulcie: "Let me take her. I'll carry her to the car."

At that Thessalie opened her eyes again and the old, faintly humorous smile glimmered out at him as he stooped and lifted her from the gra.s.s.

"Can I really trust myself to your arms, Jim?" she murmured.

"You'd better get used to 'em," he retorted. "You'll never get away from them again--I can tell you that right now!"

"Oh.... In that case, I hope they'll be--comfortable--your arms."

"Do you think they will be, Thessa?"

"Perhaps." She gazed into his eyes very seriously from where she lay cradled in his powerful arms.

"I'm tired, Jim.... So sore and bruised.... When he was choking me I tried to think of you--believing it was the end--my last conscious thought----"

"My darling!----"

"I'm so tired," she breathed, "so lonely.... I shall be--contented--in your arms.... Always----" She turned her head and rested her cheek against his breast with a deep sigh.

He held her in his arms in the car all the way to Foreland Farms.

Dulcie, however, had possessed herself of Thessalie's left hand, and when she stroked it and pressed it to her lips the girl's tightening fingers responded, and she always smiled.

"I'm just tired and sore," she explained languidly. "Ferez battered me about so dreadfully!... It was so mortifying. I despised him all the time. It made me furious to be handled by such a contemptible and cowardly creature."